Everyone is familiar with the Nike brand, the world’s leading sports apparel companies and one of the biggest corporations nationwide. The company not only makes clothing and shoes for working out, they also design different sports equipment, jerseys for thousands of professional and amateur teams, casual attire, and are the owners of quite a few smaller companies who produce similar types of items and apparel. The company is not just active in the United States either, the Nike brand is present in 120 countries around the globe. With so many different products, areas, and operations to keep track of, one would think that the company may have trouble managing their brand online. However, Nike has done an amazing job of hitting every mark needed to maintain top quality online brand management.
Positive Responses to Negative Comments
One of the most important aspects of online brand management involves how a company responds to complaints, negative comments, and concerns voiced by customers on the internet. As large and popular of a company as Nike is, they still receive an enormous amount of negative comments from customers online. In order to handle this, the company has taken several steps to ensure that all of these complaints are handled in a efficient, personal, and professional manner. Nike created a Twitter account that is solely dedicated to handling customers issues and concerns, @TeamNike. This account was created to ensure that no customer complaints are missed or ignored, and to make customers feel as though Nike is taking a personal interest in their problems and has a desire to fix the issue as quickly and directly as possible.
Good Vibes (and SERPs) Only
Another thing Nike has done extremely well is ensure that, when the company is searched online, the results that appear and positive and link directly to Nike sites or partner sites. As you can see in the picture below, when the company’s name is searched on Google, the results that appear are for the company’s website and for different products they sell. It is important that company’s ensure that the top results for their company are positive, including the advertisements that pop up at the very top of the page.
Five Star Content = Five Star Reviews
Lastly, Nike does everything possible to give their customers only good things to say about their company. Nike is active on every social media platform you can think of, as well as their Wikipedia page, blogs, etc. Nike puts a lot of time and effort into their digital marketing to ensure that they have a positive online presence and are connecting with as many customers as possible in any way they are able. The more companies are active online and take the necessary steps to interact with their customers, the less opportunity there is for negative comments and opinions to start widely circulating. And, when these negative reviews do begin to arise, Nike reacts quickly and professionally, ensuring that any damage done to the brand’s strong image is minimal. Nike releases well thought-out content with a clear plan of action in mind, and does a great job of monitoring how their audience responds to their online marketing.
All of these strategies combine to make Nike a great example of online brand management done the right way, and they are a great example for companies who are newer to online brand management to look up to.
Sources
Chaffey, Dave. “5 Examples of Online Reputation Management Done Right.” Smart Insights, 4 Nov. 2019, www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/online-reputation-management-done-right/.
“What You Can Learn from Nike Branding Strategy.” Rival IQ, 27 Mar. 2019, www.rivaliq.com/blog/nike-branding-strategy/.
Larson, Jeff, and Stuart Draper. Digital Marketing Essentials. Edify, 2014, Edify, edify.stukent.com/app/publication/d801ea3f-55b7-4374-ac5a-03d0e2cff93f/cb47ca6c-e25b-460e-a11e-acb31043218b/9360d5e9-ea3c-4674-83a9-306ae005add1/25fcd625-0453-4844-8075-d4799d62f0a4/view.
