If you maintain even a minimal online presence for your brand or business, there’s a good chance your customers have already begun to drop in their reviews on your company’s social media pages and online business listing sites. The reality is that product and business reviews have become an essential component of consumers’ interaction with brands as well as their product purchasing patterns.
Nowadays, it is crucial for brand strategists to analyze both positive reviews and negative reviews posted about their brand online, as well as take timely action – or risk losing their customers to competitors!
Ratings & Reviews: The Frontier Beyond The Price Point
Business reviews and ratings have witnessed an astronomical rise in importance recently; quickly becoming a key aspect in consumers’ decision-making. According to PowerReviews’ study, The Growing Power of Reviews, online reviews and ratings are only second to product cost in terms of dictating consumers’ buying choices. Statistically speaking, reviews and ratings can affect the shopping choices of 2 out of 3 online customers; making them a crucial factor to have in your favor.
Garnering positive reviews has several upsides, such as a potential boost in product sales, online reputation, and SERPs. However, negative reviews, if addressed tactfully could lead to a positive impact on your brand. Read on to find out more about how you can effectively tackle negative feedback from consumers.
What Do The Average Consumers Look For?
Consumers read reviews to gain knowledge and trust about the brand, product, or service. Many business owners make the mistake of displaying only flattering reviews whilst completely hiding or removing negative and undesirable reviews. This strategy can backfire as consumers refer to unflattering reviews to build the brand as authentic in their minds. Deleting negative reviews can result in trusted customers instantly losing faith in your brand.
Furthermore, the number of reviews and ratings a particular brand or service has can also be instrumental in deciding a consumer’s actions. Statistics suggest that the higher the number of reviews, the better the customer sentiment.
3rd Party Review Sites – Boon or Bane?
The rise of 3rd party reviewing websites such as Google Business & Yelp is a testament to the fact that consumers place more trust in the reviews of fellow consumers than in the marketing efforts or claims of the parent company. Although it is true that 3rd party review sites generally tend to contain more negative reviews than the reviews and testimonials up on your business’ website, as you have a lesser degree of control; these review sites can also yield positive results.
This is because third-party websites share your leads directly with your website. As many of these sites publish their content across multiple platforms and web channels.
How to Analyse & Diversify Your Profile Reviews
You must consider creating business profiles on various third-party platforms. This is to help your consumers to easily drop in their ratings and reviews. Apart from serving greater convenience for your consumers, these third-party websites share business reviews across several websites to increase your company’s online reach and improve your search engine ranking position.
Edkent Media offers a great tactical solution to reduce the bounce rate on your website. We help establish SEO as your next digital marketing strategy for your business. Draw in users using relevant and engaging content for users to spend endless hours scrolling. Focus on using call-to-action and landing pages to get users to feel attracted to your business and its services.
You can easily determine which review websites are positively impacting your brand in several simple ways. If you are well-versed with web analytics services such as Google Analytics, you can easily view which review sites are increasing your on-site traffic.
Another simple method is to type in your brand’s name into Google or type in the services your firm offers. You’ll recognize the strengths and weaknesses of your company from a visitors perspective, use the search results to help you find which review websites are enhancing your firm’s ranking positions & driving up your on-site traffic. Additionally, this method can also help you identify and determine the review websites you can target in the future!
Additionally, our qualified digital marketing experts would be glad to design a comprehensive custom digital marketing package tailored to fit your firms’ promotional strategy goals.
How Can Your Business Tackle Negative Reviews?
Avoiding negative reviews on third-party review sites is almost impossible. However, experts suggest that with the right approach even a negative review can be turned into a positive brand touchpoint.
The first step you must undertake is to establish the authenticity of the review. Posting fake negative reviews is a common tactic employed by rival brands to hamper the brand image of their competitors. If the username appears to be made up, the review is too ambiguous, or several bad reviews have been posted in an unreasonably short period, then the review could be fake. In such a situation you can ‘flag’ the review. Bring it to the notice of the regulators of the third-party review website.
If you believe that the review is genuine, then you must conduct an internal case. This helps understand what went wrong for the customer. Your next step should be to draft an appropriate response to the negative review. Apologize for any of your business’s mistakes, offer a satisfactory explanation, and address the concern any other way.
Apart from helping you potentially win over a dissatisfied customer, our strategic goal is to make your brand come across as responsible and transparent.
Encourage Consumers to Post Reviews
Your business benefits from the review and rating system which is why you need to encourage your consumers to post!
Encouraging only those customers to post reviews, who have previously had a pleasant experience with a product or service, is a smart tactic employed by some business owners. Some brands convince their previous customers to post reviews by offering simple discount codes upon their review submission.
Bottom line: The Ecosystem of Business Reviews and Ratings is Here to Stay
Therefore, a comprehensive review management strategy is important for maintaining your brand’s positive online reputation. At Edkent Media, we will discuss management techniques, begin with our 30-minute FREE strategy session. Call 647-699-2623 to let us provide your business with effective digital marketing strategies to be placed at the TOP.
