Whether you run an online or offline business, one of your primary goals would be to please your customers. Such excellent services will give them a favorable opinion of you, which benefits your business.
A good review from happy customers is one of the most valuable forms of marketing collateral a business or brand can have. It communicates your value and quality, particularly to your target audience and other potential customers, which increases sales.
However, if positive customer reviews are an asset to a company, negative reviews will be a disadvantage. So, it is safe to say that reviews can either make or break a business.
For customers, online reviews are all about building trust. Individuals will only make purchases, especially online, if they trust the business or brand. To ensure that they are not buying a poor product or service, most individuals conduct proper research before deciding to make any purchase.
Online reviews and testimonials have been the top go-to source for information about an online service or product, especially in recent years. In fact, according to research, 93% of online consumers claim that reviews impact most of their purchasing decisions.
Therefore, with most consumers relying on the internet to research products and services before purchasing, a business’s online reputation has never been more important. In other words, reviews are crucial to a business’s success, especially in this digital age.
Why Are Reviews Important For Businesses?
Indeed, customer testimonials, personal recommendations, and reviews play significant roles in marketing and influence sales on a large scale. Therefore, it is not a surprise that customer review marketing currently occupies a large portion of the digital marketing space.
Customer reviews can provide several benefits include:
- Increased online visibility
- Customer engagement
- Improved trust and credibility
- Competitive Insights
- Increased transparency
- Increased sales
- Improved customer service
- Improved customer loyalty
- Search engine optimization etc.
Beyond the various benefits and importance discussed so far, reviews can also have negative impacts. Unpleasant reviews can damage a business’s reputation and credibility, bringing about a reduction in sales and a loss of customers.
In summary, customer review marketing and management are essential to succeed in today’s highly competitive business landscape. Managing your customer’s reviews can be a complex and time-consuming task, but it is essential for the success of your business.
Tips for leveraging customer testimonials and reviews.
Since customer feedback and reviews are such an important aspect of business, it is important to manage them properly. Collecting, monitoring, and managing customer feedback and reviews, whether positive or negative, must be an important component of any business or digital marketing activity. Here are a few tips on leveraging customer testimonials and reviews to boost your reputation and drive growth:
Proudly publish customer testimonials and reviews on your website.
Whether positive or negative, you should strategically publish reviews on your website. They serve as social proof, providing potential buyers with an unbiased look at customer experience and what it’s like to use your service or product.
A positive review will help communicate your quality and value to prospective customers, eventually increasing sales. Moreover, aside from communicating your quality and driving sales, reviews are an important point of interaction with your current customers too.
For example, you should always thank customers for good reviews and respond to negative reviews strategically. Customers love to know they’ve been heard, and sharing and responding to their feedback is a great way to engage and build a strong relationship with them.
Carefully respond to unpleasant reviews.
Image source: Pixabay
It is impossible not to have bad reviews at all. In fact, when your website is only studded with hundreds of good reviews and no bad reviews at all, it appears fake to customers.
Today, people are smarter about online testimonials and reviews, as they can easily spot fake and doctored ones. Genuine and authentic feedback, testimonial ad, and recommendations will help drive organic interest in your products or services.
When you get a bad review, publish it as well, and take the time to respond to them carefully. The truth is most individuals are more interested in the bad reviews. In fact, according to recent research, 94% of online consumers say that a bad review has convinced them to avoid a business.
Carefully responding to these negative reviews can help prevent this. While getting upset about unpleasant reviews is natural, it’s important not to lose your cool and lash out at your customers.
Instead, try to understand your customers’ experience and respond promptly and professionally. Be honest about your mistakes, show empathy, and apologize when appropriate but don’t take responsibility for things that weren’t your fault.
Finally, always investigate what has gone wrong, and make amendments immediately. Your interaction shows that you’re genuine and that you care. It also helps change any negative opinions or impressions of you.
Capitalize on a positive reviews
Good reviews are an asset that you should milk to your advantage. Convert great reviews into highlighted case studies that you can post on your business blog. Such customer review marketing will help build more credibility and trust for your brand.
A good idea is to highlight reviews that explicitly commend specific services or products. You can put such reviews on display in your marketing or advertising campaign as testimonial ads. Such specific reviews help promote that specific service or product and may eventually increase demand for it.
Share reviews on social media channels
Image source: Pixabay
You should not limit your customer review marketing to just your website; instead, ensure that customer reviews, especially positive ones, are visible across social media posts and platforms.
You can consider creating social media graphics that highlight the best reviews. Sharing these reviews on social media channels will generate more exposure among your page followers and direct readers to specific products or services on your webpage.
Customers love to hear and see authentic experiences from other buyers. So, putting customers’ reviews and testimonials at the forefront of your own marketing strategy and plan will attract new buyers who will patronize you.
Leverage Video Testimonials
You can also leverage video testimonial ads in that you get customers to communicate their positive reviews through recorded video. Although written reviews work quite well, video reviews appear to be more effective in that they sort of express authenticity. Also, video is obviously more engaging than text.
Solicit customers for customer review marketing.
When you build a strong and loyal customer base, you can solicit their favor for customer review marketing. This can involve asking them to post their review of your products or services on various review sites, social media platforms, etc.
You can easily convert your current pool of loyal and happy customers to brand ambassadors, especially through the influence of social media. A marketing technique like this appears effective because the idea that your product or service is good enough for other third parties to canvas for you elicits trust and positively influences other prospective customers’ purchasing decisions.
Build relationships with your reviewers.
By building a strong relationship with your reviewers, you can successfully convert them from one-time customers to a pool of loyal, returning, and satisfied customers. It starts with engaging them through interaction, responding carefully to poor reviews, and showing appreciation for good reviews, perhaps with promotional services.
Being appreciative of customers’ efforts gives them a sense of belonging and value, which further builds their trust and loyalty to your brand. In fact, certain marketers believe that the key is making your reviewers the heroes. Publicizing them in testimonial advertising is a good way to do this.
For example, you can go beyond just mentioning a reviewer’s name. Instead, provide a link that drives traffic from their testimonial ads to their website or social media pages. You might even partner with a reviewer by engaging their guest blogging services.
Capitalize on public figures and influencers.
Many individuals will not make a purchase except if recommended by somebody they trust, perhaps by a friend, family member, known product expert, or a trusted influencer.
Influencer marketing thrives greatly on reviews and recommendations. Positive reviews and recommendations from a popular and trusted source will positively influence many customers’ purchasing decisions.
Optimize online reviews for SEO.
You need to also integrate SEO into your customer review marketing procedure. Before publishing reviews on your website, ensure they are adequately optimized with the appropriate keywords and phrases matching your target audience’s search intent.
Adequately optimizing customer reviews can contribute immensely to your site’s visibility and SEO ranking in that they appear as user-generated content, which Google and other search engines usually recognize.
If you post the reviews in picture format or videos, ensure the respective captions are optimized and the appropriate alt tags are in place. Soliciting customers to leave reviews on third-party sites can also be a good link building avenue.
Validate Your Reviews
Since fake and doctored reviews and testimonials are quite common today, many individuals tend to doubt their authenticity altogether. However, with validation tools like reviews.io, you can validate your reviews to prove to your audience that they are authentic and not doctored. Doing this will also help further build trust for your brand.
Conclusion
Building a sound online reputation and credibility is crucial for any online business, particularly with the degree and intensity of competition in today’s digital marketing sphere. Since reviews and testimonials are such an important aspect of a business’s online reputation, it is important to manage them properly.
Properly managing and harnessing customer reviews will help improve your online visibility, sales, customer satisfaction, service, trust and credibility, and customer engagement. It can also be an opportunity for link building. Although bad reviews can be damaging to your reputation and overall sales, with proper engagement, interaction, and management, you can still get on a good marketing footing.
Some ways of leveraging customer reviews and testimonials include publishing them online, using them as social proof, handling negative reviews strategically, leveraging video testimonial ads, etc.
The whole point is, whether positive or negative reviews, proper customer review management will help you leverage customer reviews and testimonials for improved online visibility, credibility, and sales.
