Before explaining about reputation marketing, I will restate word of mouth marketing which has been posted a long time ago. Nowadays people are blasted by thousand of commercial advertisement so that it makes them do not care about the ads (ads blindness). They often do not believe anymore to ads in the mass media. Therefore, the ways to get their attention and gain their trust is referral marketing. It means there are some people that they trust recommend the product so they consider the recommended product and buy it. This is the essence of word of mouth marketing. If you want to implement WoM marketing, please see my articles Implementing WoM and you can search the things related to word of mouth marketing here.

Basic reputation marketing information that you can find here are:

reputation marketing definition (answering the question what is reputation marketing), the differences between word of mouth marketing and reputation marketing and also the similarity between them, the importance of reputation marketing, online reputation management and it's best practices.

Samples of the word of mouth implementation :

Do a great job, deliver excellent service at pre-sales and after-sales. Try to get the feedback from consumers and then improve your product or your system based on that.

Approach to influencer and then ask them to make a testimonial to your product or service. After getting the recommendation, insert this testimony to your sales copy in your ads. Keep approaching to more influencer so that your brand is mentioned more and become viral.

Above is the sample thing you can do because you want a word of mouth referral to help your business grow.

What is Reputation Marketing?

Now we talk about reputation marketing. The newest referral marketing is known as Reputation Marketing. This new marketing is just like the old time word of mouth marketing, but most of the time it is done via online.

Little difference between WoM marketing and Reputation Marketing

Word of mouth is that people who recommend your product refer your product and most of them happened offline (online also). It means when people want to consume particular product or service, they usually ask their relatives or their friend about that product or service. If their relatives say a good sentiment about this product, they will follow the opinion and will buy that product.

Nowadays, internet has become the most important medium of communication. One of the benefits of the internet is as a source of information. When people want to find out some information about a specific product, they often seek on the internet. Usually they look up website or blog, social media, mailing list or forum, and so on. They try to figure out what people are saying about that particular product or service.

They want to know that the product by reading some review or referral or recommendation from other who have used that product or service.

They will summarize based on the sum total of what people are saying. The sum total of what people are saying about the brand or product/service is called reputation. If amount of people's mention with good sentiment more than negative sentiment, the product or service has good reputation. Otherwise, if the amount of negative sentiment more than the amount of positive sentiment, the product has a bad reputation.

The thing you must know: word of mouth marketing depends on reputation. Therefore, build a good reputation is the fundamental thing in these marketing approach. 

The importance of reputation marketing

Now, you have already known about reputation marketing. So, it is important to encourage customer whom you service with outstanding customer service to give a review of your product via online because this review can create a great online reputation. So you can utilize it to market your product to new customers who searching product information online.

It is crucial to know what people are saying about your product online. If you found good reputation you will gain more customers.

Online Reputation Management

After knowing how the importance of reputation marketing, you have to implement online reputation management (ORM).

ORM can help you deal with a process to engage with people, monitor and investigate all about your related brand or product on the internet. It can help you to develop your credibility and build your good reputation. In addition, it can help you to get an early warning that make your brand going to bad reputation.

Examples of ORM daily activities:

There are a lot of activities here, but I will give two sample ORM activities below.

1. Monitoring the internet.

It means you and your team monitor website, forum, mailing-list, social media, etc. that mention your brand or your product or your service.

The ultimate goal of this activity is help you to get an early warning if you get negative sentiment or negative feedback so that you can respond them as soon as possible.

2. Correcting negative sentiment.

It may not be possible to avoid 100% bad reviews. The things you should do is listening people who give you negative feedback and giving them corrective action and appropriate response.

Online Reputation Management Best Practices

The best thing you must do is PREVENTIVE ACTION. Preventive action is better than curative action. It means that you have to perform your business outstandingly from pre-sales services to after-sales service so that you will get a positive response from your consumer. With appropriate engagement they will give good reviews about your brand or your product, either in their social media channel or via offline.