We’ve now reached the era when all areas of life are closely intertwined with digital technologies. The internet is replacing reference materials, books, and even personal communication. If you need to find out information about a product, service, or company, then just Google the query without leaving home—without even leaving the couch. Everything is done here and now.
This trend fully applies to the real estate segment. Potential clients no longer travel to developers’ offices or study paper brochures—everything they need can be found on the internet. Here they also study the opinions of those people who have already collaborated with the developer. Regarding customer reviews, Reputation House, an international agency with more than ten years of experience in reputation marketing, explains the important role they play in forming a company’s image.
Also, in 2019, the company was given the “Best SERM Agency 2019” award.
Reputation House: Customer Reviews Determine a Brand’s Image
When thinking about which real estate developer to choose, a person necessarily studies the reviews of other people and looks for information about them on forums, YouTube, and social networks. That is to say, their choice is determined precisely by the information that can be found online.
If a person comes across a lot of complaints and negative reviews, according to statistics from Reputation House, the likelihood of cooperation with the brand rapidly decreases. For 60% of clients, negativity on the internet becomes the reason for refusing to choose a company, and 49% will make a positive decision only if the brand rating is at least 4 stars. The agency points out another important fact: increasing your Yelp rating by just one star can help increase revenue by as much as 9%.
Digital is the new reality, and you need to be aware of all the tools available to manage and control your reputation. This way, you can several steps ahead and ultimately get the desired result. For Reputation House’s SERM team, it’s all about neutralizing the negativity and reaching the top positions in search engines. The abbreviation stands for Search Engine Reputation Management, and its goal is to displace negativity from the top 10 search results and replace it with positivity.
We’re talking not only about the reaction of Reputation House employees to existing customer reviews. This direction includes large-scale work with search results, as well as maintaining the achieved high positions.
How to Work With SERM at Reputation House
An important point: people generally tend to leave negative comments. According to statistics, out of 26 people, only 11 are willing to share a positive opinion. When people search for information about a real estate agent online, they use branded queries. These can be phrases consisting of, for example, “company/website/residential complex + reviews.”
Specialists search for all possible query options and analyze references to the company and its products and services. This allows you to understand what current information is available online, what worries customers, and what errors need to be corrected.
Displacing negativity is a set of measures that includes SEO optimization, working with search engine algorithms, and writing new content & promoting it to the top of search results. It also includes working with customer reviews—the Reputation House team writes and publishes positive comments on those resources whose information background needs to be adjusted.
In addition to reviews, Reputation House creates other types of content: news, articles in the media, reviews, videos, and posts on social networks. Their content must be agreed upon with the customer because the tone of voice of the customer’s brand and their needs are specific and unique. Agency specialists monitor the reaction of the audience, correspond with them, neutralize negativity, and create a positive image of the client.
If Reputation House experts find customer reviews that are aggressive, clearly fake, or essentially unreliable, they contact the site owners to have them removed. Removal is resorted to in rare cases. The problem can be resolved pre-trial, but if necessary, the team is ready to file a statement of claim.
Upon completion of the work cycle, Reputation House’s SERM team begins to analyze the results obtained: which channels and methods worked better, and what needs correction. For the next cycle, an updated individual strategy is being prepared to build and maintain the developer’s reputation.
Advantages of Cooperation with Reputation House
In addition to SERM, the agency also uses other Online Reputation Management (ORM) technologies, that is, it manages a brand’s reputation as a whole on the internet. This allows for:
Increased awareness of the company, its projects, and services.
Attracting new clients, thereby increasing income from real estate sales.
Gaining trust from potential partners.
Resisting black PR and information attacks from competitors.
Reputation House is a team that always achieves its goals and acts exclusively in the interests of its clients.
