Almost half of the planet’s population is online. With this huge segment, there is a mind boggling diversity of usage, opinions, behaviors, and preferences amongst the users. However it is also true that together they depict some global trends or patterns that provide a potential opportunity for Consumer Goods companies. These dynamics include –
- Social Media – The online segment is going social, fast, on one or more of the 207 social networking sites around the world
- Total Control – With the rise of price comparison and analytics sites, the Gen-Y consumer wants to be in total control.
- Opinions – Review websites and social forums encourage outspoken reviews from consumers that can make or break brand image
- Security and Privacy – These are two of the biggest concern areas for consumers
- Buying channel – Consumers expect omnichannel experience from brands and failure to provide that experience on channels like mobile devices and social media can put consumer goods companies out of business
With these trends, some challenges of engagement immediately come into focus. According to the Consumer Goods Technology Aug 2014 survey:
- Almost half of consumer goods enterprises feel that there is a lack of strong engagement in social media channels.
- 42% feel that direct to consumer engagement is missing
- 1/3rd admit that their digital marketing programs are ineffective
These concerns underline the growing need to engage better with consumers. Tie this up with the growing influence of search engines and websites in consumers’ purchase preferences, and consumer goods enterprises face a big challenge of managing online reputation and maintaining brand image to drive business.
Enter Online Reputation Management (ORM)
The correct application of ORM strategies ensures positive public perception and opinions amongst individuals or organizations. These perceptions are built upon positive reviews and feedback which also act as a backbone for buying decisions for a staggering 70% would-be buyers and influence 84% of buyers (source: marketingcharts.com). These statistics make online reputation management the priority risk to focus over other strategic risks for almost 90% of consumer goods marketing executives. (source: Local Consumer Review survey 2014, Bright Local Study)
Another strong signal that depicts the tremendous influence of online reputation is that over the past 5 years, companies with leading reputations achieved shareholder returns 100% higher than competitors. (source: prophet.com)
Signals that demonstrate reputation disaster
- Better positive sentiment for the competitor brand
- Higher volume of negative sentiment for the brand in question
- Late response to negative feedback
- No real time insightful dashboard available with the marketing team
- Decreasing sales conversions
There have been numerous real life reputation management catastrophes that spelt tragedy for company bottom lines. A very prominent example was the case of a MNC in food and beverages that didn’t react on time to negative sentiments echoed on its environmental policies. This led to a perception of complacency that attracted tremendous backlash. Eventually, they were forced to suspend activity on their public page to bring down the repercussions of the backlash.
Such instances call for a reliable solution to manage online reputation. Towards this, CIGNEX’ Reputation Management Platform (RMP™) helps you strategically build, monitor, manage and amplify your business reputation. The operational premise is simple yet highly effective – It helps you track what is being said or shared about your brand as well as competitors’ offerings. This insight helps you make real time decision to manage launch day sentiment, plan actionable campaigns and ultimately increase your online reputation.
This strategy is executed by:
- Encouraging positive customer reviews
- Fast response to unhappy customers
- On-going campaigns to improve CRM
- Encouraging multi-channel reviews
Once the feedback comes in from users, we amplify its positive sentiments by:
- Sharing across multiple social media sites
- Quickly identifying weak links in marketing campaigns
- Monitoring review websites for quick action
- Creating branded website listing
Features of the Platform
- Real time insights – for competitive analysis, tracking user sentiments and identifying positive and negative keywords used
- Amplification of positive reviews – All positive reviews from different sites arranged at central place, which can be further shared on social channels
- Analysis – Sentiments are correlated to trends, competition, and benchmarks using advanced analytics to derive reputation scores
- Segregation – Scores can be split by pointers such as geography and features. This helps fine tune marketing campaigns at a micro level for better efficacy
Case study
An international home, office and industrial products company needed to gain more from its online reputation management. The earlier manual system revolved around collecting data from 50+ review sites for analysis and action. This took weeks by which time the efficacy of the solution was diluted.
With RMP™ in place, feedback for around 200 products from 50+ review sites arrived in minutes with special alerts for negative sentiments. This allowed management to quickly step in real time to address them and thus improve user experience. It also carried out automated competitive analysis for better online positioning as a segment leader. This transformation happened in just 20 days of running the RMP on client side.
Interested in taking your online reputation to the next level? Do connect with us to know more about our Reputation Management Platform solution.
