Businesses thrive on positive online reviews for a better overall rating. Five stars shaded gold popping up next to their product or services across the entire online world is a goal. Though not easily obtainable, it can be done with the proper fostering and strategy to reach out to consumers for their thoughts on your product or service.
Did you know that reviews influence 93% of consumers’ decisions, and those consumers are taking the advice of total strangers? In fact, they all agree: any business with a rating of fewer than 3.3 stars is not getting their business. The decision to reach out to the consumers you have should be the easiest one you make to build better relationships. Let’s dive into boosting your positive online reviews.
Importance of Positive Reviews
Positive reviews provide the foundation for long lasting relationships between consumers and businesses. This is why getting positive reviews should be a priority. A recent BrightLocal survey showed that 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation with 54% of people willing to visit a company website after reading positive reviews. Online reviews are not just feedback about your business, but a clear advertisement for your business with the attached real life experience and emotion.
Building positive sentiment can be obtained through multiple channels of communication. We’ve provided our favorites further along in this article and how you can get your consumers to give you the reaction you are hoping for.
Getting Customers to Write Positive Reviews
A purchase was made, but there is still work to do to nurture the customer and foster their long-lasting connectivity to your brand. Providing outlets for consumers to reach out to you after the sale is just as important as being reliable and open to sharing information about your service and product beforehand. There’s one catch to this, however, being that you’re going to get a combination of both positive and negative online reviews.
Creating a strong strategy to prove your business is what you say it is can be done with a few simple tips:
- The thought of under-promising and over-delivering will increase your chances for overall satisfaction of consumers.
- If you’re a B2B business, leave a positive review for those you’re working with to help boost their confidence in the relationship you have with them.
- Target people who need your product or service the most. They tend to be the focus group that will give you the most satisfactory results simply because they NEED you.
Your main focus should be to get in touch with satisfied, in-need customers and ask them to write you a review. To do this, you’ll need to utilize a variety of resources to maximize the amount of touchpoints you can make to obtain positive online reviews from consumers. Below are some of our favorite tools to help us get in touch with consumers across the web in the follow up communication of a purchase:
- Social Media: Directing your consumers to your social media platforms gives them the opportunity to openly share their thoughts and experiences with the digital community where others are more likely to respond with agreeance or disagreeance, ask questions to one another, or reach out to your business for further comment.
- Text Message: Follow up with a text message if your consumer opts in to leave you a review on your website, social media, or Google. This is a quick and easy way to get in front of your customer.
- Email: In the shipment confirmation, provide ways for your consumers to respond to you with their experience or questions if they have any.
- Google My Business Reviews: As a part of the purchase process, you can add a link to your Google My Business Page to leave a review. This is an excellent way to drive your ratings up when consumers are searching for your products and services online in comparison to your competitors.
While the hope and overall view, if your product and services are credible & reliable, should be positive, you are going to encounter negative feedback also. It’s in your messaging and response to those negative encounters that will help you build more trust and brand loyalty with potential and existing customers.
Shifting Negative Reviews into Positive Ones
There are going to be a handful of negative messages to respond to from customers that just didn’t feel satisfied. Use those that are negative to regain footing, show your customers that you care about them, and provide them with the certainty that you are going to be continuing to develop your business and product into the best it can be with the recommendations they are providing.
By simply sharing your appreciation for their honest response, this gives you the capability to learn more about the situation and allow them to open up fully on what it is that is bothering them. Sometimes it can be entirely unrelated to your product and they end up changing their review to reflect.
If it is due to your product though, be sure to provide a level of empathy that gives the consumer the feeling that your apology isn’t just a robot, but a human. Acknowledge the issues at hand and provide a resolution or plan of action in a short message back to their online review.
On occasion you will receive reviews that you may deem libel, defamatory, or false by people who have not used or experienced your product or services that you’ll need to take legal recourse against. In those cases, it is best to reach out to an online review management professional for assistance to take the proper steps of recourse.
Who to reach out to for Online Review Management
Online reviews and their tone can shape your entire business reputation both on and off the web. Above we discussed several great options for boosting your overall brand sentiment through positive online reviews and managing those that are negative. But while it is easy for some businesses to maintain their online reputation and reviews, it can be overwhelming or even a full-time job for others that they just aren’t ready to take on.
If that is the case, it’s time to find someone dedicated and experienced in maintaining brand presence online. Reputation Rhino is the world’s leading online reputation management company. We have the reputation management tools, the experience, and the know-how to make online reviews work for you. Let’s keep your business in the spotlight for all the right reasons!