Your Online Business Reputation Can Make or Break You

Last month I talked about your Performance-Based Contracting’ brand and how that can help you dominate your marketplace. What I didn’t bring up is the importance of your reputation. This is a very important part of your brand and is something you should really pay attention to.

You really only get one chance to make a great impression to potential customers and then, once you have them as customers, you have to work hard to keep them. Your reputation is central to this.

In the past, companies built their brands reputations through traditional methods ‘ word-of-mouth, advertising, direct mail, and so on. Those methods, by the way, are still valid, but now you have to think about your ‘online’ reputation as well.

Why?

With the ever-more dominant millennial generation, that reputation, especially what they find online, is one of the most important ‘hooks’ they use to determine whether they want to do business with you or not.

What Does This Mean?

Most of us are quite familiar with this phenomenon, but for kicks, here is the definition of reputation management I found on Wikipedia:

‘Reputation management is the influencing and/or control of an individual’s or business’s reputation. Originally a public relations term, the advancement of Internet and social media use, along with reputation management companies, have made it primarily an issue of search results.’

The point is that online reputation isn’t much different from word-of-mouth except it is exposed instantly to tens of thousands of potential customers. Oh, and it is up there pretty much forever.

No matter what you do, people will post good news and bad news about your company online every day. Some people say that any ‘press’ is better than no press. But if any includes negative statements about your company, its services, people, and products, how is that good? The answer: it isn’t.

What is Your Online Reputation?

So ‘ do you know what your online reputation is? Are you proactive at staying on top of it? Do you ask for reviews? Do you quickly respond to them? These are some of the actions necessary to really manage your reputation, stay ahead of your competitors, and attract not only new customers but potentially new employees as well.

If you ignore this aspect of your overall branding strategy, your online reputation can negatively impact your business. Your worst enemy is complacency. As I said before, your ‘digital footprint’ never really goes away. So it’s in your best interest to stay on top of your reputation and take care of customer issues in a fast, positive manner.

Read more about reputation management at ncilink.com/Reputation. Be sure to also read about how you can strengthen and grow your reputation and brand through content marketing.

Speaking of digital footprints, we dedicate this issue to the digital solutions side of managing a successful High-Performance HVAC Contracting company. We cover software that helps close more sales plus other digital tools that help you on your mission to measure, diagnose, and solve customer issues.

Branding and reputation are important keys to a successful HVAC business. So how are you managing yours?