For owners of home improvement businesses, online reputation management is often one of the most important ways to ensure you’re generating new business. If you don’t pay attention to what’s being said about your home improvement business online, you are not only harming your pipeline, but missing out on a big opportunity to improve lead flow, client retention, and future sales. At conXpros, we talk a lot about the importance of a customer-centric approach, and this plays a huge factor in online reputation management.
In this article, we will discuss five ways to go about online reputation management and improve your relationship with your customers both past and present.
- Keep Your Listings Current
When people search online for your painting, gutter, junk removal, or general contracting business, usually review platforms like Google My Business or Yelp are among the first results to show up. If you’re not checking in on these listings regularly, there may be false information that is hurting your business.
Be sure to check these listings to make sure they have the most updated information (like seasonal hours, service offerings, employees, policies, etc), so that any reviews that mention outdated or outright false information can be responded to and addressed. The last thing you want is potential customers seeing negative reviews over a simple misunderstanding that could have been resolved by a response!
- Respond To Reviews
As we alluded to in the first point, your home improvement business should monitor reviews and respond to them. These reviews can dictate current and future customers’ impressions of your business and can even affect sales. While some commenters may be harsh or inflammatory, negative reviews are an excellent opportunity for your home improvement business to improve customer relations and address their pain points. If these can’t be monitored daily, we recommend that you create an automated response that includes a thank you and a promise of a more detailed follow-up within a certain timeframe. Small efforts like this are very effective in improving customer satisfaction and can help your business earn 5 stars.
- Stay Present On Social Media
Nowadays, there’s no denying how ubiquitous social media is. Potential customers are no longer just using Google to learn about your business— they’re using social media!
There are 2 ways to monitor your company’s social media presence: directly on your social media accounts, and by searching for mentions of your company that you’re not directly tagged in. It is important that your brand has social media accounts and that someone responds regularly to any comments or questions. We also recommend that you use social media as a way to improve customer satisfaction, but also suppress any overly hateful or derogatory comments on your business.
- Highlight Positive Press
Customer reviews aren’t the only way your business gains its reputation. The press is also a large factor! Whenever your company is mentioned online by the media or news outlets, you’ll want to know what is being said about your home improvement business. A good way to monitor this is by setting up Google alerts for your business. Some press might be involuntary (and hopefully beneficial), but you’ll want to ensure that any positive press is brought to light on your website, social media accounts, and more!
- Have A Strategic Approach Towards Reputation Management
If reputation management is important for your business, make sure it’s getting done one way or another. There are several ways you can approach reputation management, including but not limited to: using reputation management software, outsourcing a marketing agency to do it for you, or hiring a person internally to handle it. Reputation management won’t necessarily cost money, but if you have more resources than you do time, then it may be time to invest in quality reputation management somehow or another. If you do have time, then save money and do it yourself! Regardless of what makes sense for your home improvement business, ensure you have a strategic approach to reputation management that makes sense for you and your business.
All in all, there are many strategies and tactics your home improvement business can use to approach online reputation management. However, if your business is still struggling with generating positive reviews, it may be time to brainstorm ways to improve customer satisfaction.
At conXpros, we are proud to outdo all of our competitors on every review platform. Currently, conXpros is the ONLY lead generation company in the home improvement vertical that exclusively has ratings of 4.0 or better on every review platform, including the most notable ones— Google and BBB. If you want to learn more about our home improvement lead generation services, learn more about us here.
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