Here’s a frightening story that proves how a few negative online reviews—even flagrantly false ones—can cost your business millions of dollars.

Hide the children. This story is scary. And 100% real.

A year ago, one of our roofing clients received a phone call from a wealthy prospect who wanted a custom roof, built-entirely-from-the-ground-up.

The project was so difficult that numerous roofers had already turned down the job.

Our client, however, has the resources and skill to pull off this kind of unique project. They have been in business for over 20 years, serviced thousands of customers, and were renowned for their high quality. And unique solutions to unusual situations.

Still, the customer’s demands were so complex that the project would be risky. The job was accepted by our client, but with 3 caveats clearly spelled out to the customer:

1. The job is going to be expensive.
2. It’s going to take a long time.
3. There’s no way to guarantee the quality of the outcome.

The customer had deep pockets and readily agreed—in writing—to the conditions. The roofing company then proceeded to work closely with a high-end manufacturer to painstakingly design and build the roof.

The roof was built offsite, then installed on the customer’s home. The client happily signed off on the job every step of the way, frequently commenting about her excitement as it progressed. When the job was finished, she happily paid the final invoice.

Job well done.

Well, almost.

Suddenly, a week later, the customer did a complete 360 and said she HATED the roof—and demanded every penny of her money back.

Panicked, the roofer reminded the customer of the conditions she agreed to, and showed her the contract.

But the customer was irate. And, as it turns out, nutbar crazy.

Over the course of the next year, she executed an extensive online smear campaign against our client that cost them more than $1.5 million.

Then Came The Murder Allegation. Yep. Murder.

Apparently wealthy enough to have nothing better to do with her time, she then made it her life mission to maliciously destroy our client’s reputation with fallacious, downright disgusting allegations.

• She flooded online review sites with false claims about the company (including fraud and that they hired convicted felons).
• She created a Facebook page and fake websites specifically to defame the client.
• She accused the owner’s father of murder.

Though all of this was obviously BS, it didn’t matter. This customer was so tenacious with trashing the company online that her absurd allegations started dominating the first pages of search engines.

One of the many false claims the customer made online that destroyed the roofer’s reputation.

Company name removed for privacy.

Put yourself in the prospect’s shoes. If you were researching a company and came across these results—whether or not they appeared flagrantly false—would YOU do business with them?

NOT. IN. A. MILLION. YEARS.

Result: Droves of prospects simply moved on and found another roofer. Hence, $1.5 million in lost revenue. Conservatively speaking.

All from a few nasty, fabricated words on the internet.

How To Stop This Type Of Bad Publicity From Killing YOUR Company Online

Though probably not as vindictive and padded-cell certifiable, you’ve most likely had a few grouchy, erratic, impossible-to-please customers of your own.

Out of the hundreds of customers you’ve satisfied, that small handful of customers will be the ones with the loudest voices. Customers who feel they’ve had bad experiences are over 50% more likely to leave an online review than customers who have good ones.

Fortunately, we’ve got your back when an angry customer blasts your company with a devastating online review.

We’re rolling out a revolutionary new Online Reputation Management (ORM) program that builds, repairs, and controls your online reputation to eliminate damage and dramatically spike your sales.

Here’s how it works, in a nutshell:

We monitor ALL 170+ review websites for you every single day. If negative feedback pops up on any of these sites, we ensure it vanishes—POOF—into the internet either through process called “Information Dominance.”

This allows people searching for your business online to see only your “best side.”

It works for ANY company, even if…

1. You have little to no online reputation and want to BEEF UP your presence across 170 review websites.

2. You have some negative online reviews and want to “wipe the slate clean.”

3. You want to maintain your pristine online reputation or make that last push to improve your online ratings. (Just a one-star increase on websites like Yelp skyrocket profits by 5% to 11%!)

While other ORM companies use shady, often ineffective tactics that tiptoe the line of legality, we’ve spent the last seven years painstakingly developing and perfecting a program that’s 100% foolproof and white hat.

When we outlined the specifics of our new ORM services to this roofing company, the owner started doing backflips of joy. With our help, they’ll erase the damage their crazy, vindictive customer has done to their reputation… and start recovering the $1.5 million (and growing) of revenue they’ve lost because of it.

Watch this brief video for more information about our ORM service and why it’s absolutely mandatory for building and maintaining a great online reputation. Then read our ORM page to discover how to stop negative online reviews from costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Here’s to a healthy online reputation.

P.S. Want to know if your online reputation is causing your business to bleed cash? Let us conduct an in-depth audit of it, grade it on a scale of 0 to 100, and provide concrete recommendations for improvement.

This valuable insight is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to your company—and it’s yours for FREE. Click here to fill out the form and get started.

© 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.