Reputation Management: How a Property Investment Company Handled Industry Sabotage

Reputation management has never been so important as it is now in the digital age.

Mobile devices are close-at-hand and minor blunders are made disastrous with everyone's ability to record and quickly share and amplify negative views online.

Digital communication also allows for instant reviews so, if 90% of customers say buying decisions are influenced by online reviews, then your company absolutely needs to see what is being said about them and manage the crisis of potential reputation damage.

Property Investors

Our client, Tim Ash (CEO of Property Investors), received a negative write up on an American site and this review came up on the first page of Google when searching for the company.

Note: The negative review is still present however, it is now surrounded by a plethora of objective and positive reviews of Tim, his company and many of his staff.

Before he approached Conversion Leadership, Tim had already contacted his clients to check in on their experiences, with 100% positive feedback. He also couldn’t identify a client with the name and scenario outlined in the review.

With this information, plus the review being posted on an American based site, with some questionable formatting and spelling errors, we recognised competitor sabotage.

Action Steps in Reputation Management

Even though we suspected the review was a fake, the team at Conversion Leadership identified the core issues within it and created a campaign to address them in a positive way (the review attacked Tim personally and detailed a negative client relationship).

Respond Promptly

First step, we responded to the review. Our communications represented a desire to help, as if the accusations from this review were legitimate and real. But our response also indicated that Property Investors were unable to identify who this person was and what situation they were talking about.

After responding we also contacted the website admin and asked them to remove the review, this request was declined.

We anticipated this and were already in the process of implementing our campaign, focusing on the REAL and positive impact that Tim Ash and Property Investors had on their clients.

CEO Online Persona

Since the review attacked Tim directly, the team at Conversion Leadership assessed his current online representation, through social media and other online platforms. We cleaned up his online profiles and Tim was prompted to begin looking at his social media behaviour in a way that will influence his business no matter what (which wasn’t too far from what he was already doing).

"The review was posted around Christmas," Tim says. "I was obviously too busy to deal with it, but my advisors countered it pretty quickly. In the end, Property Investors ended up looking even better than it had before."

Social Media Campaign

Positive client relationships was the focus of the ensuing campaign, so that when prospects encountered Property Investors they would see the positive impact the company has made. Especially important for any prospective clients that may have seen the bad review.

Conversion Leadership used existing client testimonials and found suitable stock photos (with appropriate copyright) that supported the theme of the testimonial. The images were formatted in Photoshop: Testimonial snippets were added with basic font, the logo was put in the corner and coloured lines were added to make the font and logo clear while also enhanced the aesthetics of the image.

These images were posted on all of the Property Investor’s accounts and were even included in their email marketing, demonstrating the ability in leveraging this campaign for future marketing communications.

"Focusing too much on the negative would have cost us. We decided to invest some money into boosting our reputation instead"

Competitor Sabotage

The negative review was a tactic to nurture bad word of mouth for Tim Ash and Property Investors.

Tim’s experience is far from unusual, in fact, false bad reviews are making Uber drivers feel they need to film their passengers.

The aim of the competitor that created this review was to damage Tim’s personal and business reputation.

Responding to it through attacks, accusations or rebuttals would have been inefficient and a waste of valuable time and money and quite possibly amplify the wrong kind of attention.

Instead, we helped Tim respond with a positive objective by highlighting the satisfaction of past, existing, and REAL clients. CEO Tim Ash has been able to completely reverse the initial negative perception of his online persona and that of his company.

Additionally, Tim has been able to use and reuse the content produced to support many future campaigns.

Are you or your business experiencing a reputation crisis and need help?

Get on the front foot. Contact Conversion Leadership Today!