As a marketing agency, there are countless services you can offer your clients from social media to to SEO to digital advertising. But one of the most underrated things you can offer, for higher margins than almost any other service, is reputation management services.
What are Reputation Management Services?
Before we dive into the service aspect, it’s important to define reputation management.
Reputation management is the practice of paying attention to, improving, and influencing public perceptions of a brand and business.
Offering it as a service to your clients means you are taking some level of responsibility for their reputation and are engaging in a variety of marketing strategies and tactics to improve their brand perception. One of the biggest elements of reputation management is review management. But it’s more than that. Actively managing a reputation involves capturing a variety of customer feedback, listening to that feedback, and taking strategic actions based on that feedback.
In a recent survey we conducted with marketing agencies, 55% of them already provide reviews or reputation management services to their clients. So if you’re not one of them, you could be missing out on an opportunity to delight your clients and grow revenue.
If you find the right reputation management platform, you have options for managing client reputation in a way that works best for your agency. To start, the three ways you can approach packaging and selling reputation management services to your clients include:
- Do it for them: Full-service reputation management
- Do it with them: You and your clients share management responsibilities
- Let them do it: You simply resell the software and only provide initial onboarding
We’ll outline what you’d be responsible for in each situation and how you can get started.
1. Offering Full-Service Reputation Management Services
This option is the one our agency customers have the most success with, and as a result what we recommend most. And if you use GatherUp, our automated features make it so you can manage a location in 30 minutes or less each month. So you get to charge a premium for the value you bring to your clients without a ton of investment in time.
Responsibilities:
- Set up the account, location info, and branding for your client
- Ensure customers are added on a daily or weekly basis
- Customize requests, landing pages, and email reminders
- Set up and manage notifications — alert client to negative feedback within 2 business hours
- Reply to reviews
- Send reports to your client and include a summary of activity and insights
- Advise client to encourage employees to direct customers to give feedback
- Install display widgets on client website
- Create and share social media posts
2. Shared Reputation Management Responsibilities
If you have limited resources, tech-savvy clients, or clients that like to be involved, this is a great approach to reputation management services. However, if you do take this route, be sure your platform can be white-labeled. Reputation management platforms are the most common service agencies white-label, followed by SEO tools.
Agency responsibilities:
- Set up the account, location info, and branding for your client
- Set up and manage notifications
- Reply to positive reviews
- Send reports to your client and include a summary of activity and insights
Client responsibilities:
- Customize requests, landing pages, and email reminders
- Ensure customers are added on a daily or weekly basis
- Encourage employees to direct customers to give feedback
- Reply to all direct feedback
- Reply to negative reviews
- Display reviews on business website using Widgets
- Create and share social media posts
3. Resell Reputation Management Software
Depending on the reputation management software you find, and if it’s white-labeled, you can simply resell the software as part of your services.
This approach is if you or your clients are very price sensitive. In this case, as the agency, your role is limited to a consultant and your client is responsible for all management activities. We don’t often recommend this approach because clients are often too busy to log in and use the product as needed — which can result in cancellations. This means limited long-term revenue for you. And any time spent working to keep clients will cut into profit margins.
Agency responsibilities:
- Set up the account, location info, branding, and notifications for your client
- Educate client on features and functions
- Configure reports to send directly to client
- Consider a monthly review
Client responsibilities:
- Ensure customers are added on a daily or weekly basis
- Customize requests, landing pages, and email reminders
- Reply to all direct feedback
- Reply to reviews
- Encourage employees to direct customers to give feedback
- Display reviews on business website using widgets
- Create and share social media posts
Make Reputation Management a Revenue Generator for Your Agency
Reputation management services can generate a steady stream of recurring revenue for your agency, as clients often require ongoing support to maintain their image. Additionally, offering reputation management alongside other marketing services creates a holistic approach that can lead to more successful marketing campaigns.
If you’re ready to get started, check out this post on how to choose a reputation management platform.
By ensuring a client’s reputation remains positive, marketing strategies can build on a solid foundation of trust, resulting in higher conversion rates and a more significant return on investment. In particular, full-service reputation management enhances your agency’s appeal, profitability, and overall effectiveness of marketing efforts.
Consider offering reputation management to clients to bolster your agency’s portfolio and attract a wider array of clients! Schedule time with one of our product experts to learn more. And see how offering reputation management services can create more substantial, long-term partnerships with your clients.
