The Changing Effect of Online Reviews & Traditional Marketing

When 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine, it’s pretty important to be found. Google’s main goal in the organic strategy is to model the real world. This means, if everyone loves your products or services, there’s a much higher chance your business will keep growing as more and more websites praise your business.

Although, unfortunately, it only takes one person, or one mistake to destroy everything you’ve built online - where almost everyone is searching these days.

For example; one day Joe the plumber woke up, and it happened. He pulled up his laptop while sipping his morning coffee, and searched his business name to see how he was doing vs. his competitors.

Joe drops his coffee, staring at his business name in Google search results. His most valuable asset - his reputation, being trash-talked by websites.

This happens to businesses every day. Sometimes it’s well-deserved, and sometimes it isn’t.

In the days of traditional marketing, using advertising means such as TV, Radio & Billboards would work incredibly well for a company despite a few bad moments here and there. Not to say these methods are no longer useful, but here is the kicker….

Anyone who sees traditional advertising, can now, in a split second, pull up their mobile phone and search the company via Google, Bing, or whatever search engine preference the user may have.

Using one of my favorite online marketing tools, SEMrush, I was able to see how a local law firm I saw advertised on a bus was doing online in mobile searches.

Afterward, I looked at how they're doing on desktop searches.

According to these statistics, they are receiving almost 47 times more traffic from mobile devices than they are desktop traffic.

Now, there are many factors determining why they rank - mainly focused around the website itself.

So, in order to prove my theory of how traditional marketing is supposed to be used in this digital age (which I'll explain more about below), I dug a bit deeper.

This was stunning to me. They were receiving over 80% of the mobile traffic to their website from keywords people searched, and not their brand name.

So, returning back to my traditional marketing theory...

Traditional marketing still works, very well. BUT THIS IS ONLY TRUE WHEN DONE IN COORDINATION WITH A STRATEGIC DIGITAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN.

That's because, as you saw in the examples above, people don't remember the business name they saw on a billboard or a bus, but they do remember the service being advertised.

In most states, it's illegal to even look at your phone. So, of course, if you drive by a billboard about getting your air conditioning fixed, you're going to try and remember you need to get that done.

But you aren't (hopefully, for your own safety and that of others on the road) taking down the information on the billboard such as the businesses name, its phone number, etc. while driving.

But you will search for air conditioning services on Google as soon as you have a chance to.

From there, most people will do one of three things:

1. Click on the best-looking result. This could be an Ad result, a Map result, or an Organic result. This is where copywriting is critical.
2. Look at the results for the business name, they'll probably remember what it was when they see it in the search results. If not, they'll click on the next best result.
3. See the business name that they remember seeing, or thought they remembered seeing on the billboard, then search for that businesses reviews on other platforms such as Yelp.

Most people who aren't in a hurry will look at reviews before getting in contact with any company, or purchasing a product.

So, knowing all of this, what should Joe the Plumber do?

The first thing is to see if Google will assist you through online defamation laws, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work all the time. In some cases, you can flag videos or other reviews to be examined by the site it was published on, and they will take it down. That’s always your first, and best route to go.

The next thing to do is to hire a digital marketing agency for reputation management services.

To fully comprehend why the reputation was defaced, to begin with, let’s quickly review a two of the most popular perpetrators.

• Disgruntled Employees.

It’s common, especially in a very large company, to have employees who don’t voice their problems to anyone. And sometimes there are employees who are disloyal to clients. These clients then make sure everyone knows his or her experience with the company by posting negative reviews on sites such as Google, Yelp, Ripoff Report, Pissed Consumer, and the list goes on.

And then there are the employees who get fired and decide to try and destroy the company by leaving terrible reviews everywhere this said employee could online.

• Upset customers.

Maybe the customer was in the wrong; maybe the business was in the wrong. Either way - this is the reason honesty, transparency, and excellent customer service is vital for a company in today’s digital age.

Destroying a businesses reputation online not only hurts the business - but its owner(s), their families, the employees, their families, and the list goes on.

Do some businesses deserve their reputation being trashed?

Quite possibly.

There are certainly excellent reasons to leave honest reviews. I, for one, like to know whom I’m spending my money with and enjoy understanding what kind of experience and service I’ll be receiving.

When a business hires another for reputation management, it’s not cheap. Most companies are losing tens of thousands of dollars before they even make the call for help.

So, besides these traditional review sites where people just give businesses a 1-5 star rating, there are websites that almost immediately rank high (Page 1 in search results).

Some examples are:

• Someone making a video complaining about their “negative” experience with the company.
• Someone submitting a complaint on the Better Business Bureau's website
• Someone filing a “complaint” on powerful sites such as Ripoff Report, Pissed Consumer, and Complaints Board.
• Someone creating blogging accounts on powerful blog platforms such as Blogger, Issu, Blogspot, etc.

The list goes on. The extents some people have gone to destroy a company disgusts me.

Just look at these results when I search for a company which I will not name for privacy reasons.

Some people do this to companies for a living. They are evil, professional “SEO” experts who hold businesses ransom. They use their skills for harm. They make it nearly impossible for anything but negative reviews to show up in search results for a company's name.

This is the last thing you want to experience.

Earlier when I was using the word “powerful” when talking about the different complaint sites, blog sites (also known as Web 2.0’s) and review sites, I was talking about the power these sites have to rank so high, so quickly.

These are sites which have a high Trust Flow, Domain Authority, User Engagement, etc.

All those SEO factors that help a site rank in search engines.

Some people try reputation management by just building sites with similar statistics as these powerful sites.

For example, a positive review Youtube video.

But there’s a problem with that, especially if you’re up against an evil SEO expert.

They will build these youtube videos, and then power them with other powerful links, making them very hard to push down in rankings.

But I wouldn’t still be talking if that were the answer or go-to solution.

So here comes the burning question:

How does reputation management work? And does it even work?

Of course, if you start by hiring a company who’s experienced with it, you’re on the right track.

Don’t go cheap and risk your company. It’s just not worth it. Do your research on a few companies, ask for case studies, and make a decision on whom you feel most comfortable with.

When reputation management is performed, it’s not as simple as these review sites being deleted off the internet. That would take a hacker, which could get your business into even more trouble.

Also, old methods such as sending porn links to these sites, DDOS attacks, and Brute Force attacks, don't work like they used to.

Reputation management now consists of building sites with powerful metrics and getting them to rank. In the digital industry, the term is well known as “Parasite SEO,” or using these already powerful sites to outrank other powerful sites.

Some well-known ones are Social Media Profiles, Blog Platforms or Web 2.0’s, News sites using Press Releases, or guest-posting on other sites with powerful SEO metrics.

To put things in perspective, any Google search for a generic service or product has companies fighting tooth-and-nail for the top spots. It’s not easy.

If you’ve worked with an SEO company, you know getting just your site to rank isn’t easy.

Now imagine having to rank tens of different sites on the first page to push these “negative” sites down to the second and third pages of Google.

Not the easiest thing in the world. And certainly not the fastest thing in the world.

Depending on how bad your reputation has been trashed online, it could take anywhere from 2 months to 1 year, sometimes even longer.

The good news is, if your online reputation needs to be fixed, it almost always can be. There are many ways to go about it, it just takes time, and of course, money - which you can always make more of thankfully.

Before starting any marketing campaigns, ensure you have a strategically planned method using traditional marketing and digital marketing together while ensuring you are providing goods and services that keep people happy. Also, don't forget to ask for reviews, as a superior marketing plan, with real reviews which back your company's brand message will ultimately help you dominate your market.