Technology has revolutionized most principles of marketing, notably brand reputation building. Digital advertising and artificial intelligence, for example, have become key tools in reputation building.
Technology can also be used by your competitors to tarnish your brand’s online reputation.
With that in mind, you must channel a sizeable amount of your marketing budget towards making technology work for you; to enhance your brand reputation. Here are a few tips that will help you with that:
- Build a top-shelf website
Technology has enabled most people to own smartphones and access the internet. And because your website is the face of your brand online, your online reputation is mostly dependent on how great the website looks.
- Help your visitors find their way around your website by improving its user interface.
- Optimize your website for mobile.
- Use the site to promote the right kind of content, using the right keywords, to target the right people.
- Build your website visibility by marketing it on social media.
- Build relationships through professional interpreting
Language can deter your expansion strategy if you are targeting overseas markets. If a target audience cannot understand your marketing message, chances that they will not make a good connection with your products. They might actually give your brand negative reviews online.
But language can be an asset. Thanks to technological advancement, you can meet new people and build business relationships with them even without speaking the same language. How so? Because you can easily access professional translation services online at an affordable fee!
That is not all. Video and over-the-phone remote interpreting has made it possible for brands to hold both virtual and in-house multilingual events without blowing their budgets. You can access remote interpreters just a few hours or minutes to your event, especially if the meeting is urgent.
- Use chatbots to boost customer service
You need to provide customers with the best online shopping experience not just for the sake of your reputation but also for the purposes of conversions. If online shoppers cannot find what they need on your site fast, they are likely to bounce and give you a negative review. A chatbot running on your website can assist your clients to find items easily, particularly by answering their frequently asked questions. This kind of customized service makes the clients feel appreciated, so they will spend more time and money in your online store.
- Leverage social influencers
Thanks to technology, reaching potential clients through LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, among other social platforms, is very easy. But your competitors and malicious reviewers are there too. Build a community of influencers to drown any negative reviews that people could have shared about your brand. Create useful, informative, and engaging content and promote it through social media influencers to correct any misinformation that people have shared about your brand.
- Own your brand by becoming the media
You can become your own media these days thanks to technology. You can, for example, share your videos and photos via social media, eliminating the need for magazine and newspaper ads. Instead of relying on radio for adverts, you can host your own podcast. Simply put, you can get your message out more accurately, faster, and affordably by becoming the media.
- Make use of data analytics
All your business decisions should be informed by customer data, but collecting data using traditional means hasn’t always been productive. Thanks to online data analytics, you can understand different demographics better by studying their online shopping behaviors, media preferences, and promotion sensitivity. You can now customize your messaging and products for each customers; which is helpful in brand reputation building.
- Use visual content to your advantage
This is particularly useful for small businesses and startups. Because a startup entrepreneur is in most cases the face of their company, their brand reputation is always influenced by their personality. If you create a positive, strong personality, you will automatically gain a good online reputation. It is very easy to take professionally-looking amateur videos and images, which you can then use to create a positive personality online. Think of all the positivity you will build around your brand if you share videos of your company feeding the homeless or engaging in a form of voluntary community service.
- Leverage voice search
Online voice searches have become really popular these days as online activities continue to shift to mobile. If you adapt your web content to voice searches, your chances of cultivating a positive brand reputation multiplies.
Conclusion
Customers in today's fast-paced market have no time for brands that underperform online. You need to work diligently to improve products and services, while at the same time investing modern technology for both your production and marketing processes. However, even as you grow your brand reputation online, you must remember that your offline reputation matters too. Invest in word-of-mouth marketing.
Guest post courtesy of Dave Burrell