The importance of review management and digital location marketing for a strong brand experience

Buzzwords are thrown around a lot, especially in marketing. The field of digital marketing is no exception – quite the opposite, in fact. However, ‘brand experience’ is one of the important keywords with a right to exist. So let's start with a brief explanation:

Brands have long been more than just logos, corporate design or advertising slogans. It is not for nothing that companies invest time and money in positioning their brands, in possible distinctions from the competition and in special unique selling points. As nice and important as this is, the success of a company or a brand depends above all on how it is perceived and then remembered by its customers. And that is precisely the explanation for the magic word ‘brand experience’. Various factors play a role here.

However, while many companies invest large budgets in social media, content marketing or performance ads, two essential components of digital marketing are often neglected or not actively managed at all: review management and digital location marketing. Both topics play a central role in terms of visibility, trust and new customer contacts – reason enough to take a closer look at them.

Companies that want to actively manage their brand perception should be aware of these three key messages:

• 1. Public opinion of the brand is significantly influenced by customer reviews.
• 2. A consistent, optimised online presence strengthens credibility and makes it easier to attract customers.
• 3. The combination of review management and local location marketing ensures a higher reach, more attention and stronger brand loyalty.

So why are these essential aspects often neglected? And how can companies benefit from them in a targeted way?

Review management and location marketing are underestimated

The digital transformation and the coronavirus pandemic have fundamentally changed purchasing behaviour.

• The first finding: customers are increasingly relying on reviews and on how companies deal with them. Studies, surveys and statistics clearly show that interacting with online reviews has become very important for companies:

• The second finding: Search queries with ‘near me’ have increased significantly – the so-called ‘near me search’ often proves to be the starting point of the new customer journey. This leads to new expectations on the part of consumers: they search online, but still want to buy locally or take advantage of advice. The blurring of online and offline is therefore becoming increasingly important.

Nevertheless, many companies continue to rely primarily on traditional advertising measures and do not include review management and digital location marketing in their measures.

Review management: customer feedback as a growth engine

Positive reviews not only increase trust, but also ensure higher visibility in search engines. Google favours companies with authentic customer feedback, and product reviews have now become so important for the search engine that Google has dedicated a separate update to them.

In a world full of purchasing options, customers often make their decisions based on reviews – this is confirmed by figures, data and facts from studies conducted:

• According to ratepay, 91 per cent of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and
• 93 per cent of consumers read reviews of local businesses to determine their quality.
• According to tagshop, the likelihood of a purchase increases by 270 per cent when a product receives five reviews.
• In addition, companies generate 32 per cent more sales with 4-star reviews than companies with poorer reviews.
• Furthermore, according to the studies, 22 per cent of customers are put off by just a single negative review, while three negative reviews put off 59 per cent of customers.
• 73 per cent of customers only trust reviews from the last month. This shows that being up to date is crucial.

What challenges do companies face when it comes to review management?

• Many companies collect reviews, but often unconsciously from different sources – they don't actively manage them.
• Negative reviews often go unanswered, damaging the brand image.
• All too often, there is no unified strategy for actively soliciting new reviews and for using and/or aggregating customer reviews.

This is precisely where a professional review management strategy comes in. Our recommendation for companies: review management with ProvenExpert. This tool enables companies to optimise their reputation in a targeted way and use the following functions:

• Aggregate reviews from different platforms and merge them into one company profile.
• Actively solicit new reviews through surveys, banners and social media integration.
• Centrally manage feedback, selectively publish it and display it on your own website to create transparency and trust.
• Use Google stars and optimised location profiles to improve visibility in search results.

If you want to gain the trust of potential customers, you should not only value good reviews, but also actively maintain and analyse them and use them specifically for branding.

Digital location marketing – local visibility as a competitive advantage

Why is digital location marketing so important? Many consumers today are not just looking for a brand, but specifically for services or products ‘nearby’. In fact, over 50 per cent of all Google searches are local, and searches with ‘...near me’ have increased by 200 per cent in the last two years. I often hear companies argue, ‘But we can be found on Google Maps. Most consumers use Google Maps, so why should I be interested in the other directories?’

If you consider that iPhone users use Apple Maps as the navigation service on their mobile devices by default, it is important to be found and displayed well there too. In addition, all of the 40–50 platforms link to the company website – a clear SEO advantage, because Google & Co. interpret such links as recommendations. It is clear that the challenges for companies are high:

Many companies make serious mistakes here:

• Incomplete or inaccurate location data on platforms such as Google, Facebook or other directories.
• Inconsistent company names or information such as opening hours that confuse search engines and users.
• Inadequate maintenance of entries in different directories and platforms, which makes it more difficult to find.

If you don't take action here, you're ‘giving away’ valuable customers to the competition. With our tool solution for efficient location management, based on Uberall technology, we offer companies:

• Comprehensive management of location data for a unified presence on Google, Facebook and many other directories, platforms and navigation systems.
• Optimisation of local findability (Google Maps & Co.) to improve ranking in search results for local searches.
• More visibility and citations – including cross-platform and cross-directory publishing of social posts.

The key advantage: Maximum brand experience and control:

• Consistent company information ensures trust and that the target group is provided with correct and up-to-date information.
• Companies are visible exactly where customers are looking for them.
• Brand perception is not ‘handed over’ to Google or other platforms, but remains controllable.

For companies, optimised digital location management is therefore synonymous with greater reach, better brand perception and ultimately higher sales.

Review management and digital location marketing: The perfect combination for a strong brand

Just like other digital marketing channels, these two topics should not be viewed as isolated measures, but rather as essential building blocks for a strong brand experience. Companies that pay too little attention to these areas, or none at all, not only lose valuable leads, but also the chance to actively shape their brand and thus influence how it is perceived.

As an SEO agency, we support our clients in the area of digital marketing, not only with regard to selecting the right tool solution for review management and digital location marketing: we also carry out an initial analysis of the current status quo, provide detailed optimisation recommendations based on this, implement these ourselves if desired, support our clients in setting up the respective tool profiles and train our clients and their employees.

Summary: With a targeted strategy and the use of the right tools, companies can...

• ...strengthen their own online reputation and build customer trust,
• ...increase their local visibility and be found more easily,
• ...generate more attention, a higher conversion rate and ultimately more sales.

By the way: We are happy to support and advise you on profile setup, possible optimisations for obtaining new reviews and how to maintain incoming reviews. We are also happy to help you optimise your digital location marketing and check how easy it is to find your company locations.

Get a discount on various ProvenExpert packages here