Online Reputation Management is the New Marketing Battleground Say Experts

The online reputation management of individuals, businesses, and brands is being cited as the new ‘marketing battleground’ by one of the UK’s leading ORM providers. Balanced Media, which works to rebuild and solidify digital reputations both nationally and across global networks, believes that online reputation will emerge as a significant differentiator and competitive advantage following an influx of enquiries from international firms as they re-merge from Covid-related lock-downs..

Online reputation is being recognised as one of the most significant roadblocks standing in the way of post-COVID recovery. At a time when current and prospective investors, employees, partners and clients consider whether to work with companies, former business mistakes or personal blunders are delaying or preventing growth and development plans from reaching fruition.

Jonathan Singh, Head of Accounts at Balanced Media said, “Awareness of the importance of online reputation management has been steadily growing over the past few years, moving far beyond wanting to increase positive online reviews to massively increased demand for the legal removal of negative content, and the pandemic has served to facilitate this movement. With post-COVID growth plans on the horizon, we’re seeing more and more enquiries from organisations concerned about previous faults or unfounded allegations that could prevent them from achieving their business goals.”

Increasingly, decisions whether to engage with a business – be it for investment, the provision of professional services or working with clients – are being taken by ethics boards and sometimes anxious corporate boards. The prospect of being seen to be working with discredited businesses can result in significant customer backlash. This has been exemplified by the recent ‘cancel culture’ that seeks to effectively make ‘business as usual’ very difficult and demands a strong response by companies and brands.

Online reputation management is particularly important as the expectations of all stakeholders have changed in ways that most would agree are steps forward for progress but which also likely mean those same stakeholders are less forgiving of past mistakes or rumours of wrongdoing. This is certainly a major driver of the projected growth of the global online reputation management industry, which is expected to grow at a rate of 14.33% to 2025, taking the value from $183 million in 2019 to $410 million.

Balanced Media specialises in the European Union’s Right to be Forgotten legislation, supporting both individuals and organisations to apply for the right to remove harmful links from Google’s European search engine results. The leading ORM firm also develops and implements tailored strategies, publishing press releases across relevant international markets, and optimising content to strategically and discretely redistribute search results to enhance positive content while simultaneously minimising access to unfavourable information.