The Advantages of Managing Online Reviews

The Advantages of Managing Online Reviews

by | Oct 2, 2024 | Digital Marketing, Review Management, SEO

The Advantages of Managing Online Reviews

Effectively managing customer reviews with the right tools and strategy can streamline your day-to-day operations and bring valuable benefits to your business.

Boost in Credibility

Having customer reviews lends your business credibility, especially when those reviews are positive. Prospective customers browsing online tend to trust companies with real client feedback. On the other hand, lacking reviews or mostly negative or outdated feedback can hurt your reputation by not providing the social proof consumers rely on. This is why maintaining credibility through review management is key to your return on investment (ROI).

By overseeing customer feedback from sources such as Google, third-party review platforms, your website, and social media, you can highlight your business’s strengths or work on areas that need improvement. Responding to reviews also shows customers that you care about their opinions. Implementing review management allows for a steady flow of new, positive reviews, reinforcing your business’s legitimacy and trustworthiness.

Enhanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Another key benefit of review management is its impact on SEO. Just as reviews demonstrate your authenticity to potential customers, they help search engines like Google recognize your business’s credibility. Reviews are among the top factors influencing local search rankings, contributing up to 16% of Google’s Local Pack ranking factors, just behind signals from Google Business Profile and on-page optimization.

An effective review management strategy ensures a consistent stream of recent, verified customer feedback, which helps boost your SEO rankings. The more positive and verified reviews your business has, the higher it can rank on search engine results pages (SERPs), improving your visibility to potential customers and making it easier for them to find and engage with your business.

Increased Leads, Conversions, and Sales

Positive customer reviews are powerful in attracting new leads and driving sales. A glowing review from a satisfied customer can provide the push a potential buyer needs to take the next step, whether that’s contacting your business, scheduling a consultation, or visiting your website. Research shows that customer reviews can increase conversions by as much as 15%.

Ultimately, the ROI of managing reviews lies in recognizing that feedback from happy customers is a critical marketing tool. When handled properly, it can help your business grow, generate more revenue, and expand your customer base.

The Importance of Responding to Reviews

Having a system in place to respond to all types of reviews—whether positive, negative, or neutral—can benefit your business in the following ways:

Demonstrates You’re Paying Attention

Customers want to know their reviews are being read and valued, whether they are leaving praise or criticism. By responding to reviews, you show current and prospective customers that you actively listen and care about their feedback.

Gives You a Voice in the Conversation

Responding to reviews offers the opportunity to share more about your brand. What are your core values? What steps are you taking to improve customer experiences? Review responses allow you to engage with customers meaningfully, providing added context or clarification where necessary.

Instead of dismissing problems, it’s about showing transparency and using the feedback to help create a more accurate image of your business.

Strengthens Customer Loyalty

When customers receive a response, it creates a personal connection that helps humanize your business. Whether the customer feels appreciated or heard, it taps into their emotions, one of the fastest ways to build long-term loyalty. Loyal customers are highly valuable—you’re up to 70% more likely to sell to them again.

Provides an Opportunity to Recover from Negative Reviews

Negative reviews can be damaging, but they’re inevitable. What matters is how you respond. Addressing the issue with an apology and a solution can often win back unhappy customers. This approach also shows potential customers that your business is willing to take responsibility and make improvements.

In fact, over half of consumers (53%) prefer to see a mix of positive and negative reviews when making a purchasing decision. Handling reviews carefully demonstrates that you’re committed to improving the customer experience.

Your Reputation is Everything

Are you ready to take control of your business’s online reputation? Enter your business details below, and we’ll provide you with a free, personalized reputation scorecard—showing where you stand and how you can boost your credibility, attract more customers, and grow your business.

The Secret Sauce to Beating Your Competition with Reviews

The Secret Sauce to Beating Your Competition with Reviews

by | Dec 14, 2017 | Digital Marketing, Review Management

It’s been reported that for every star a business gets, it will see an increase of approximately 5-9% in business revenue. So if an increase like that sounds good to you, start paying attention to those reviews.

What would be the benefit of a 5-9% increase in your business?

Whatever the answer is, would it be worth spending an hour or two per week responding to online customer reviews for your business? Having an online reputation management plan for reviews can have many positive effects.

It shows potential new customers that you understand customer service and it doesn’t just happen at your location, but also happens online, and before or after the customer engages in a transaction with you.

Positive reviews can help improve how your business ranks in local search. “Prominence,” as defined by Google, is “how well-known a business is.” The third factor that Google uses to determine local ranking in search, prominence factors in recent ratings and reviews. You can read more about that here. When someone uses the word “best” in a search query (like “best restaurant,” “best plumber,” or “best hospital”) the search engines interpret that as a signal that they use ratings to quantify.

In the article Crush Your Competition with these Website Building Basics, I talked about how to “super juice” up your website with first-party reviews. First-party reviews are feedback that a business asks customers for directly — and which live on a business’s own website.

If you are really gunning for success, first-party reviews should be part of your online reputation management plan. According to Yext, “Customers and search engines make decisions about your brand every day based on your ratings and reviews. If you don’t pay attention to this important source of customer feedback, you could be leaving revenue on the table.”

So take the time to properly manage those first-party reviews — they can help your business to be found online.

Before we dive deeper into first-party reviews and how you can leverage them for your business, let’s have a quick refresher on third-party reviews. When a customer leaves a review of your business on a site that is not your business’s website (e.g. Google, Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Foursquare, etc.), that is considered a third-party review. In other words, they are reviews that are on third-party websites.

Now let’s talk about first-party reviews. The big difference between these and third-party reviews, is that they live on the website for your business. They are a powerful tool in driving customer advocacy and SEO results, but there are guidelines that you have to follow. In short, you can’t “fake the funk on a nasty dunk.” Basically, they have to be 100% real and unbiased.

There are no universal comprehensive guidelines out there on first-party review conduct. That’s mostly because each of the publishers and intelligent services have their own rules. And those rules frequently change. That being said, there are some good rules of conduct you can follow with first-party reviews that won’t steer you wrong.

  1. Do not do anything that incentivizes customers to leave a review
  2. Ask all your customers for a review (don’t only ask customers you know are happy)
  3. Do not cherry-pick or delete any reviews, no matter how negative
  4. Reviews cannot be written by the business owner, employees or associates

If you operate inside those guidelines, you should be in safe shape.

How do you get first-party reviews on your website?

Well, that’s where compliance gets easy. You’ll need to use a system or software as a service to collect and manage your reviews. I’d, of course, point you to Yext, who offers a first-party review collection and management system as part of their overall review management solution. It also offers instant notifications and a system of organization that allows you to see every review customers leave of your business across the web, and to filter those reviews by site, star rating, response, and other items. It’s really powerful. However, there are other options out there.

Once you’ve chosen a system, it’s important that you reply to all reviews — no matter how positive or negative — and demonstrate that outstanding customer service you’re known for.

Knowing this, it’s important for companies to pay attention to what is being said about them online. And to be sure to respond to each and every review or message that they can.

 

Source: The Secret Sauce to Beating Your Competition with Reviews

How to Educate Clients on What Matters Most In Local Marketing

How to Educate Clients on What Matters Most In Local Marketing

by | Oct 26, 2017 | Digital Marketing

Clients are confused.

They’re not really sure where they should focus their attention. Should they focus on local business listings, reviews or leads? What about content, social media and call tracking – how much attention do they dedicate to those channels and tactics?

 

Local clients want the most bang for their buck, but most of the time, they don’t have a plan. They definitely don’t know which local marketing tactics will produce the results they want.

The worst part?

What works for one local business, may not work well for another.

 

There’s confusion about what works best for local marketing

Experts recommend a variety of different tactics.

“Focus on your local listings. No, no, no, you should be investing in Facebook Ads. If you’re focused on content marketing and SEO you’ll have lots of free traffic.”

The suggestions are typically very broad, incredibly vague and focused on the wrong things. Nine times out of 10, the advice from these “experts” misses the mark. This leads to a tangent of unfocused ideas that suck up a client’s time and budget, but fails to produce results.

Why?

Your clients are listening to the wrong people.

Listen to bad advice and your local marketing campaigns will fail

There’s a problem here.

What is bad advice? Where does bad advice come from?

A better question would be to ask where great advice comes from. The answer is simple and obvious. It comes from your client’s customers.

Does this mean their customers are experts?

No.

It means you’re able to listen to what your client’s customers say and you’re able to watch what they do. This is how you determine what matters most for your local marketing campaigns.

That doesn’t sound right, does it?

How are your client’s customers the best source for information? They’re typically the least knowledgeable group you can draw data from. Why would asking them for advice work?

Your client’s customers know what they want

They don’t have to be experts on your industry, business, product or service. They just need to know (a.) what they want and (b.) how they buy.

There’s a lot packed into that simple statement, what does that mean exactly?

It means you know your target audience / ideal customer. These are the customers who are both willing and able to buy. These are the people your clients want to turn into long-term customers. Your job as an agency or consultant is to learn everything you can about their customers.

This means you know…

1. The demographics and psychographics of their target audience.

2. Where to find customers that match the demographics and psychographics above.

3. Know the books they read, shows they watch, brands they buy/follow, etc.

4. Their fears – in the form of frustrations, problems, and objections.

5. Their buying process – what they want, what they look for, where they go to find answers, etc.

6. The authority figures they trust, follow or listen to.

Do these details matter all that much from a client standpoint?

Any experienced agency professional or consultant will tell you they understand the importance of these details. Here’s the surprising part about these details.

Most small businesses (and many medium-sized businesses) don’t have this data.

Most of the time, clients believe they already know the answers to these questions. Often times your clients are able to rattle off comprehensive details about their customers.

But, are they right?

The bad news about their data? It falls apart under close scrutiny. Their customer personas are often based on imaginary or non-existent data, they don’t have answers for their customer fears, and their buying process isn’t in line with what customers actually do.

Most businesses don’t know what their customers want

That’s a pretty bold statement to make. The bad news is that it’s true.

How do we know?

Research from CB Insights, found that most startups / small businesses failed because of “the lack of a market need for their product.” This is the number one reason, cited by 42 percent of the startups in their study, for business failure.

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