DigitalMust and Construction Chemical Plant Case
Our client is a large construction chemicals plant. In addition to production, the company is engaged in the restoration of architectural monuments and world heritage sites, so the client’s reputation is a significant intangible asset.
PROJECT FEATURES
The target audience is amateurs and professionals in the field of woodworking, owners of wooden houses and summer cottages, mostly men aged 25-44.
OBJECTIVES
Increase brand awareness for 8 months, build a positive reputation in search results and set up tracking of negative mentions of the company on the Internet.
Period: July 2011 – March 2022
Tools: Brand Analytics reputation monitoring system, working with negative reviews, SEO, guest posting, crowd marketing, threading on forums.
MAIN ISSUES
We conducted an analysis of the company’s reputational background and identified the primary sources of dissatisfaction, getting the following information.
The first obstacle to success is cost. If you take a look at the shelves of stores, there are many options for paintwork materials at a price of 100-200 rubles/liter.
Products of the same purpose with a price of 700-1500 rubles/liter are perceived by default as “expensive”, while the high quality of the products remains in the shadow.
There is another obstacle – habits. Since the Soviet period, people have become accustomed to certain patterns of wood processing: 2 layers – primer + finish, color to varnish, etc. Professional tools have their own application technologies and do not forgive mistakes.
These are the two main issues that have become a source of negativity on the Internet. So we set the following tasks: to work out the negative (analyze the cases, explain the consequences of technology violations), turn “expensive” into “high-quality” and create a positive information field in the TOP of search engine results.
SOLUTION
We have divided the project into 5 tasks, the solution of which is described below. It is worth saying that the maintenance of social networks remained entirely on the client’s side.
What We Have Done
MONITORING MENTIONS
We connected monitoring of brand mentions in the service “Brand Analytics” on the first day of work.
Automatic systems do not always accurately determine the tone, so the reports were reviewed manually. This allowed us to identify the negative and work it out quickly. The main task of working out was not a refutation but assistance in solving the problem, transforming it into a positive where possible.
SEARCH SERP
To form a positive information field in the visible area of search engines, we have chosen sources in the TOP-30 of the search results. At the same time, the resources were divided into 2 completely different camps, in the first of which there were trust reviews, in the second – powerful construction forums.
FORUMS
Working on forums entails direct contact with the target audience and can be carried out in 2 directions.
The first is to create an official account, open a branded branch and work with users on behalf of the brand (answering questions, posting and advertising).
The second involves the creation of ordinary user accounts and guerrilla work on the placement of native advertising (crowd marketing).
The first is more straightforward but costly. The second is cheaper and easier to generate trust with the public but risky.
The emphasis in the discussions was on the quality of materials, we also turned the attention of the target audience from the price per liter to the price per square, which, due to the low funds, was on the bottom of the segment occupied by the customer. The fight against “habits” was in almost every discussion – we shared application technologies, backing them up with photographs of the results.
Working on forums is fundamentally different from working out the negative. In the case of negativity, you can ask questions using a standard script, but forums require a professional specialist (which we have), or we recommend giving this part to the client for at-home work.
Over time we garnered an ever-increasing amount of advocates for our brand who themselves responded to criticism of “expensiveness” with photos of their results and stories about quality. Using the service Brand Analytics “Most Popular Messages” section, we monitored the development of discussions that caused the highest engagement of the audience in the reporting period and posted messages on similar topics on other resources.
REVIEWS
The meaning of the work on the placement of reviews is to increase brand confidence. According to the web portal Anketologist information resource, 93% of people read reviews and 67% can change their purchase decision based on them. As a result it comes as no surprise that a business would experience significant financial loss due to customer negativity.
At the same time, 89% of respondents write negative reviews. This is because a positive experience when making a purchase is taken for granted and rarely leads a person to write a review. From what it turns out that the chances of a brand in a positive information field are approximately 1 to 10. 
The strategy of encouraging customers with discounts and bonuses for writing a positive review always remains on the side of the customer, we can only recommend this practice. For our part, we have decided to create reviews based on answers to key queries and place them on all review sites in the visible area of the consumer.
ARTICLES
There are several objectives when it comes to writing and posting articles. One of them is the content of the search results, so the materials were created with the help of SEO specialists who selected semantics for each article and formed a technical task with key queries. This approach gives a slow but steady result – as long as the request remains relevant, the articles work.
The second provides a quick but temporary result – guest posting on top sites. This increases brand awareness and builds expertise. We agreed with the pumped construction portals to post articles on Yandex Zen and blogs, so we received up to 20 thousand views with 83% of readings on average.
The articles were created on behalf of business professionals and contained valuable tips, life hacks and innovative approaches to solving common issues.
PRODUCT LOVE
According to the customer’s database, a series of photos from real objects were selected for our target audience: wooden houses, private stables, small recreation centers – where the selected products were used. For each item we:
- Talked about the difficulties (grayed wood, shabby coating)
- Described surface preparation technologies and the use of products
- Shared BEFORE and AFTER photos (this format is a favorite of the target audience) and sent ready-made cases for posting on forums, actively participating in discussions.
Of course, it is impossible to measure customer love correctly, but it is quite possible to track the number of positive mentions. Moreover, these posts and discussions appear on the first page of search results for requests for solving such problems now – this is how SEO promotion works.
RESULT
As a result, first of all, we will give a diagram of the dynamics of search results in the format BEFORE – AFTER.
Growth Dynamics and Distribution
of Tonality of Mentions
Before After
We have increased brand awareness for 8 months: the diagram shows an increase in the number of mentions by more than 12 times, in reality – more than 70 (manually calculated), since when building this diagram, customer posting is included in the output. Up to 10 new discussions from brand advocates appeared on the forums weekly. Positive mentions comprised approximately 99% of search results. We have counted not only the positive messages but also all the neutral messages in the discussions.
As for the negative mentions, their number fell only in percentage terms; however, it increased in absolute terms. This is a typical situation with an increase in recognition and, accordingly, sales. This is the way to build a trusting relationship between the brand and the target audience.