Best Reputation Management Software

The enormous traction of consumers on social media, online portals, and review sites is both- an extreme opportunity for increasing customer base and an ever-lurking threat to brands' reputation. Customers not only look for social proof and visibility of a business on review sites and search engines but also raise their concerns with brands. It is, therefore, crucial for brands to promote positive and desirable content and curtail negative and maligning content to maintain their brand reputation. 

However, with multiple online channels, several review sites, and amidst millions of reviews posted every day, it is not possible to track everything that customers are posting about their brand. This is where a reputation management software can help brands to keep their credibility intact by tracking the web for their brand-related mentions.  

Amidst lucrative vendor offers, and equally appealing marketing tactics from multiple software vendors,  businesses who want to deploy a reputation management software find it difficult to identify and evaluate the best solutions. Therefore, this buyer's guide intends to assist brands and seekers of the reputation management software in making a prudent buying decision by detailing the value, features, key aspects, average pricing, and important factors of the reputation management software solutions. 

Brand reputation is your brand's relative strength compared to your peers in terms of positive customer sentiment. Positive reviews, admiring online mentions, laudatory client testimonials, and frequent press coverage are indicators of a strong brand reputation. In contrast, frequent customer complaints, negative online reviews, negative or no media coverage, constant scrutiny, and reminders from stakeholders indicate a poor brand reputation. 

Brand Equity

Brand equity is the measure of a brand's valuation as perceived by the marketplace, customers, clients, and potential buyers. Brand equity is an intangible asset for a company and is an invaluable part of its market capitalization. 

Some of the factors that decide your brand equity are:

• How well is your brand recognized in the marketplace? 
• How many customers are aware of your brand’s existence?
• What is your unique selling proposition?
• What is your perceived quality in comparison to other brands? 

Brand Recognition

Brand recognition means when you are a household name among your target audience. For example, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, McDonald's, Starbucks, etc. are well-known names. However,  your brand can be successful even if the general public does not recognize you, but you are a familiar name with your target audience. For example, Hubspot may not be an easily recognizable brand for the public, but in the world of software-based inbound marketing, everyone knows it.

Brand Reputation management

Brand reputation management is a comprehensive process of managing, controlling, and protecting your brand's reputation by continuous brand monitoring, resolving customer complaints, and safeguarding your brand's image from slandering attacks. Brand reputation is the most vulnerable entity for any company, and what took it years to accomplish can be destroyed overnight. Therefore, it requires various strategies, advanced risk sensing capabilities, proactive preparations, and technological assistance to protect your brand's identity and public image.

Online reputation management

Online Reputation management means controlling and managing your brand image on online platforms, social media, online news portals, trusted customer review websites, etc. Online reviews on websites such as Amazon, Yelp, Trustpilot, and even Google and Facebook reviews allow consumers to share and discover their experiences with brands. By gaining positive reviews and mentions on online venues, your brand can gain more traction, popularity, customers, and revenue. 

Offline reputation management

Offline Reputation management means controlling and managing your brand image on offline venues such as TV, press, radio, magazines, word of mouth, etc. Positive offline reputation is generally built by customers who have used your products and services and were satisfied with the outcomes. Businesses offer discounts, memberships, reward points, freebies, and consistent free customer service to build a strong offline brand reputation.

PR Strategy

Spinning the right Public Relations Strategy requires brands to communicate with the internal (employees)  and external stakeholders (customers, suppliers, distributors). Communication and training programs for staff, social media interface for clients, and customers, grievance redressal forum for suppliers, distributors, and a professionally qualified public relations strategist combine together to form the PR strategy. 

Impression management 

You must have heard of various motivational corporate stories presenting the corporates in a positive light. Storytelling techniques are often used to subconsciously influence the audience and give a message about the integrity, fair practice, distinctiveness, and authenticity of the said business. This perception building strategy is known as Impression management. Impression management strategy often relies on marketing the brand as a 'virtuous entity' that cares about the customers, employees, and the environment. 

Online Identity management

Online identity management is the process of building a brand's strong web presence. It uses SEO tactics, social media marketing, blogging, etc., to create an online presence that is easily noticeable by the target customer group. 

Social listening

It also goes by the name of social media monitoring, social media intelligence, buzz analysis, or online analytics. Social listening refers to the understanding of online social media conversations and mentions by the customers about a brand. This data is used by brands to improve their products and services and to enrich customer experience. Social listening acts as a SWOT analysis for the brands. 

Sentiment Analysis 

Sentiment analysis is a method of finding the polar-positive or negative, happy or sad, interested or not interested, satisfied, or unsatisfied. Brands monitor available sentiment lexicons to infer the overall sentiment of the customers. For example- the customer says- this push up stand cannot take my weight and is jittery’ it means that the customer is not satisfied and is apprehensive of its  ability to take the weight

Smear Campaign

Smear Campaigns are brand image damaging campaigns run as a part of a propagandist strategy to malign someone's reputation. Rumors, fake news, false claims, slanders, etc. are used to create a negative impression for any brand, organization, or individual. Sometimes competitors resort to smear campaigns to tarnish the reputation of their opponents. 7

Repair brand reputation

Repair brand reputation implies regaining a lost brand image. Repairing a damaged brand reputation requires a sound social media strategy, marketing plan, corrective measures, PR and communications professionals, and influencers. It also takes a huge amount and effort to build back your lost reputation. 

Streisand effect

Streisand effect refers to the situation in which an attempt to hide a piece of secret information leads to the information getting spread faster. The effect takes its name after Lady Streisand whose efforts to hide her property pictures led to more people downloading it. 

Brand Reputation is everything for businesses. It is the protective gear that saves companies in bad times. The faith that people put in a brand's logo increases employee morale in testing times and keeps the brand motivated to perform better. It's a delicate entity, and brands need to be extra careful when it comes to brand reputation. Brand reputation is a must-have intangible asset because:

• It increases brand recognition, and therefore, a brand has to spend less on future advertising.
• It makes buyers comfortable, and they feel inclined to spend more money on legitimate and reputable brand products.
• It increases the company's stock value, and it becomes easy for the brand to raise liquidity whenever required.
• It generates more revenue by adding new customers due to word of mouth referrals. People love to refer to a reputed brand to their friends and family.
• It makes it easy for the brand to go global when it is well-respected in its domestic market. It increases the chance of getting regulatory approvals.
• It lessens the chances of smear campaigns, rumors and slanders getting successful against the brand. It mitigates the impact of negative publicity and negative reviews. 

Management’s conduct and statements:

Media, customers, and stakeholders closely monitor the statements made by the higher management and speeches of CEOs and directors. Any contentious statement can ruin the brand image. Gerald Ratner's infamous speech in which he jokingly termed his own jewelry brand's products as 'total crap' and 'cheaper than a sandwich' cost him the closure of 2500 jewelry stores and a loss of more than £500 million. The 'Ratner moment,' a popular term in the corporate world, teaches us the value of a reputation for a successful brand. 

Brand’s position on environmental and social issues

With growing consumer sentiment in favor of environment protection, green products, and social issues, brands that portray themselves as environmentally friendly and socially responsible build a strong brand image.For instance,  Mike Jefferies, the former CEO of the iconic American clothing brand Abercrombie and Fitch, made a statement that their brand only wants thin and beautiful people to come to the store. It drew a lot of flak from the public for fat-shaming (a prevalent social issue), and he had to apologize. The brand image was negatively impacted. 

Brands take on health safety:

People take their health seriously. No compromise can be made when it comes to their health. Netflix faced a backlash when it said sleep is their biggest competitor, and Uber faced government wrath in Singapore for its ad campaign that urged people to take uber rather than walking for 10 mins so that people could afford to sleep ten more minutes in the bed. The government found the ad against their health promotive culture.  

Influencer views:

There are some related brands, people's communities, brand ambassadors, influential social media celebrities, opinion leaders, bloggers, and activists who can influence your brand image based on how they see your brand. If these influencers positively review your brand, then your reputation increases significantly. You can use reputation software such as BuzzStream to find influencers in your field. 

Global/Local presence:

Your brand is perceived as strong when you have a global presence. Your ability to do business in a multinational and multicultural environment itself signifies that you have a robust business model and a strong brand presence. It conveys the stability and ability of your business and strengthens your brand reputation. 

Customer reviews:

Do you want your customers to use words such as 'utterly disappointed,' 'shocked,' 'worst,' 'don't buy,' 'poor quality,' etc. for your brand on review sites or your review page? No one wants that. You won't like to buy anything from a brand whose review page is full of these words from disgruntled customers. Customer reviews can damage your reputation and cause you a great loss of business. Even if one customer decides not to buy your product because he/she has seen a negative review, it will cost you dearly when considering the lifetime value of a customer. 

Technological advancements

In an age when consumers can reach a competitor in a click, CX is the key differentiator. (Gartner). Your reputation can increase or decrease based on the type of customer experience you provide. If you don't use technology with millennials and Generation Z customers, they will probably avoid you. Use of VR, AR, Beacon technology, AI, Machine learning, and predictive analytics to enhance your customer's experience can increase your brand reputation. 

• Interact and engage with brand influencers and try to accommodate their suggestions.
• Respond to all reviews. Never shy yourself from responding. Reply to all comments-negative, positive, biased, paid, tarnishing, and even to fake ones. 
• Use online alert tools, reputation management software, and technology to continuously monitor social media and review sites.
• Foster, recognize, and reward a positive base of loyal customers who can defend you from negative storms. 
• Remain professional on all platforms, respect cultures, and don't make controversial statements that can cause embarrassment and wrath. 
• Provide the best products and services and deliver on all fronts. According to recent research by Gartner Marketing Research team: 50% of consumers stop doing business with a brand that fails to deliver on its promises.
• Don't make false claims and be transparent about pricing. 
• Monitor price gouging by third-party sellers. Price Gouging of a brand on an unmonitored platform can negatively impact a brand. For example, due to the COVID 19 situation, some third-party sellers unscrupulously sold products of prominent brands on online platforms with over 500%  price gouging. Generally, such practices are damaging to the parent brand.
• When a whistleblower suddenly exposes prevalent malpractice, employee fraud, hazardous processes, etc. In such cases, it is the brand's responsibility to protect the whistleblower and take immediate action. Your brand can manage crises if you work with the whistleblower to solve the issue rather than acting against him or her. 

Reputation Management Software is a set of application tools that help brands to manage their online and offline reputation. The software has features to track, generate, and respond to reviews and comments about brands on multiple venues. The reputation management software sends customers email alerts and SMS, requesting them to review their experience with your brand. With the help of reputation management system brands can keep track of their social and online reputation.

• The online reputation management software boosts and restores brand reputation by delivering on all fronts of brand building. 
• It secures all your social media accounts and monitors the digital space to keep a tab on how your brand is covered by the press and how people perceive your brand. 
• It builds a customer database based on the mentions. Anyone who mentions your brand is added to the list. 
• Sends reminders to customers who have not posted a review. It also sends a reminder to people who have posted a review to share it on other social platforms of strategic importance. 
• A reputation software also works as an SEO and digital marketing tool either in a standalone form or in integration with a third-party SEO software to increase traffic, web presence, and online popularity of your brand. 
• It reaches out to target customers and aggregates reviews from multiple sites in one place: showcases and features positive reviews on the home page of the brand's website. 
• It analyzes key brand reputation metrics such as sentiment score,  location-wise trends, reputation score, industry ranking, social media ranking compared to peers, etc.

Based on Focus

• The review focussed:  These reputation management tools focus on monitoring reviews and sending alerts whenever a review is posted on any social media sites or review platform. Some tools also work to acquire more reviews from customers.
• Campaign focussed: These are specially designed to increase the winning possibility of political, business, marketing, or individual branding campaigns. 
• Crisis focusses: These reputation rebuilders are focussed on rebuilding a tarnished reputation by removing negative content from webpages and adding more positive content to limit the damage caused by negative mentions. 
• Privacy focussed: Some business people, reputed families, and prominent individuals want social media, bloggers, press, or any other platforms to stay away from their personal space. Privacy focussed reputation management tools remove all such content and mention it from search engines. 
• Reputation scorers: These tools only allow brands, websites, and businesses to determine their reputation score and compare it with their peers. 

Based on Type of Deployment 

• Web-based or online: Third-party online reputation management software providers offer web-based online reputation management solutions that can be accessed from anywhere with internet accessibility. These don't require any hardware installations. 
• Cloud-based: The cloud-based reputation management software is hosted through a third-party cloud service provider, and data is stored in cloud servers for high-speed and massive storage capabilities. 
• Open source: Open source reputation management software comes with a free source code that can be modified according to the organization’s needs. 

• It helps in resolving customer issues quickly by identifying the pain points from the review analysis.
• Equip brands with necessary context and knowledge to address negative reviews
• Increases brand trust and reputation as the brand can proactively solve customer complaints.
• Aids brands in growing online presence, positive sentiments, and credibility.
• Helps brands in customer service and grievance redressal.
• It gives brands the ability to learn from customer feedback, influencer criticism, and client complaints. Some valid points from those complaints can be utilized to make subsequent improvements.
• A strong brand reputation requires robust measures for customer data protection, privacy, and cybersecurity. Reputation management software helps brands achieve it. 

Most of the reputational crises occur when masses of customers or employees join together to tarnish a brand’s image. Brands should know the power of those hashtag campaigns that can create massive negativity for their brand. In the latest research, Forrester emphasizes the importance of proactively dealing with the collective bargaining power of customers or even employees who would come together to criticize your brand on social platforms. 

Reputation management software has features to detect any such mass negativity buildup before it becomes a reality. Brands can thus take proactive measures to stop such things from happening.

Competitors may pay to post false and fake reviews as a predatory campaign against your brand to ruin your reputation. False reviews potentially hurt your brand reputation and provide useless information to other customers.  You can also use a mechanism created by reputation management software in integration with AI and NLP to find out fake and inauthentic reviews. 

Corporate: Small, medium and large scale businesses

A strong reputation can project businesses, whether large or small, as thought leaders in their field and build a strong customer base. The corporate world and all sizes of organizations can use brand reputation software to monitor their brand image and build customer relationships. 

Political Parties

Political branding has gained unique importance in recent years, and today social media plays a crucial role in deciding the fate of political campaigns. Political parties can use the online reputation tool to monitor public sentiment and to thwart any smear campaign running against them by vicious circles.

Reputation management firms

Reputation management agencies are responsible for the makeover and protection of the brand image of their clients. They have to monitor and remove negative comments, false blogging, wrong facts, and image tarnishing web pages and posts related to their clients. A reputation management software for agencies can be of immense help to them. 

PR departments

Celebrities, high-profile individuals, and all brands have the PR department to take care of their online and offline reputation. A reputation management tool can make the work of a PR department easy with its automated review emails, alerts, social media listening functions, etc. 

Individuals: Actors, Sportspersons, Influencers, Speakers, Professionals

It takes years of hard work, patience, and consistent efforts to make yourself a brand in any field. One single reputation crisis incident can cause bans and #saynoto to their movies; sports events type online campaigns. Actors, sportspersons, speakers, etc. are more vulnerable to slandering attacks, and therefore they need to deploy a reliable reputation management system to proactively manage their public image.

Ecommerce and online businesses

Ecommerce and online businesses don't have a face that people can trust before buying. People, therefore, trust the reviews of other buyers that bought from the same ecommerce seller. Negative reviews, fake reviews, auto-generated reviews from the same IP address, etc. can give a hard time to ecommerce store owners. A reputation management system can bring legitimacy to reviews by getting rid of reviews that have no merit or truth in it.

NGOs

NGOs are easy targets for slanderers that may spread rumors about NGO misusing the charity funds or diverting funds for personal benefits of its management. One such negative comment can refrain to other people from donating to that organization. NGOs can deploy a reputation software to proactively track any such attempt. Reputation software can send requests to the search engines to remove any unsubstantiated comment against the organization. 

Government Organizations

Many unsolicited messages do round on social media and even in the form of personal emails and messages claiming to be Government organizations to defraud people. Such incidents tarnish the image of the government agency whose name is misused to commit fraudulent activities. A reputation tracker software that tracks keywords and organization's name on social media can help government bodies catch any such activity on time and issue a statement or warning to people to beware of such fraud. 

Digital Marketing Firms

Digital marketing agencies are responsible for the sound and healthy digital presence of their clients. They can use reputation marketing software to improve search results, online reputation repair, and marketing. 

Business Reputation report:

It provides reports/scores about your current reputation, listings, reviews, ratings, and brand ranking compared to peers and competitors.

Real-time alerts for reviews and mentions:

The reputation management tool sends real-time notifications whenever your brand gets an online review on Google, Facebook, or other social media platforms. It also sends alerts whenever your brand name is mentioned online.

Competitor analysis:

Reputation management software also keeps track of how your competitors are doing on social media and online platforms.

Reporting Formats:

Reports in various formats can be availed using this software (PDF, email, Excel Sheet, etc.)

Location-wise data:

It monitors location-wise reviews and customer sentiments. Brands can work on particular areas more where they are lagging behind in terms of reputation score. 

Track Trends:

Track trends of how your reputation is increasing over time. Compare the trends month-wise, year-wise, lifetime, etc. 

Generate reviews:

Reputation management software can send your customer list emails and notifications to review your brand or a recent experience with your brand. Reviews are valuable business drivers for future business deals. Automated review request modules can help your brand in garnering more reviews.

Sentiment Meter:

Most of the brand reputation management systems come with an inbuilt sentiment analysis tool that measures customer sentiments based on their conversations and text sentences on various platforms. AI and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic programming) integrated with reputation software, provides an efficient way to gauge consumer sentiments.

Image Analysis:

Earlier customers used to write texts only for raising their grievances. Nowadays, they upload GIFs, Memes, Images (such as defective products, closed stores, conversation chats with the customer representatives, etc.) Reputation management software can integrate with AI image recognition technology to help brands monitor criticism transposed onto images. 

CRM and POS integrations:

Most online reputation management tools integrate with the CRM and POS system to fetch the list of existing customers. The list is used for brand messages, review requests, and monitoring the social media accounts of those customers to see what they are speaking about the brand. 

Other Features:

• Single Dashboard: Monitor your reviews from multiple sites at a single place
• Multi-language monitoring
• Custom design features to give a unique look to your brand's messaging
• Highlight positive reviews on your website and partner channels

Buyers should consider the following factors about the reputation management software before making an actual purchase: 

• Can reputation management software integrate with other technologies such as AI, machine learning, NLP, etc.?
• How secure is the data vaults of the software, and does it have the required storage capacity? 
• Is the software user-friendly, sophisticated, and easy to navigate?
• How many important review sites and social networks it currently monitors?
• Is the system scalable to accommodate more than the mentioned review websites on request? 
• Is the reputation monitoring solution accessible on all devices such as desktops, laptops, tablets, mobile phones? 
• Are any hidden costs, installation, and training charges? 
• Can it work smoothly with low bandwidth internet connectivity?
• Whether below functionalities available?
• Multiple languages,
• 24/7 customer support
• Free software upgrades
• Free training
• Free trial or Free demo

Reputation management platforms offer a number of niche products to help brands and individuals seeking to keep their brand image intact and improve further:

The costs of  the best reputation management software depend on a large number of factors such as:

• A number of  websites, locations, and brands to be monitored
• Features it offers
• Type of installation required: Cloud-based, Web-based, on-premise software, or open-source.
• The type of automation it offers
• The number of review sites can monitor
• The number of devices it can work upon simultaneously.
• Quality of service and user support offered 
• Privacy and the data encryption it provides 
• User interface and experience

These variations can significantly alter the pricing estimations of the reputation software. 

The enterprise version of BrandMentions will cost you around $299 a month (suitable for agencies and companies looking to monitor several brands), the plan for businesses and professionals will cost $79 a month, small businesses looking for a reputation monitoring software can opt for its $49 a month plan. 

Online reputation management solutions such as Brand24 will cost $199 for its professional plan, and $49 a month for the personal plan. You can try both BrandMentions and Brand24 for free for 14 days. Reputation911 starts at $295 a month for businesses and individuals.  HothStar comes for $149 a month for its retail license plan and $399 a month for agencies. 

Hootsuite and Rankur offer free versions of reputation management software with limited feature plans. For other online reputation management software or more free online reputation management software such as Reputation.com, BrandYourself, Qualtrics Customer XM, Brandwatch, and many others, you need to contact the vendor for detailed pricing. Get the updated list and complete information from the GoodFirms reputation management software page. 

GoodFirms is one of the finest frontline IT market research companies providing buying assistance to B2B IT service seekers. GoodFirms relies on meticulous research and astounding analysis of the IT products and services to provide the buyers with the best available knowledge of thousands of IT services and products. GoodFirms offers a behemoth listing of more than 9000 software products and services and a collection of more than 15000 reviews from verified users. GoodFirms analysis, combined with the unbiased and genuine reviews, can provide an extraordinary glance into the usage, brand reliability, features, capabilities, merits, pricing, and many more aspects of the listed software products and services. 

The readers of this buyer's guide for reputation management software are advised to navigate the list of thoroughly researched market-leading reputation management software solutions that provide immense features and best services to manage their reputation.  You can also read reputation management software reviews here.