Who handles your online reputation? Do you have one person managing your online reputation? Do you have a service provider or Agency managing your reputation? Knowing these questions will help you and your company to know how to protect your PPC brand in the best way possible.
If you are an Agency, you should know most everything about the product you are promoting and protecting online. If you have a regulated brand you really need to know the basics and legal issues behind your brand that you are managing. If your company has to disclose everything, you need to know this information.
When online brand protection gets attacked you need to be the first person to bring this up. We know that our brands are always going to be attacked. We need to be there to protect them.
What NOT to do?
Every company has vulnerabilities. Know your vulnerabilities and know how to defend them. You will have many people trying to beat down your brand. You can take negative examples like Dell. They block everything and delete bad comments. 90% of the press for Dell online is negative. Dell needs to identify all the negative things about their product, address them and bring them to light. If your product is bad, why don’t you stop selling it. People will always crap all over bad brands. I’m not saying Dell is a bad brand, they actually have a very good brand. But the way they deal with problem customers is horrible. They treat them like crap. They don’t let them voice their concerns on social media. They delete forum posts. Don’t bury problems, fix them.
What to do?
Attacked to our brand won’t go away. The best defense is good offense. You have to be one step ahead of your competitors. Know what your good sides are and figure out how to make your positives are better then your negatives. This will help you deal with the negatives. You need to sing louder then they do. Determine what the underlying reasons for the attack. Fix the problem and make it right. If you make it right, those negative customers will be your raving fans.
What ELSE can I do?
If you look back in the history of McDonald’s the top result in Google was McDonalds but every link after that was negative about them. So what did McDonalds do. They started jobs sites, blog sites, sites on other domains. They drowned out the other competitors. Now their competitors couldn’t be on the first page and were shut off from all the people searching for their brand.
Protecting your PPC brand is important, make sure that you’re addressing the problems and not burying them. Bringing your problems into the light will help you to manage and protect your brand.
