Reasons Why You Should Start A White Label Reputation Management Agency

Reasons Why You Should Start A White Label Reputation Management Agency

For many years when people thought about reselling white label digital marketing services, they thought about reselling SEO or Websites to the exclusion of everything else. It wasn’t that other services couldn’t be lucrative; it was just that they didn’t have that flagship status that an agency could be built upon; they just were not anchor type of services.

The state of the industry didn’t help the perception that anything except SEO or Websites was a second-tier service. White label wholesalers for years put their focus on anchor services; they brought in more money and were typically a lot easier to put on offer. Another aspect of all this was, of course, the fact that many services are creatively based. Services such as design work, writing, and video production require a very intimate relationship with the end-client. This is due to their subjectivity and need for many revisions, making them less than ideal candidates for white label wholesalers to offer.

Online reputation management (ORM) had the reputation itself of being a complex service to offer. Those with the worst reputations were often the aptest to seek out reputation management companies, and, let’s face it, some of them were less than savory to deal with. On the other hand, reputation management traditionally has meant one word – suppression. Suppression tactics are tactics employed to create large volumes of false-positive reviews designed to dilute negativity online. This technique is considered a black hat, and in the past, it worked. At least some of the time, to drive down the bad press.

Changing Times

In the past, those with negative online content they wanted to remove were generally concerned with national or even global level lousy stuff, and the commonality of the occurrence wasn’t that prevalent. Most of the negative stuff was also relegated to venues dedicated to exposing scams and attack websites.

Today, on the other hand, most people looking to fix their reputations are regular businesses suffering from too many one-star reviews on straightforward review websites. It’s a different situation altogether. These are normal businesses, and the criticism they face is less scandalous than it is mundane.

Today, businesses are less looking to suppress horrendous information about themselves than they are looking to bolster their reputations. They are willing to pay well for those who wish to help them.

This is all excellent news for people looking to start agencies because it means just one more major market forming out there that they can profit from helping in a significant way.

Reactive vs. Proactive ORM

In the past, when we discussed ORM, it was all about responding to the negativity that existed online; it was about suppression and creating a new narrative via dilution. Today reputation management is about leveraging existing relationships with customers to get the word out about great experiences they’ve had. There is no need for unethical practices or dissembling narratives to help businesses survive and thrive online.

Proactive ORM is the diametric opposite of reactive ORM. What we do with proactive ORM is we seek to connect with businesses existing customers and get them engaged in producing reviews about the experiences they’ve had. We don’t ask or want them to spin the truth – we want the truth because people are keener today, don’t want to be sold, and don’t trust actors. With the ORM we offer here at Rocket Driver, we educate businesses (in a 100% white-label manner) on collecting and using data they gather from end-customers and empower them with the tools to conduct outreach to customers via Email and SMS. In addition to written reviews, we also obtain video reviews from customers, which the client-businesses can then utilize on social media, their websites, or elsewhere.

The end result of our proactive ORM is to build a solid and positive reputation online for the client’s business. This increases trust and improves their perception, increasing profit and decreasing the threat posed by those who would write negative reviews.

Monitoring & Responding

Something essential to understand about negative reviews is that statistics show us that around 70% of people will retract a negative review if the business reaches out to them and solves the underlying problem. This may sound astonishing, but it’s been our experience that it’s not only right that people will retract harmful content, but they will also often become your biggest fans. However, one other stat should be scary to everyone – the average time a negative review sits online before being identified is more than seven weeks. This means a narrow window of time between when a reviewer posts a negative review and the business has the opportunity to respond and fix the problem.

Our ORM Offering

Our ORM incorporates monitoring, which scans review sites and the web looking for mentions of a business’s name. When the software detects something, and we get hit, it’s reported back to us, and our staff reviews what it’s found. If what it’s found is legitimate, they take action. If they see that it’s a positive review, they respond on behalf of the business thanking the reviewer. If they see a negative post, they respond, reaching out to the reviewer offering to help resolve the matter, typically posting the business’s phone number and imploring the negative reviewer to call so they can make things right.

Now, not every reviewer will take the bait and call in; some have already moved on, some won’t see it, but every single person – forever – who sees that negative review sees that the business reached out and tried to make things right. This, in itself, is major. Stats show us that somewhere in the order of 90% of people who read reviews actively scan for responses from businesses. When people looking at the review see that the company cared, it sends a powerful and positive message that can directly counteract the bad review.

Insights

Whether a business wants to hear it or not, online reviews represent a window into people’s perceptions about their business that is drenched in honesty. Suppose a company gets the occasional one-star review, and most of the time its 4’s and 5’s; that’s one thing. In that case, if they consistently get negative reviews about a given product or service, it’s probably time to ditch that product or service.

The ORM from Rocket Driver is connected to our Business Center dashboard system. Inside BC, clients have access to real-time analytics and reporting; along with this is the ability to watch the mentions, reviews, and other critical pieces of data roll in. This is a powerful business tool for many businesses because it gives them an eye-in-the-sky style view of the ORM campaign itself and their own business, a place to reflect. Big picture, this is a hugely powerful tool.

Building An Agency

Reputation management is an excellent service to sell to businesses of all sizes. As social media continues to dominate and competition online continues to grow, it’s becoming more and more critical for companies at all levels to leverage every available asset they have to succeed. If you’re someone who wants to differentiate themselves from the crowd and offer something precious to your clients, considering reputation is a smart move.

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