August 13th, 2019
Online reviews are the modern version of word of mouth recommendations. Not only can they help with the decision-making process for consumers, they can instill trust in your brand. Generating reviews is a vital activity for any local business, but achieving the right balance of quantity and quality can tricky for even the savviest business owner. Increasing customer reviews effectively can be troublesome for any size business, in any niche and in any location. That’s why you need strong reputation management in order to take control of your online reviews.
Why Increase Customer Reviews?
The content found in online reviews on sites like Yelp, Glassdoor, Trip Advisor, and even Facebook can spell the difference between failure and success and for your business, especially if you are in the hospitality or service industry. According to Small Biz Trends, positive comments from customers translate to an average boost in sales of 18 percent, with consumers likely to spend 31 percent more due to positive reviews.
On the other side of the coin, 22 percent of consumers will not buy a product or service after reading just a single negative review; four or more negative comments can take up to 70 percent of a company’s potential customers away.
Tips for Boosting Reviews
Bottom line is, your business’ best marketers and sales reps are not your employees -- they're your existing customers. You have to actively seek, maintain and nurture their trust in your business or risk losing them to the next guy. Eighty-eight percent of consumers trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations, so treat this as the most trustworthy and credible source of advertising around.
1. Create Different Spaces to Leave Reviews
Before potential customers even visit your website to learn more about what you do, it’s important to make sure they can find out about you no matter where they are conducting online research about their next purchase. The most common sites people will visit first include Yelp, Facebook, Google My Business, and BBB. Make sure your listings are current, correct and comprehensive.
2. Optimize Your Content
Your customer reviews will likely originate unsolicited from happy -- or unhappy -- customers via third-party sites. However, be prepared to make it easy for them to leave reviews on your own site as well. To do this, make sure your website, blogs, emails and social profiles are optimized for providing quick and easy avenues through which people can leave reviews.
You can do this in any number of ways, from optimizing your website for mobile search to setting up website badges that direct visitors to review sites.
3. Give Your Team Incentives
While you can’t offer incentives to encourage customers to write reviews (it’s against many review site policies, like Yelp), you can incentivize your team to go out there and gather reviews for you. There are many ways to entice your employees to collect reviews for your business, from awards to gift cards to privileges. You can incentivize based on recommendations, number of invitations, and number of reviews secured.
Contact Tactical-Moves
Looking for effective ways to increase reviews for YOUR business? Get in touch with the professionals here at Tactical-Moves, where we can help with our comprehensive reputation management services.
Learn more about Reputation Management for Small Businesses