Marketers spend great amounts of time and large sums of money ensuring their brand is perceived in the correct light. Surprisingly, few practice any type of reputation management online.
If you aren’t familiar with it, online reputation management involves being aware of, and participating in, the perception of one’s brand online. Three factors which have propelled online reputation management to the forefront of digital marketers’ minds:
- The power of search engines as an efficient way to research companies, their products and services
- Search engine’s affinity for user generated content, and
- The increasing amount of confidence consumers pus on the opinion voiced by other consumers, whether they know them or not.
The power of consumer opinion
While the first two points above are largely accepted, the third—the amount of confidence consumer put in the opinion of other consumers online—is both powerful and highly relevant. An October 2007 Nielsen survey (Trust in Advertising - a global Nielsen consumer report) concludes that “consumers around the world still place their highest levels of trust in other consumers.” Included in the studies breadth of platforms and sources were:
- Ads before movies
- Brand Sponsorship
- Brand websites
- Consumer options posted online
- Email [the consumer] signed up for
- Magazines
- Newspapers
- Online banner ads
- Radio
- Recommendations from consumers
- Search engine ads
- Text ads on mobile phones
- TV
“Recommendations from consumers” topped the survey with 78% of respondents indicating “they trusted - either completely or somewhat - the recommendation of other consumers.” How all platforms and sources fared can be seen in the chart below.
Clearly monitoring how your brand is being perceived (and participating in that perception) is valuable to any organization. Depending on your need, online reputation management can be handled in house or a digital marketing firm can be engaged.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Robert Neal 01.27.08 at 8:46 pm
Great statistics. I just finished a mildly dated, but still relevant white paper by RelevantNoise about the importance of blogs. My assumption is that blogs fall under ‘consumer opinion posted online.’ I like the free flow of information and the fact that businesses are taking note of their customers through some medium other than focus groups. However, the demographic that blogs is very narrow and there needs to be other ways for other demographics to put their relevant input into the mix.
[edited to provide a hyperlink to the white paper Robert provided ]
Scott McAndrew 01.27.08 at 9:33 pm
@Robert: When writing the post above I noticed that in the Nielsen study the option that you called out as ‘consumer opinion posted online’ is presented as ‘consumer options posted online.’ At first glance I read it as you did. Whether consumer opinion or consumer options, my take on the Nielsen report and what I meant when in point #2 when I cited ‘user generated content’ was broader-based than blogs. If it were blogs alone I would agree that the demographic would be incredibly narrow, and further, the results wouldn’t be nearly as high (in my opinion). I’m thinking respondents were (rightfully) including user posted reviews that appear alongside product at ecommerce sites.
April Holle 02.01.08 at 3:25 pm
Scott,
I’ve often wondered when I read reviews through Target.com etc if these were actually written by the product branding agencies instead of real people, but I still put a lot of stock into them.
I put even higher amounts of trust into blog postings by friends online. In fact, there are a few of my friends which have been so jaded by a product they own domains such as “thiscompanysucks.com” or “ihatethiscompany.com” to blog about their horrible experience to make other consumers aware.
Great post!