You have probably already been inundated with "the Best Of" and other recommended things you should watch, use, buy, or talk about in 2019. Many of these suggestions are worth their weight in golden nuggets so I've taken a few of the best of the best recommendations that are related to the online marketing space and would best apply to small business owners and, over the next few days, I'll share my top 7 best of the best online marketing moves for 2019.
1. Build & Maintain Your Online Reputation
As a business owner, it is imperative that you pay attention to what people are saying about your business, products, and services online. Approximately 97% of today’s consumers go online to find local businesses that have what they’re looking for. If they find information that puts your business in a negative light, your ability to attract and retain customers will be seriously impacted.
Why? Depending on which report you read or who you ask, somewhere between 80 and 90% of consumers say online reviews impact their buying decisions. You can believe this because, in most cases, this is a practice that you do when you are searching for a product or service for your own personal use.
Bright Local produces a yearly survey report showing these statistics and if you're curious about the rest of the details about how consumers feel about reviews, a businesses reputation, or their habits when it comes to choosing a business, you should take the time to read the latest survey.
Another feather in your cap for building your online reputation is that it really does increase sales for your business. In some cases, businesses have seen an increase in sales as much as 58% thanks to good reviews posted online.
Many business owners don't see the connection between reviews and sales until they get a less than favorable review. Unfortunately, the business owner won't know that it exists unless a customer shows it to them. By then, the business owner is in reactive mode.
If you don’t control your online reputation, someone else will. Unfortunately, there are many ways for customers, ex-employees, and competitors to post negative comments about your business. If you do not know what is being said, you have no chance of counteracting this activity to ensure your brand comes across in a positive light for potential customers. Can you see why being proactive and managing your business online reputation can be beneficial?
Influencer Marketing Hub shares a list of free and paid online reputation management tools that you can adapt in your efforts to get a better hold on what's being said about you or your business online. There are even a few mentioned that I use myself in this list. Here is a shortlist of a few that are no cost, simple, and offer the biggest bang for your efforts.
Google Yourself- The simplest and most immediate way to see what's online about you or your business is to do a search of your business name (and your own name). To get the best results, log out of all Google services, such as Gmail, YouTube, or any other service you may be using (or even use a completely different computer). The reason this is so important is because you do not want any “personalized” search results to come up based on your browsing history, location, or other factors.
Google Alerts- Google Alerts is a great free tool that allows you to receive email notifications whenever content is posted online that is related to the keywords you set up. For instance, you can setup keywords with variations of your company name, your personal name, your products/services, etc. You will be notified whenever someone posts content about your brand. This tool is also useful in many other ways, such as monitoring your competitors, monitoring industry news and trends, and any other content monitoring you want.
Social Mention- a free online monitoring tool that shows mentions of your brand on social media networks. It searches the top social sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as smaller ones you may not know about. Simply enter your company’s name in the search box and choose a filter from the drop down to pull from specific platforms and other criteria. When the results come up, the overall mentions will be graded on sentiment – being positive, neutral, or negative – along with other types of data.
As you can see, it is important for you to listen to what people are saying about your company online so YOU can regain or maintain control of your company’s image. You don't need to dedicate a large part of your life to online reputation management, by putting a few tools in place, you can setup a little automation to alert you of any issues.
Here's the whole list of the 7 Top Best of the Best Online Marketing Moves for 2019
- Reputation Marketing
- Video Marketing & Conversion Strategies
- Voice Search
- Chat Bots & Push Notifications
- Personalization
- Seamless Channels
- Native Advertising
Look for the next on my Best of the Best Online Marketing Moves for 2019!