Most of the time, a savvy business owner can correct the problem by offering a discount, a free service, or even a simple apology. But if it gets past that point, your customer could go out onto the internet and write a negative review about your business. When other potential customers do a search on the internet for your company’s name, they might just find a negative review. That of course would probably mean they will not contact your company or business or buy anything from your online store.

More Information on Online Reputation Management:

• Online Reputation Management
• What is Online Reputation Management?
• Definition of Reputation Management
• Free Online Reputation Management Beginner’s Guide

One of the best ways to gain free promotion is by using press releases to highlight your company’s latest news stories, events, hires and client wins. In order to write a truly effective press release, it should be a newsworthy story. A grand opening, a special sale, a charitable effort within the Las Vegas community, are all great stories perfect for a press release and an excellent free advertising tool.

There are numerous press release submission websites, some free and some paid, which will allow you to submit your news articles. By doing so, you’re exposing your news item to newspaper and magazine editors who may in turn publish your article/s.

Your press release should be no more than one page in length. Make sure your name, mailing address and telephone number are included at the top of the page as editors will confirm your identity before publishing your news article. See the links below to find the standard format you should write your press release in.

More Information:

Tips on Writing Your Own Press Releases

Write & Submit Press Releases for Your Las Vegas Business

Of course, the more traffic you have to your website from your satisfied customers, you can begin to collect their email address for email marketing purposes. An email newsletter is an excellent way to capitalize on your email list and communicate with your clients. With an email newsletter, you can send out relevant articles, tips, tricks and special offers that will help drive business.

Email newsletter marketing is a very inexpensive and effective way to help market your website, your company and its products and services. You can sign up with an email marketing company like constantcontact.com at a very reasonable cost. In your account you can choose from a wide variety of templates, upload an excel spreadsheet of your contacts, compose your newsletter, and click send. Make sure to include links back to your website! 

You want to make sure that all of the contacts you are adding to your email contact database are opt-in, which means they give their consent to receive email from you. If you collect email addresses with a consent check box, you are most likely covered. With an opt-in subscriber list, you are can be fairly sure that the email newsletters you’re send out are received, viewed and read your subscribers and not simply being deleted. 

The other side of the coin is that if you are sending out email newsletters to help promote your Las Vegas website and business and if you aren’t delivering relevant information or the information that your customers are expecting, you run the risk of having subcribers unsubscribe. 

Here are some tips for relevant and engaging email newsletter content:

• Make your newsletters fun and creative while still maintaining professionalism
• Add photos and links to your website
• Research what information your customers are most interested in and information that will help them solve business problems
• Write articles that are informational and engaging, but keep them short and sweet
• Keep the content varied and diverse, don’t over write about one topic or subject
• Put coupons and special offers in your newsletters

If your email newsletters subscribers can benefits from your well written newsletters, they will actually look forward to receiving them! Just don’t email them too often, you don’t want to annoy them!

With the widespread rise of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, rating websites for every business sector out there, and popular blogs which show up on search engines, it can be difficult to manage your brand’s online footprint. If one popular voice says something negative about your business or product, or even you yourself, it can easily snowball into a public relations catastrophe of epic proportions. The good news about the Internet is that folks are easily distracted - the next big thing will likely take their minds off whatever bothered them. However, all that bad press sticks in Google’s memory like a terrible song, and if anyone searches for your name or your business, guess which sites will be at the top of the list?

There are a number of steps you can take to combat negative press, otherwise known as Online Reputation Management. Depending on the severity of the situation and how popular the negative press is, these can require some public displays of humility, professional assistance, or a full-blown social media campaign.

First off, it’s important to keep tabs on your name’s and business’s presence online. Remember in this digital age, anyone can say anything about your brand and be heard. You have to hear it all. Type your brand into Google every few days or so to stay abreast of any developments.

If you catch a blog post that could potentially be damaging, the best bet is to email the rating service, blogger, or social media user directly. Most people don’t expect to get a message from the person they’re maligning, and many times some frank discussion or incentives will be enough to get them to remove the post. If they don’t, make sure to respond to the complaint in the comments below, and make it appear that the blogger’s dissatisfaction is a freak occurence. Honesty, sincerity, positivity and humanity are the most important tones to take in responding.

If someone is actively trying to discredit your name on search engines, you can fight back by launching a SEO campaign stronger than the one they’re using to put out positive reviews. Every company should do this anyway, in order to build a strong reputaton online that’s less assailable by disgruntled reviewers.

Finally, if government, top-tier news, or wikipedia sites say bad things about your company, you won’t be able to push their negative content top rungs of the search ladder. The best way to combat them is to write a sincere apology and launch a SEO campaign to put it all over the net. Searchers may act like numbers, but they are still people, and will still be swayed by your humanity. Despite it being the 21st century, reputation management is as much about being a sincere human being as it is about SEO.

The technique used to enhance the reputation of a business is known as public relations, or PR. The PR department of a company takes care to present a company in the best possible light to the public. Every company is seeking some way to make themselves memorable and more appealing to the public. A successful PR campaign could mean higher profits, access to higher caliber employees, a more respectable reputation in the community, protect the company in times of trouble and scandal, and greater access to funding.

The PR department of a company uses various methods to broaden a company’s reputation. PR is not the same as marketing. In marketing, the department would pay to take out advertisements in print, television, radio, and internet. Marketing is making a direct sales pitch to the public. PR is accomplished through lobbying, speaking at conferences, sponsorships, and community involvement. When a company is involved in the revitalization of an area of a city, the media coverage is considered public relations. Marketing is about short-term goals, such as boosting sales of a specific product. PR is about long-term goals, such as building a brand.

A company with a good reputation has a much greater chance of hiring and retaining quality employees. They also stand a greater chance in securing funding for special projects that involve the community. A successful PR campaign could help a company gain new customers, as well as retain current customers, which would allow a company to experience greater profit margins. A lot of people shop at a certain store because the company’s PR team has created a solid reputation for that company and made it more desirable as a shopping location to the public. On the other side of the coin, if some news has surfaced about the company that could prove to be detrimental, the PR department is responsible for keeping the damage under control.

Communication between PR and the public is not one-sided. PR also takes the opinions and questions of the public back to the company so that they can be addressed. Maintaining this balance requires a person involved in PR to be versatile, and adept at time management. Public relations is a necessary invention for the survival and expansion of the business world. A company needs to present a good reputation in order to remain viable, and a good PR team can help make that happen.

The goal of a marketing communications plan is to make potential customers in Las Vegas (and beyond) aware of your business and its products and services. This is accomplished by creating websites, brochures, flyers, powerpoint presentations, press releases and more.

In order to write a meaningful marketing communications plan, you need to do research to understand your target market and target customer, what materials would be most appropriate to reach that customer and what budget and timeline will help you reach your marcom goals.

The following are some great links to help you understand exactly what a marketing communications plan is and some templates and information to help guide you along:

• What is a Marketing Communications Plan? - hutchinscrang.com
• What is a Marketing Communications Mix? - wikianswers.com
• Marketing Communications Plan Template - csumb.edu
• Integrated Marketing Communications Plan Outline - mcgraw-hill.com
• Creating an Integrated Marketing Communications Plan - rd-marketing.com
• How Marketing Plans Work - howstuffworks.com
• Marketing Communications Articles, Resources, Glossary - marcommwise.com
• Books on Marketing Communications - amazon.com