Managing Your Online Reputation Through Customer Reviews
The days of relying on word-of-mouth to figure out who to do business with are long behind us. Now, online customer reviews are the name of the game.
According to a survey, 90% of consumers read a business’s reviews before interacting with it. In addition, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as word-of-mouth recommendations.
This makes managing your reputation on the web a no-brainer.
But like everything else on the internet, everything has its advantages and disadvantages. While positive customer reviews are a great way to attract more individuals to your business, negative reviews can have a big impact on your online image, too.
To manage your online reputation, it is important that you understand how to handle both and build your customer’s confidence.
1. Where to Start
Your online presence, including your footprint on the different social media platforms, plays a crucial role in building and managing your online reputation.
Make sure all your bases are covered by creating profiles and collecting reviews on the major platforms.
Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is a free business listing from Google. It allows you to provide your business’s details, including its location, products, and services.
Creating a profile here is one of the best ways to build a credible standing for your business. It is also one of the fastest ways to increase your visibility across Google services as the information you put here will appear in Google Search, Google Shopping, and Google Maps.
Having an online Google listing with good reviews is a great way to let the prospects know that you are the right business for them. You are essentially giving them social proof of your credibility.
Facebook’s massive audience just keeps growing and you can use it to reach nearly anyone. According to a recent survey, Facebook is one of the most popular platforms that consumers use to review local businesses.
Since a significant chunk of your customers will likely already have a Facebook profile, it will take minimal effort for them to leave reviews, adding to your business’s reliability.
2. Capturing and Asking for Reviews
An unsatisfied consumer is 21% more likely to leave a review than a satisfied one. So, how do you ensure that you get more of your satisfied customers to share their experiences?
By asking them to leave a review.
According to a report, 68% of consumers left a local business review when asked for it. The trouble arises when you have to establish a reliable and consistent way to ask for those reviews.
Here, it helps to let technology lend a helping hand.
Use Automated Platforms
Review generation platforms are a great way to encourage your customers to leave a positive review. They automate the process of asking for and posting reviews with many providing the option to auto-post good reviews to your main web page and other online channels.
Some popular choices are mentioned below.
Podium
Best for: Locally-focused businesses with multiple locations
Free Trial: Yes
Primary Benefit: Contains text and sentiment analysis to track the average review rating of customers along with 24 hours live support.
Broadly
Best for: Small businesses
Free Trial: Yes
Primary Benefit: Features a multi-location dashboard that allows local businesses with one or more locations to respond to reviews and monitor team performance, all in one place.
OneLocal
Best for: Local businesses providing regional services
Free Trial: Yes
Primary Benefit: Features a customer rewards program to retain customers. It also contains ReferralMagic feature to leverage word-of-mouth marketing and reduce marketing expenses.
BirdEye
Best for: All types of businesses
Free Trial: Yes
Primary Benefit: Provides custom alert setting so team members can respond efficiently. It also utilizes Natural Processing Language (NLP) to help isolate and respond to negative reviews.
Make it Easy – Asking for Reviews Via Text vs Email
There are just as many ways to ask your customers for a review as there are mediums of communication. The best, and most prompt, ways to ask for reviews are via text and email.
Using email to ask for reviews is a solid approach for many businesses because you can include the link to the review platform right in the email.
You can either use an email blast that would go out to your customer list at once or write a personalized email that sends the customer a personal thank you note and asks them for a review.
Similar to emails, asking for reviews via text is yet another effective method since you can include the link to your website in the text. In many cases, the open rate for texts is much higher than emails.
3. How to Respond
Responding to reviews is a vital part of your business’s marketing strategy and online brand image. It tells the consumer that your business is invested in their satisfaction.
Negative Reviews
One of the biggest worries of business owners is negative reviews. Not only can these reviews feel particularly hurtful, but they can also have detrimental effects on your online reputation.
Oftentimes, though, by engaging with a reviewer, you can change their mind about your business.
If a customer’s complaint can be resolved, send them a private message offering a resolution. Once their complaint has been resolved, politely ask them to reconsider the review.
If, somehow, you are unable to resolve the customer’s issue, write a short and respectful response, thanking them for their business. Remind the reviewer that this experience is not the norm.
Try and respond to the customer’s specific experience. Mention any particular changes you might have made as a result of their review. This could go a long way in earning their trust.
Positive Reviews
Replies to good reviews show your customers that you appreciate them.
Start by thanking the customer and letting them know that you’re glad they had a nice experience. You should be careful about not making it all about you, but do use this as an opportunity to put a spotlight on your services.
While you are busy responding to both positive and negative reviews, it also helps to keep no-comment (only stars) positive reviews in mind. Respond to these with a brief expression of gratitude.
4. Why It’s Important to Cultivate New Reviews and How It Affects Your Presence on Google
The importance of gathering genuine positive reviews for your business is of ever-increasing importance if you want to improve your business’s visibility on Google.
Testimonials make a core part of your local SEO strategy.
In an attempt to deliver the most relevant information of local searches to the customer, Google not only looks at what your business does but also how it is perceived.
The way Google determines this is by looking at how many reviews you currently have and what is the average review rating. The highest-rated businesses are shown first in search results.
This does not only happen in Google’s search engine but its corresponding services as well, such as Google Maps.
While your business gets recommended by Google as a result of positive reviews, you also experience other benefits, including:
Increased brand trust
Potential for increased ROI
Conclusion
Your online reputation is your first impression, and as we all know – first impressions are hard to change.
Managing your business’s online reputation ensures that your business appears credible and trustworthy. It can have a major impact on the buying decisions of prospects who are wondering whether or not they should interact with your business.