Brand Reputation – It takes years to build it. It takes minutes to ruin it.
With the internet providing a platform for businesses to operate on a global scale, it also became easier to establish a brand reputation. However, the internet has always been a double-edged sword. Without adequate defensive measures, internet can just as easily break a business, that too in a matter of minutes.
Although reputation is important for every kind of business, online businesses especially web hosting brands will be the ones benefitting (or suffering) the most from it. For a web hosting brand, a solid reputation depends on even the smallest of things associated with the business.
The context
Your business involves selling web hosting services. Just like in any other business, you will be facing a good challenge in the form of competition, making it harder for you to retain existing customers and attract new ones.
This is where you need some momentum. Reputation provides just that. It is important because of a lot of reasons. For now, let’s just assess it with some facts.
- Existing customers will choose to end the deal
- Sales figures go down
- Discredits the quality of your service
- Market value drops
- Easier for competitors to take over while you become obsolete
I chose the 3 facts above just to keep it simple. Here’s the assessment.
#1 – Reputation is volatile. So are your customers’ minds. The trust they place on your business should be safeguarded. That will keep your good reputation alive.
#2 – Online source is the most trusted source of information for more than 65% of the Internet users. See the impact of trust there. Online search now has that kind of reputation because of this trust.
Now, check the second half of that fact. Potential customers search about people and companies before making a purchasing decision.
With that said, see what you can understand from the third fact.
#3 – Consumers research a lot now thanks to the Internet, and what they find influences their purchasing decision. Imagine if your business has been consistently getting negative reviews from customers. Or imagine that the customer rating is below 4 on a scale of 5. The business you could’ve got is as good as gone, because they can find similar businesses without negative reviews and with a 4+ rating out of 5.
This is what a web hosting business will be dealing with. Some make it after a long run. Some don’t. It’s a battle of wits and patience….a struggle.
What bad reputation can do to a web hosting firm
- Sales figures go down
- Discredits the quality of your service
- Market value drops
- Easier for competitors to take over while you become obsolete
The Struggle
The struggle is to keep the business going by keeping customers happy. Keeping customers happy means positive feedbacks. Positive feedbacks indicate good reputation. Good reputation in turn means more business.
But why is there a struggle to keep customers happy? Not just because there are others doing what you do. The struggle is basically because you can’t earn trust that easily. People don’t want to just share their business data and information to a web hosting provider they know from a search engine results page.
They consider it a risk that could break their business in so many ways. What if they provide the data, and then the hosting provider messes up losing that data as a result? That spells doom for their business in most cases. Customers tend to get paranoid when they are dealing with something new.
So they rely on search engines to learn more about the technology, the company, their service history etc. This makes it important for your business to earn their trust first.
The Leverage
Owning a business in a very competitive market, and establishing online brand visibility are just one half of the real challenge. You are wrong if you think the other half of the challenge involves what your business does or what you are selling.
No. The other half is about what customers will find about you when they search your business online. That is why search engine optimization is relevant. But in addition to that, you would want everyone saying good things about your business. They wonder about even a single negative review, and seek answers to their questions probably from your previous customers.
The most useful tool in the internet that you can leverage to clear this confusion is content.
That is why companies started investing a lot on content marketing. The material they publish are meant to reach potential customers, answer their questions, and assure them that you are good at what you do (web hosting in this case).
Reputation Management
You should be realizing by now why it’s important. However, no matter how careful you are, there will still be….always be…unsatisfied customers. You can’t please everyone. You may even come across negative reviews on your business, regardless of whether the one who wrote it had a just cause.
Not responding to it can do more harm than good. Instead of ignoring it, you should respond and attempt to win over the one who wrote that review.
How?
Show them that you care – Most web hosting companies make it a habit of ignoring negative reviews and comments. They normally won’t contact the people that publically posted their negative opinions. Even if the companies do respond, it will only end up antagonizing those people.
The best approach is to fix the problem rather than defending your business. Reach out to those people who had bad experiences with your business, let them know that you genuinely care in a respectable way. Throw in some discounts or gifts, and then make things right for them.
Create more websites and domains – This is plan B. If they are still adamant enough to not take down the negative review, you will have to spend some money on buying a few websites and domains for your business (with your brand name of course).
They will find their way in to the first page of the search results along with your social media pages, Wikipedia page etc. when someone searches for your business, and also effectively pushes back the negative reviews to third or fourth pages. It’s unlikely that people will check everything in those pages.
Get customer testimonials/references – Make sure to get testimonials and references from satisfied customers so that you can use them to show off your service quality. If this is what potential customers first notice about your web hosting company, they will be impressed with the positive reviews, and might move on to look into the services you offer rather than scan everything for negative feedbacks.
Harness SEO and start blogging – Online reputation includes appearing in the first pages of search engine results. You achieve that through SEO and a lot of patience. You will need backlinks and a boatload of good quality contents, especially blogs. Optimize the blogs to be ranked higher by search engines, tag blogs with backlinks, interconnect the content and share them to get them before potential customers.
When You are Done
Once you have done everything above, you will start noticing some good changes like search engines rewarding your website, traffic increasing, more people visiting your social media accounts etc.
These are signs of momentum. You will have to capitalize on this by providing services in such a way that it impresses the hell out of your customers. Respond to their queries, and focus on building an online community of followers. If you notice anything that could potentially tarnish your hard earned reputation, find ways to mend the relationship so that people will know that you have been watching and that you still care.
