Online Reputation Can Make or Break Your Business, from Grease Monkey Search.
Back in the “good ole’ days,” a company’s reputation was dictated by spoken word of mouth. Friends and family told each other about a restaurant they enjoyed, an amazing hotel where they resided, or the plumber who fixed a ruptured pipe on very short notice. Fortunately, and often unfortunately for some companies, those days are long gone. Platforms such as Yelp, Google Reviews, Dealer Rater and Facebook, among a growing list of others, now have complete control over businesses’ reputations. Simply put, online reputation can make or break your business.
Online Reputation Management (ORM) has the ability to either advance a business to the next level or send it into extinction. Most of this depends on how the business handles both positive and negative online reviews from customers. While it’s extremely important to acknowledge all positive reviews, it is exponentially more crucial to respond to every single negative review.
When it comes to the automotive industry, more than 50% of the “road to a sale” happens online, long before a customer even sets foot on a dealership’s showroom floor. Many dealers are eliminated from a customer’s consideration, without ever even meeting in person, as a result of poor online reviews.
