Your business’s online reputation is one of the first things a consumer sees. You have very little time to prove that your business is trustworthy, and those little gold stars are the ticket to building a better digital footprint.
How important are online reviews, exactly?
Ninety-one percent of consumers read online reviews, and most of those consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations from friends and family.
On the contrary, we found that only 36 percent of local businesses invest in review marketing.
If you’re still on the fence, here’s what you need to know about online reviews and reputation management:
- 82 percent of consumers visit review sites because they want to make a purchase
- 89 percent make a purchase within a week of visiting a review site
- 29 percent make a purchase within a day of visiting a review site
So, how do you develop a review marketing and reputation management strategy?
- Find the most important review sites for your business.
Google, Yelp, Facebook and Bing Local are good places to start, but you can also search for your reviews. Try this: [business name] reviews or [industry] reviews. For instance, I’d search for “RevLocal reviews” or “digital marketing reviews” to find out where RevLocal is being reviewed and to find important review sites for digital marketing agencies.
- Reply to your reviews.
Reply to both positive and negative reviews. If replying to a negative review, try to figure out how to fix the problem that prompted the customer to leave a bad review of your business. When replying to a positive review, thank the reviewer and tell them you look forward to doing business with them again.
- Get a steady stream of new reviews.
If a review is too old, consumers will find it irrelevant. This means that your business needs to get new reviews on a regular basis. Ask customers to leave reviews after their purchases. Seventy percent of customers would leave a review if asked, so if you consistently ask customers for reviews, you should consistently get new reviews.
Ready to get started with review marketing? For more information, check out our automated review marketing platform, Renown.
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