Reputation Management for Plumbers - Start by looking at your competition

Is your online reputation in jeopardy due to unhappy customers?

Or are you enjoying glowing customer reviews on the top review websites?

Better yet, how are your competitors faring in the world of online customer reviews? What are their customers saying about them? Which of your competitors are getting the most praise? Which ones are getting the most criticism?

Before you embark on the trail of online reputation management, it is important to take a look at some of your closest competitors’ reputations as well. Armed with this information, you will be able to develop and implement a plan to increase branding and boost the amount of positive customer remarks and reviews made about your business online.

In the business world online, people have the freedom to say whatever it is they want about their experiences with businesses – both positive and negative. This means that there is a chance that they could post about bad experiences they’ve had with your business.

Regardless of whether or not their claims are accurate, the fact is that once they are posted online, their ability to impact the buying decisions of others is quite strong.

Therefore, taking a peek at what’s being said about your competitors is a great place to start your reputation management efforts. Why? Because this will give you some immediate insight as to how much work you have to do to build a reputation that will outshine theirs.

When it comes to consumers taking action, businesses with positive reputations win hands down. People trust what other people say about businesses online, so they’re likely to go with those businesses with better reviews and reputations.

Taking a look at what is being said about your competition is also a great way for you to see what potential customers in your market like and do not like when dealing with businesses in your industry.

So you are able to take this information and use it to make your products and services more appealing to local consumers.

You can get online and simply perform a search for your closest competitors and start reading through the results that come up. Which ones seem to be more involved in managing their online reputations? Which ones have great reviews? Which ones have terrible reviews with no responses?

The whole point of identifying your competitors’ reputation is so you can lay down a strategy that will work towards creating a better online image for your business to attract more customers.

Analyze Your Own Reputation Status

Are you keeping up with what your customers are saying about your business online? If not, you’re putting your livelihood right in their hands.

Consumers are very careful about which Plumbing & HVAC businesses they spend their money with.  In fact, some studies have shown that a large percentage of consumers heavily rely on online reviews made by other consumers when making purchasing decisions.

Therefore, it is extremely important to know where your online reputation stands prior to developing a plan to build and maintain it.

To start, all it takes is a simple search engine query – enter your business name in the top search engines and read all of the results that come up.

Pay special attention to local review sites such as Google+ Local, Yelp, Bing Local, MerchantCircle, and others. Many consumers flock to these sites to praise or slam businesses.

This is the quickest way to see exactly how your customers feel about your products and services. Do you have any negative comments? If so, have you reached out to the customer to correct the issues? Have you made a public response to their issues? Or is the fate of your business simply left out there to chance?

Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is the first step at improving them. Reading what others have to say about your business is one of the best ways to see how well you are performing in the eyes of consumers.

Quite honestly, multiple negative comments can hurt your business and destroy the reputation you have worked so hard to build. Simple comments by a few angry customers can turn out to be your worst nightmare once your business starts to decline. Therefore, if you find these comments and do what you can to dissolve the negativity quickly.

While looking through the results found in your search, don’t stop at the first page. Keep digging through the pages so you can find out as much as you can about how your business is being portrayed online.

Also, what are you doing to build your brand online? Are you using social media sites to help in the branding process, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+?

Social media is the perfect tool for building your company’s image in a positive light. Not only that, but they provide a way for you to actually communicate and interact with your target audience, which is great for increased sales and ultimately, increased profits.

Spy on Your Plumbing & HVAC Competitors (What are people saying about them online?)

Although building and improving your own reputation is critical for marketing success, it is also important that you look into how well your competitors are managing theirs.

Besides, this information will give you some insight as to how much work you will have to do to gain “top of the line status” in the eyes of local consumers.

To take a peek at how well your competitors are doing in their customers’ eyes, pull up your favorite search engine and perform a search. Simply enter your competitor’s name and see what comes up in the results…

Does the competitor have a nice amount of good customer reviews? If so, chances are that they are actively encouraging reviews from their customers, which is one of the most effective ways to get them.

Does your competitor have a large amount of negative customer reviews?

Are they actively monitoring and responding to customer complaints? Or have the complaints been out there for months with no response? If any of this is the case, you’re already ahead of them in the battle.

Also take a look at their social media pages to see how often they are posting comments. How well do they communicate with their audience? What are they saying to their audience? How is their audience responding?

Are they providing valuable content that their audience wants to hear about on a consistent basis?

All of this is part of the branding process and plays an important role in how well businesses look in the eyes of potential customers.

Google Alerts is a clever way and simple way to monitor what is being said about your company, as well as your competitors, online. Simply set it up by entering the keywords (the business’s name) and Google will deliver the results to you from the web and news as they occur.

While spying on your competitors may seem a bit overboard, it’s actually a key factor in helping you develop your own reputation and branding strategies.

The information you obtain should not be used in any unethical way against your competition. In fact, it should be used to help you figure out what you can do to become the “business of choice” when consumers perform local internet searches for your type of product or service.

Make Customers Choose YOU With Reputation Management

While it is important to build a reputable website that will convert traffic into sales, you should not focus all of your energy on website promotion and forget about other important marketing factors.

One critical strategy that is often overlooked by plumbing & HVAC Business Owners is online reputation management. This is the process of building a positive reputation online, while diluting any negativity that may hurt your reputation.

In an effort to beat your competitors and become the business of choice in your area and field of expertise, online reputation management is a must.

You should do everything in your power to monitor what is being said about your company and flush out the negativity by building the positivity.

If you want any chance of grabbing more of the market share from your direct competitors, reputation management cannot be ignored.

So, let’s say, for example, that your local customer come across your website and one of your competitor’s website in the search engine results.

Your business has no customer reviews at all, but your competitor has 55 reviews – mostly glowing ones. Who do you think consumers will choose?

Or, let’s say your competitor has 20 great reviews and 1 negative review, but you have 10 great reviews and 10 negative ones. Who do you think consumers will choose?

If you really want consumers to choose you, you must put forth an effort to get more positive comments and reviews from your customers. How do you do that? One of the easiest ways is to simply ask your happy customers to go online to leave a review for your business. There are many creative ways to do so and most people don’t have a problem doing it.

Also be sure to carefully watch and engage with your social media audience as this is another place where consumers air their opinions about businesses.  However, as long as you are there to respond to and fix any complaints, you won’t lose too many brownie points because at least you show that you care.

You may have noticed that some of your competitors have terrible online reviews and have yet to respond to them. Some of them may not have any reviews at all. These competitors should be your least concern because as long as you have built a strong, positive brand, your business will win against them every time.

Maintain Your Reputation Status

Many businesses tend to ignore their online reputations until it’s already too late. Some Plumbers discover that the damage is already done, which means they must get to work quickly and restlessly to re-build their reputations.

The process of online reputation management involves replacing negative comments with positive ones, which can be a huge task to take on.

However, if you can achieve this goal, your potential customers will read more positive comments about your business while the negative ones are being pushed down the search engine results.

This is usually done by asking your existing customers to leave reviews about your business on review sites, as well as encouraging positive comments on social media pages, which also rank in the search engine results.

In order to maintain your newfound online image, it is crucial that you keep doing everything you did to get there. If you relax and reduce your efforts, you may fall back into the same situation and have to scramble to re-claim your great reputation.

Maintaining a strong, positive reputation can easily give you the upper-hand on some of your stiffest competitors. This process involves keeping a close eye on your business image by checking the web regularly and rigorously for any negative comments and reviews.

If you happen to find any negativity, be sure to promptly address it to show everyone that you actually care about your customers. You can also ask the customer to change the comment once you’ve fixed the problem.

If your audience asks questions, again, provide prompt answers to those questions to display the highest level of customer service.

Although it sad to say, but many businesses go as low as to post fake bad reviews about their competition just to make their own business more appealing to potential customers. This is unethical and is not the way to grow your business.

There are times that you may come across negative reviews about your company that are clearly unreal. While any type of negatively can be removed or buried, it may be in your best interest to get the help of an online reputation management specialist to help you tackle the tough situations.

Otherwise, you could put a lot of time and effort into the process without making any progress towards your goals.

If you would like more information about how manage and build a solid, positive branding campaign for your Plumbing or HVAC Business that you can be proud of download our FREE Internet Marketing and SEO Guide for Plumbing & HVAC Contractors by clicking here.

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