Online customer reviews may be impacting the outcome of online marketing campaigns more than anyone ever imagined. According to a recent survey of American consumers online customer reviews, or the lack thereof, can disrupt a customer’s path to the checkout page, or an in-store purchase.

A well-designed online marketing campaign leads consumers to an inviting website that has expressive photos, plenty of detail about products and services, and competitive pricing. If you have that, you’re doing almost everything right. But, no customer reviews on your website? No reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook or any review sites? For a large percentage of consumers, that means No Sale! According to the customer review survey, 92% of online shoppers are reluctant to complete a purchase if there are no product or service reviews.

Be Real

Online shoppers are becoming more and more Internet savvy and they’re not easily fooled by fake reviews. Some review sites, like Yelp, filter out reviews that seem questionable. Amazon has also cracked down on false, misleading, and inauthentic customer reviews.

According to the survey, 31% say that a mix of positive and negative reviews makes them believe that the reviews are relevant and useful. In other words, if consumers have even an inkling that the reviews were written by the business owner, employees, family, friends, or are just “made up,” they will ignore them.

Reviews that appear to be fake are as good as no reviews at all. And no reviews — that’s also a problem.

What Happens If There Are No Reviews?

Studies have found that reviews are important in helping people with buying decisions. The customer review survey specifically asked consumers, “How do you feel when there are no customer reviews available?”

• 35% of online shoppers say they’re less likely to buy if there are no reviews available.
• 32% say they’ll hold off on making a buying decision and do more research somewhere other than on your website. Maybe they’ll come back. Probably not.
• 23% will have difficulty making a buying decision.
• 2% say they won’t buy from you. Flat out won’t buy.
• 8% say they don’t care about reviews.

Businesses need reviews. The more the better! Good reviews don’t just happen—you have to ask for them.

What About Negative Reviews?

Negative reviews hurt. 35% of survey respondents say that one negative review is enough to make them decide not to do business with a company. Of course the content of the review matters. 94% say they do read written reviews and it’s probably fair to presume that they discount those that are vague or hyperbolic. The plausible ones with details about the reviewer’s bad experience with your business need your immediate attention.

When you have legitimately bad reviews, there is a way to turn things around. According to Blake Morgan, an industry expert on customer experience, negative reviews can be used as an opportunity to grow. “If you try and publicly fix the customer’s problem,” said Morgan, “others are watching and applauding you for your attitude.”

Conclusions

Authentic reviews are an extremely important aspect of digital marketing; they’re often the only way for online shoppers to get unbiased opinions about a whether a product or service is worth the investment. Make it easy for your prospective customers to buy from you! Prompt your happy customers to write detailed reviews, address the negative ones, and always keep a close eye on your online reputation.

Revenge Porn is when a perpetrator deliberately distributes pornographic material of another person – without their permission, according to the Civil Rights Initiative.  Some of the images may contain nudity, sexual activity that the perpetrator usually distributes over the web and social networks in order to embarrass, harass or blackmail the victim.  These images get seen by hundreds or thousands – and in some cases the graphics can be of children.  Often the victim is threatened or harassed by third parties who have seen the pornographic images.

If you see images of yourself or others that do not belong on Instagram, there is a way to take them down.  Instagram (like many social networks) has community guidelines and if images or videos do not conform with the guidelines, you can report it.  These images may contain the following:

• Nudity
• Spam
• Self-harm

[Read more…]

Today ratings are more omnipresent than ever.   In the past decade, as consumers have turned to the Internet to voice their opinions and thoughts online, ratings have permeated nearly every product and service.  Whether the ratings come in the form of a number of stars or even comments that offer more detail, consumers have taken charge to ensure quality and to vent their disappointments.   Mega sites such as Yelp and Travelocity have allowed people to rate their experiences for a trip, a meal, a school, a doctor – the list is endless.

There is hardly an experience today that does not have some sort of rating or forum attached to it so it — should come as no surprise that even countries are rated. Will online reputation management for nation-states be far behind? [Read more…]

New insights from the annual Ernst & Young Social Media Marketing Survey in India, show a surprising number of marketers and brand managers with notions that may sound more 2006 than 2016. The E & Y study covered over a hundred brands and reached out to 1250 consumers across Indian metros as well as professional brand managers and marketers.

By studying the what brand marketers perceive are the major digital marketing trends versus what consumers are actually doing, the study found some compelling discrepancies.

For instance, the study found brand managers believe the most popular social media sites are Facebook and Twitter.  While that might hold true for Facebook, Dinesh Mishra, partner – advisory services and customer practice leader, EY India, said that in reality only 18-pecent of the consumers surveyed are active on Twitter versus other social media platforms.  The study found a preponderance of consumers taking to sites such as Instagram.

The survey also found that marketers still believe the website is the most effective digital marketing tool to reach consumers when in fact, social media platforms are the more popular vehicles for consumers. [Read more…]

Cybersecurity is expensive.  Ignoring cybersecurity is even more expensive. Every business, from the enterprise to the mom and pop shop, has been warned:  invest in virus protection, cybersecurity services and applications because once a network is breeched – it’s a virtual feeding frenzy and cyber criminals can easily violate and exploit the confidential data of customer credit cards, employee social security numbers and other important information. Target,  St. Jude’s, Apple, Delta Airlines are just a few of the high profile companies and organizations that have wrestled with cybercrime on a very public stage.

The Cybersecurity Market Report has published a definitive study on the cost and spending of cybersecurity and the numbers are a sobering reminder of the dangerous world we live in.  The report stated that from the five-year period of 2017 – 2021, worldwide cybersecurity spending will exceed one trillion.  Getting to more accurate numbers is a problem as “IT analysts are unable to keep pace with the dramatic rise in cybercrime …” reported Steve Morgan, Editor-in-chief of Cybersecurity Ventures.

Morgan says that analysts predict a 12 to 17-percent year over year growth in cybersecurity spending in the next five years.  Already, high-profile companies such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. are doubling their cybersecurity spending from $250 million to $500 million and Bank of American has publicly declared their spending on cybersecurity is “unlimited.”  IBM  and Cisco have also announced their increased spending in cybersecurity and “…both are … making strategic acquisitions in the space,” says Morgan. Governments are investing in cybersecurity as well:  the U.S. has increased its budget on cybersecurity by 35-percent to $19 billion in 2017.

The security firm,  SANS Institute, reports that “…cost line items to justify expenditures or document trends can be difficult because security activities cut across many business areas, including human resources, training and help desk.”  According to a SANS report, most organizations fold their security budgets into another cost center including compliance and general operations. Therefore, predictions regarding security related spending have varied so that some figures forecasts $500-$700 billion in over the five year period versus a trillion.

Morgan points out that many analysts neglect to dive into more specific areas of security spending such as “aviation security, automotive security, IoT security, and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) security” continues Morgan. All of those market segments combined make up the cybersecurity market.”

Given the rampant increase in cybercrime, some companies are seeing the opportunities to offer services and products to combat cybercrime. Morgan says that that in addition to the traditional  technology firms that usually are called upon for disaster recovery and malware protection, law firms and insurance companies are just a few of the industries joining the fray to offer cybersecurity services.

Consumers are also being targeted as identity theft becomes more rampant.  Morgan says businesses are providing “non-covered spending” such as personal identity theft protection services, computer and mobile phone repair services specific to malware and virus removal, installation of anti-virus and malware protection software, post-breach services including data recovery and user education on best practices for personal cyber defense.

Your business’s online presence is a key component to building its reputation. Without a constellation of social media accounts, online reviews, and mobile-friendly options, your business is essentially invisible online.

However, as valuable as these are, they can also be risky. For example, if one angry response to a bad review goes viral, suddenly you’re the laughingstock of the Internet.

But it’s not just dings to your reputation you have to worry about. The Internet now gives you and your employees ample opportunities to make missteps that can lead to lawsuits. Let’s take a look at some of these risky interactions and how to avoid them. [Read more…]

Yelpers have written more than 108 million reviews by the end of Q2 2016. Yelp uses automated software to recommend the most helpful and reliable reviews for the Yelp community among the millions we get. The software looks at dozens of different signals, including various measures of quality, reliability, and activity on Yelp.

A recent lawsuit and subsequent ruling over whether or not negative posts on Yelp about a law firm should be removed, are causing a free speech debate and raising the eyebrows of the likes of Microsoft, Facebook and others.

Two years ago, a judge ruled the posts removed and some technology industry pundits worry that this particular “ruling against Yelp could stifle free speech online.”  Lawyers for the law firm are surprised by the outrage and have said that the case is about removing posts that “lie” on Yelp –which would not affect users’ abilities to draft negative or positive reviews. [Read more…]

Managing a corporation’s reputation is no small task in today’s often complicated world of instant online communications.  The internet and social media sites such as Glassdoor and LinkedIn – not to mention the myriad of blogs and traditional media, makes the process of monitoring and managing a corporate reputation a formidable task that requires a serious strategic investment of time and budget, not to mention, proactive planning.

Many experts are of the same mindset: if a corporation assigns a dedicated and cross-functional reputation management team, risks can be managed and mitigated more easily.  If that team is not in place – reacting to a crisis may well be more-costly and harmful to the company’s reputation and even bottom-line. CR magazine reports, “… since risks can emerge from any area, a variety of perspectives is ideal for identifying and addressing reputational risk.”  This can include the PR and marketing teams but also departments such as security, legal, finance, quality control and much more. [Read more…]