Tag Archives: video marketing

Online Reputation Management – 7 key points for success

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The reputation of your brand is like the moto of your business. Reputation is an important factor for growth, brand development and sustainability of the business. Word of mouth has been an important tool for sales and marketing for ages and it still is. But, as we enter and thrive in the world of the Internet, businesses need to manage their image online as words over the web travels much faster. A tarnished reputation can be a grave crisis for any business.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon once said, “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6000 friends.” So, you can imagine the intensity of a bad reputation. Its impact on your business is unavoidable, and sometimes irreversible.

Online Reputation Management is managing your presence on the Internet, how your business looks when they search for it and how to manage reviews. It is how the positive content about you and your business comes up first and the negatives are pushed down below, so that Google searches give a positive image of your business. Research shows that 70% of people take action based on online reviews and 68% of people trust consumer reviews posted online.

As a matter of fact, you cannot control bad news and once its up online, it stays there forever. So, it is important to manage what goes online or how to change that in your favour and create good news. The following pointers will help you to make your Online Reputation Management program a success.

Know your customers:

As you are in the process of creating your online presence and build your reputation, get feedback from your customers. Know what is good with your business and what could be better. Talk and highlight about your positives so that customers can also testify. Keep a track of improvement areas and your plans of resolution so that you can proactively respond, if a review or comment comes up.

Voice out carefully:

Choose your words, actions and shares carefully on the Internet, especially on social media. So, it is important to have a social media policy in place. Check before you post or share something on your business page or blog, if is in-line with your business and if it is relevant and useful for readers. In case, you have a business blog, refrain from making it a sales pitch, rather share information, that motivates audience to reach you.

Know your employee experience:

Your employees are your greatest marketers, both offline and online. What they speak about you outside or how they present you matters a lot. So, know about their experiences about you, your business, the workplace before they share anything on the web. The social media policy will help you to keep a track of information. Knowing your employees is as important as knowing your customers.

Be transparent and consistent:

This is one of the most important things. You really do not have to disclose every bit of information, but ensure you are transparent and consistent in what you are disclosing. Be consistent with what you say online and follow it in your business soon. A transparent reputation makes your business look clean and customers appreciate the same.

Monitor your online presence:

While it is important to monitor your updates on the web, it is equally important to monitor what people say about you over the Internet. So, keep a track about references, shares, tags, etc. It is also a good practice to know about your competitors and what they are up to.

Be true and sincere:

Make sure the information you share online pertaining to you or the industry is true and valid. Seek information sincerely from customers and respond appropriately. Talk about your best practices, your story and experiences. Reveal relevant and true facts and figures so that people are assured of your authenticity and rapport.

Build your online reputation NOW:

The onus of building your reputation is on YOU. So, it is better you build your reputation before someone else builds it for you. Digital marketing and online presence is quite important in today’s age and you should leverage the widespread reach and accessibility to customer base over the Internet to the advantage of your business. So, if you are there online, make sure your brand, networks, followers and social engagements present a positive image of your business

While you know best what to write about your business and how to build your brand, do not ignore the negative comments, get into arguments or share your details in any response. Manage online reputation and brand building wisely and reap the benefits of positive publicity.

As Benjamin Franklin said, “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation and only one bad one to lose it.”, make sure your Online Reputation Management strategy is fool proof to prevent any damages. A good online reputation is truly a boon for the business and takes it a long way ahead.

 

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Power of a smile – Humour in Marketing

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If you make someone smile, they will remember you, but you have someone laugh, they will surely remember you. I am sure that you will remember an advert, which made you smile or laugh rather than a regular one. Humor can be implicit, explicit, and satirical or presented in different forms, but it leaves a mark on our minds. This subtle relation between humor, happiness and customer recollection has been effectively used by marketers to come up with some of the best marketing and branding strategies and campaigns.

Like any other attribute, humor also triggers human senses and can impact their purchasing behaviour. Humor in marketing is not necessarily only in audio or video mode, but it can be in print and digital media as well.  How can one forget the evergreen ‘Utterly Butterly Delicious’ Amul ads, which brings a smile to your faces? How well we can relate to each one of them?

Humor had entered the social media space as well with witty hashtags or the funniest videos going viral or funny posts circulated on Facebook. humor is employed at near unanimous levels for all viral advertisements. Consequently, humor has the universal appeal for making content viral.

A few important reasons why to use humor to create effective marketing and branding campaigns are as follows:

Humor triggers emotional response

Laughter is an emotion, which is associated with happiness and positivity. It is a stress buster and creates a healthy effect on our mental state. Laughter helps to release endorphines, which relaxes our body and boosts immune system. Audience, who gets pleasant vibes from a brand, can associate and respond in a positive way.

Humor makes the brand memorable

As mentioned earlier, you will definitely remember something pleasant, which triggered an emotional connect. A recent study shows that we tend to forget only 42% of positive experiences as opposed to 60% of negative experiences. Hence, you will surely remember an ad, which made you laugh or a tagline, which invokes instant humor. You tend to discuss and talk about it more, hence it keeps coming back to the top of your mind. This way the brand recognitions and retention keeps happening in your mind.

Humor brings people together

Experts say that we tend to laught 30 times more when we are with people around than when we are alone. We tend to share a joke or a laugh with friends over a Facebook post or a tweet. We tend to discuss ads with a humorous touch when we are with friends or family and try to come up with our own version rather than talking about a mundane or serious ad. This way the audience reach of the brand grows and this is more like a word of mouth promotion.

Humor gives audience insight

Have you ever thought what makes us laugh? Do we laugh at everything or what makes something funny? Well, Peter McGraw from Humor Research Lab came up with an interesting concept – the ‘benign-violation’ theory. He explained that ‘funny’ is an intersection of benign (things which are very mundane) and violation (things we are very extreme).

To make things ‘funny’ to evoke humor and laughter, marketers need to find that overlapping region for their brand to create an impact on the audience’s mind. What is hilarious might not always work in a marketing campaign, it has to be what the audience interprets to be funny. Humor needs to be carefully chosen and presented tactfully for a successful campaign.

People are so busy in their stressful lives today that they forget to laugh and enjoy the lighter moments of life. So, they wouldn’t mind a dash of humor, when they switch their TV sets or read the newspaper. Marketers need to trigger their emotions effectively with classy humor, which needs to be simple, sustble yet eye-catching.

The power of humor gives marketers the opportunity to give their customers cherishable moments of LOL!

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