Before purchasing a cleaning service, 8 out of 10 site visitors look at online reviews. About 70% of potential customers refuse to buy if they find a negative review of the cleaning services. Often, it is because of this that a cleaning business loses up to 50% of possible sales. To avoid such significant losses, you need to competently manage the company’s reputation, form and maintain its positive image.

Consider effective methods and strategies that are recommended to be included in the Reputation Management strategy of a cleaning company.

1. ORM on review sites

Online Reputation Management is the main practice that serves as the basis for developing SERM strategies. With its help, they influence the public perception of the cleaning company and its services.

ORM is used to control review sites in three ways:

1.Pessimization of negative information – It provides for the publication of positive reviews, the removal of negative reviews, dislikes for mentions that are not deleted. You can also collect and send reviews to moderators that violate the rules of the site, connect affiliate programs to manage a branch on the review site.

2.Working off the negative – Includes a mandatory cleaning company reaction to every negative feedback, excluding obvious trolling and spam. Depending on the context, the response may contain clarifications, apologies, offers with discounts on subsequent purchases to stimulate sales.

3.Crop content with a positive tone – It implies filling the top sites of search engines with artificial neutral and positive reviews to crowd out the negative. In this case, you need to take into account the features of anti-spam algorithms and act within the established rules, publishing the most natural responses. Another option is to create your own controlled resource with reviews in the branded domain.

2. Content Marketing

Creating and distributing useful information is a productive marketing technique that helps to gain the trust of the audience and attract new cleaning clients. Thanks to content marketing, you can knock out the negative by filling the SERPs with positive branded materials.

Options for action:

1.Promotion of existing publications with a positive rating in the issue – analysis by target groups, building up external links containing relevant anchors with the necessary key queries.

2.Creation and promotion of new materials – choosing the optimal format, preparing a high-quality text with targeted key queries, posting on an authoritative resource.

The main thing in content marketing is to choose relevant topics that often have a negative tone. They are chosen based on popular search queries. The topic of the material should solve specific problems of the client and resonate with the theme of the site for placement

3. Work in social networks

Social networks are a separate area of ​​reputation marketing. The pages of the cleaning companies in social networks allow you to take high positions in the search results and rank well for brand queries. But for this it is important to maintain a profile actively and fully.

Where to register:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn.

Facebook, instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn are the best social media networks to scale your reputation among social networks.

In branded social media accounts, you need to regularly post fresh useful materials, communicate with subscribers in the comments, motivate customers to leave positive recommendations, and work with objections and negatives.

4. Working with forums and Q/A services

In addition to review sites, you can improve your reputation through thematic forums and Q/A services. It is also worth creating brand branches on them, posting relevant content, and answering questions from the audience. It is advisable to regularly fill your thread and carefully monitor new messages.

Examples of popular Q&A services is Quora

5. Local directories, map and Wikipedia

In order to get into the TOP for brand queries and displace your cleaning business websites with a negative tone, you need to use all sorts of additional methods:

• place optimized brand pages of the cleaning company in online directories
• register in city directories
• Create, customize and optimize a profile in Google My Business.

6. Influence marketing

The modern audience trusts popular bloggers and YouTubers more than traditional advertising. Therefore, you should promote the cleaning company through opinion leaders in the cleaning industry

Collaboration with influencers will allow:

• increase the recognition of the cleaning company, loyalty and trust of users
• increase engagement in social networks
• improve the ranking of landing web pages
• Reduce the level of negativity through the disclosure of the benefits of the cleaning services and the recommendations of an influential person.

The listed methods are only a part of the directions in which you can act when working with reputation management. Each project and situation requires its own tools and a separate strategy.

Important general rules:

• constantly monitor reviews by setting up automatic tracking of mentions of the cleaning company
• answer customer questions, positive and negative comments, deal with complaints and claims
• encourage your cleaning clients to leave feedback – provide a favorable user experience, offer bonuses, participate in promotions and loyalty programs
• create and develop a YouTube channel, profiles in social networks
• publish expert content on authoritative resources
• work with reviewers, forums
• use contextual/display advertising
• Add cleaning company data to maps.

These mandatory steps will help create a positive image even for young cleaning companies that are still poorly represented on the network.

Conclusion

The consequences of negativity posted online can be destructive to a cleaning business. A custom post by a competitor on a forum or social network, a bad customer review with an unresolved issue, a comment from a former angry employee – all this carries huge reputational risks. Such information is rapidly spreading, as anti-advertising attracts much more attention from the audience. For owners of the cleaning company, it is especially important to competently manage their online reputation. To do this, it is worth using a complex of diverse actions, examples of which are given in the article.