Mastering online reputation management: A 2025 guide for multi-location businesses

When customers search for your business, they see a snapshot of your reputation across search engine results pages (SERPs), review sites, and social media, making strategic investment in online reputation management a critical necessity for multi-location businesses.

Recent Birdeye studies reveal:

• 68% of consumers check online reviews before engaging with a local business
• 85% of consumers avoid businesses with recent negative reviews
• Social media is a prominent channel of research for Millennial and Gen Z consumers
• The volume of online reviews has steadily increased in recent years

Customers love giving feedback and reading feedback before they engage with an organization. This makes online reputation management a key factor in improving conversion rates, brand value, and advertising ROI.

This complete guide from Birdeye reputation management experts will help businesses like yours understand their online reputation and take steps to improve it.

What is online reputation management?

Online reputation management, or ORM, is the process of building, monitoring, managing, and influencing the perception of your brand image on the internet. Monitoring significant channels like Google, niche review platforms, and social media helps capture and manage customer feedback effectively.

Online brand reputation management has two parts to it : 

• Proactive: Taking active and continuous steps to ensure your business has a positive online perception via search engine optimization and positive media coverage.
• Reactive: Taking immediate responsive action when a negative comment, article, or mention goes online.

Why does online reputation management matter?

Staying on top of your reputation can help you stay ahead of your competitors. But there is much more to it. 

Here are a few significant advantages of investing in building an online reputation management strategy:

• Building credibility with customers 
• Gaining higher visibility on search 
• Generating higher revenue 

Let us briefly explore these benefits to understand them better. 

Building credibility with customers

Birdeye research shows that customers that search engines and customer review sites are two of the most critical channels for local business search. That is why generating online reviews, brand mentions, and a strong presence on local listing sites benefits local businesses immensely. 

It positions your business to be credible and trustworthy amongst potential customers. 

“Individuals are more in-tuned or likely to make decisions based on their peers’ feedback and comments than a marketing campaign. Customers take those Amazon-like experiences and expectations and project those to every company they do business with.”

– Ashley Cash, Global life

Gaining higher visibility on search

A stronger reputation across review sites translates into higher local search engine rankings and a prominent presence for target keywords. Search engines evaluate relevance and trustworthiness while delivering results to customers, and a higher volume of reviews, positive feedback, and social media engagement works in your favor here.

Generating higher revenue

Customers buy from businesses they trust. A positive brand reputation results in higher link clicks on organic results and lower cost per click in advertising campaigns. Birdeye research shows that 88% of marketers believe reputation directly impacts business revenue. 

What factors contribute to online reputation management?

Online reviews, brand mentions, customer comments, business listing accuracy, newspaper citations, marketing campaigns, and many other factors come together to build your business reputation.

The significant factors that contribute to a business’s online reputation can be classified into 

• Earned media
• Owned media
• Paid media
• Shared media 

Let’s explore these factors briefly.

• Earned media: These are citations and mentions a business has earned through networking, PR (public relations) activities, and media coverage. Earned media includes newspaper articles, third-party review sites, social media mentions, and influencer marketing. 

• Owned media: These are brand stories and mentions on all channels owned by the business, including blogs, websites, social media, brand newsletters, and online magazines. Employee and user-generated content also fall under this category. 

• Paid media:    These are citations and mentions a business pays to have. This includes online advertisements, affiliate marketing programs, social media advertisements, and other native advertisements. 

• Shared media:  These are brand mentions where the media is shared between the brand and others. Co-branded campaigns, partnerships, and organic social media posts come under this category.

How to build a strong brand’s reputation management strategy

A strategic approach to reputation management helps businesses understand what proactive steps they can take to mold their brand perception. It also ensures that they react professionally to negative reviews and comments without taking a firefighting approach to online reputation. 

An reputation management strategy has the following steps: 

1. Conducting an audit 
2. Monitoring online reviews and brand mentions 
3. Collecting positive online reviews and user-generated social content 
4. Managing and responding to online mentions and reviews
5. Marketing positive reviews and brand mentions 
6. Developing SEO and PR strategies to boost online reputation 

Conducting an audit 

Before formulating a reputation management strategy, start with an audit to understand your business’s current status. Check for:

• Consistency in business listings across all platforms, covering name, contact details, and services
• Key channels for reviews and mentions
• Customer sentiment through online feedback
• News on popular sources about the brand
• Social media engagement and user content

You can work with an online reputation management tool like Birdeye to gain insights into your brand’s online presence and help address gaps effectively.

Monitoring online reviews and brand mentions 

After identifying significant reviews and social media platforms, consistently monitor these channels to stay updated on customer feedback and sentiment. Track platforms like Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Google, and industry-specific sites while ensuring listing information remains accurate.

Collecting positive online reviews and user-generated social content 

While unhappy customers often share negative feedback online, happy customers need prompting to leave positive reviews. Research reveals that 64% of consumers will likely leave good reviews for quality services. Businesses should request satisfied customers to share feedback across platforms and implement a process for periodic reminders.

Here’s how Mike Bachman Plumbing benefited from piloting Birdeye for one of its office locations over seven months: 

• +110% increase in Google reviews
• +68% increase in Facebook recommendations
• +260% increase in BBB reviews
• 5-10% boost in “discovery” searches via their Google Business Profile 

The ease of use of this software has been great. The automations have freed up time to focus on other things. Webchat has also been a very effective tool to avoid potential issues and keep customers happy, or at least prevent them from getting overly upset. That’s been a bonus for sure. The website review widget is a nice feature – putting our growing / positive online reputation on prominent display when our customers visit our website

– Chad Roylance, Mike Bachman Plumbing

Managing and responding to online mentions and reviews

Keeping track of all reviews and mentions can be challenging when your business has an active online presence on more than one channel, which it usually does.

However, your business must have a system to manage (monitor, respond, and raise tickets) every review to ensure you do not miss customer feedback.

Marketing positive reviews and brand mentions 

You can learn what your happy customers say about you online by building an efficient review generation and monitoring system. However, keeping this information to yourself will not help your brand’s reputation. 

Leverage all positive reviews and mentions by marketing them across channels like your websites, social handles, newsletters, and product marketing materials so that they reach your current and potential customers. 

Developing SEO and PR strategies to boost online reputation

Elevate your reputation with a robust content marketing strategy that combines high-quality website content, blogs, and PR campaigns showcasing customer testimonials and reviews.

This integrated approach amplifies SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PR (Public Relations) efforts, fostering enhanced credibility, visibility, and business growth.

How to repair a damaged business reputation?

Most businesses can fix their bad online reputation in a few simple steps: 

1. Analyze online business mentions: Monitor and analyze brand mentions, online reviews on business listings, Google reviews, and social media content to understand the root cause of issues.  
2. Respond to all reviews and brand mentions: Staying active and responding to negative comments shows that your business is accountable and willing to solve the issue. 
3. Accept the mistake and apologize: The first step to fixing a bad reputation is acknowledging the issue and showing the customers that you are willing to remedy it. 
4. Take the conversation offline: Encourage customers to contact you via private message, SMS, and social media DMs. You can also proactively call or message them if you have their information. 
5. Encourage customers to remove the negative content: Solve customer issues and request them to remove the reviews or social media posts. If not, you can post that the problem has been addressed to balance out the content. 
6. Spread the positive word online: Usually, only angry customers take to online forums to talk about a brand. Sharing positive reviews on social media, reposting happy customers, and adding positive reviews to websites can turn the tide around. 
7. Implement SEO best practices: Implement SEO techniques to ensure customers see content from your website and social media channels instead of third-party sources. 

How to choose the best online reputation management tools

Many online reputation management tools in the market have advantages and limitations. Here are a few things to check while choosing online reputation management (ORM) tools : 

• The tool you choose must be easy to use and require minimal staff training. The easier the onboarding process, the faster you can get to work. 
• Please look for integration with your CRM, social media platforms, and review sites. Features like review generation, monitoring, and social listening can only work if the ORM tool can integrate with these platforms. 
• How easy is it to restrict user access to different designations in your business? You must be able to share edit access to a few, while the others can only access the reports. Reputation management handles sensitive information that needs restricted access. 
• Robust reporting and detailed data to help you understand customer sentiment. Please ensure that the ORM tool you choose generates reports across channels and helps you break down data by sentiment (positive and negative). 
• Businesses need online reputation management tools that can grow with them. Look for scalable solutions that accommodate enterprise (large-scale multi-location businesses) requirements. 
• Reputation management processes need a quick reaction. Work with ORM tools that send alerts and periodic summaries on your chosen device.

Multi-location businesses need robust online reputation management tools with AI-powered automation. GenAI helps you uncover trends, respond instantly to customers, and track branded keywords across multiple channels and locations.                       

Online reputation management services and tools

Customer feedback and business mentions can appear anywhere online – social media, personal blogs, review sites, and more. To stay on top of your reputation, partner with a reputation management company like Birdeye.

Birdeye’s reputation management tools simplify the process with: 

• Review monitoring 
• Social monitoring 
• Review management 
• Review marketing 
• Reporting

Review monitoring

Traditional customer online feedback still predominantly comes from reviews, even with the current higher social media usage. And there are 100+ review sites for each industry vertical beyond the popular ones like Google, Amazon, Trustpilot, etc. 

Reputation management tools like Birdeye help you monitor your reviews on the websites where you have a significant presence so that you can stay updated.

 With Birdeye’s Reviews AI businesses can:

• Monitor customer reviews across 200+ sites from a single dashboard 
• Spot and report fake and spam reviews

Social monitoring

Social media has become a crucial meeting point for businesses and customers. These platforms help customers air their grievances, testimonials, recommendations, and opinions on your brand as well. The volume of conversations on these social media platforms is usually high, so using a tool to monitor these mentions can be very useful.

Social listening and monitoring help you understand where your customers are and where you should concentrate your resources to improve brand reputation on social media. 

With Birdeye Social AI, businesses can:

• Track engagement across social media platforms from a single dashboard
• Create customized social media feeds to monitor activity on brand mentions, branded keywords, and specific phrases 
• Receive instant notifications when a post, comment, or mention goes live
• Leverage GenAI to create posts quickly that will appeal to your particular audience
• Moderate social media feeds by reporting spam and fake comments, posts and mentions with a single click

Review management

While review monitoring tools help you spot your business’s latest reviews across the Internet, you must manage them well to build your reputation.

Online review management means responding to positive and negative online reviews, acting on negative feedback, and analyzing them to make business decisions. 

Birdeye’s easy-to-use dashboard helps you track all your reviews, respond to them, and raise tickets to ensure your brand’s online reputation stays positive.

With the Birdeye Reviews AI, businesses can: 

• Automate review responses with pre-defined templates to scale review management
• Stay on top of reviews with real-time notifications whenever a review goes live
• Understand and respond to international customers with the built-in translation and respond in the original language feature
• Respond to reviews on the go with Birdeye desktop or mobile app. 

Review marketing for online reputation management

Positive reviews, mentions, and testimonials make up for excellent marketing material. You can increase customer trust in your brand and eliminate any doubt they may have about it by marketing online reviews. 

Online reputation management requires the brand to proactively share positive reviews, experiences, and updates about its brand to boost its credibility. With review marketing tools from Birdeye, you can share positive reviews across all marketing channels with a single click. 

Reporting

Online reputation management is a fast-paced arena and needs brands to stay on top of every review, mention, and feedback. Brands also need detailed reports and analytics to take proactive steps to improve their online reputation instead of being reactive alone. 

Birdeye’s AI-driven reporting systems allow businesses to:

Evaluate business performance with a comprehensive metric called Birdeye Score. This score measures your business performance for multiple locations across listings (Listing score), customer sentiment (Sentiment score), and online reviews (Reputation score).

Benchmark performance against local and global competitors to conduct detailed SWOT analysis, gain smart recommendations on how to rank higher on local searches, and improve reputation.

Customize reporting dashboards based on business goals, share the reports with one click, and evaluate location-wise performance from a centralized dashboard.

Real-life online reputation management success stories

Indiana Members Credit Union

A finance conglomerate with over 30 locations, Indiana Members Credit Union (IMCU) partnered with Birdeye to strengthen its online reputation management. With Birdeye, the brand:

• Ensure consistency in NAP across locations and platforms
• Optimize listings for higher visibility, web traffic, and customer engagement
• Streamline review management with QR codes, CRM integration, and AI-driven responses
• Analyze member sentiment, track trends, leverage insights to improve customer experience at the local level

Black bear diner

Black Bear Diner, a growing multi-location restaurant business with 156 locations across 13 states, leveraged Birdeye’s GenAI platform to elevate their reputation. With Birdeye, the organization could

• Automate review monitoring
• Ensure prompt responses and management of guest feedback across multiple locations
• Identify trends, act on guest feedback, derive insights from feedback, and more.
• Deliver exceptional service while capitalizing on a strong brand reputation

“Birdeye’s AI tools allow us to scale effortlessly. Whether we’re at 72 diners or 172, the platform grows with us and continues to deliver exactly what we need.”

Denise D’Amico Johnson, Communications Manager at Black Bear Diner

Related: Want to see more reputation management examples? Check out these remarkable results that we've seen from businesses using Birdeye.

Conclusion 

Managing the company’s reputation has become indispensable, especially for multi-location businesses looking to strengthen their digital presence. With customers relying on reviews, social media, and search results to make purchasing decisions, a strong reputation is key to building trust, visibility, and revenue.

By leveraging tools like Birdeye, businesses can seamlessly monitor, manage, and market customer feedback across channels. From streamlining reviews to social media engagement, these solutions empower brands to respond quickly and build lasting relationships with their audience.

Frequently asked questions about online reputation management

Supercharge online reputation management across multiple locations with Birdeye 

Multi-location reputation management can be challenging and resource-intensive. And that is why your organization deserves the best possible solution. G2 has named Birdeye the #1 online reputation management software for 15 consecutive quarters, among many other awards and recognitions.

 With Birdeye, your businesses can:

• Monitor customer reviews across 200+ sites from a single dashboard, spot, and report fake reviews
• Monitor mentions on social channels, use AI to respond to direct messages, and more
• Moderate social media feeds to safeguard business reputation
• Ensure consistency across multiple listing and review platforms

Watch a free demo to learn more.