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What happens next?
If you think “online review management” just means getting more reviews, you’re neglecting a huge part of your local marketing strategy. To holistically manage your online ratings and reviews, you need to look beyond review generation and getting a 5-star rating. Devoting time to monitoring your online reviews helps bolster your online reputation, build customer relationships, and attract new consumers to your brand. Well-managed reviews ultimately lead to more clicks, more revenue, and more loyal customers for years to come!
Here are the 4 steps to managing your online ratings and reviews – and why each step is a crucial part of your local marketing strategy…
90% of customers read online reviews before visiting a business. Reviews are a customer’s first impression of your business, and they provide nuanced insights into the customer experience – including how you treat your customers.
Having a lot of reviews helps potential customers get a sense of your business. Whether it’s from customer images or details of your helpful service and great products, reviews help assure consumers that they’ll have a great experience with your brand.
Reviews are also a great way to communicate with existing customers. Developing a reciprocal relationship helps foster loyalty with your existing customers. And if customers have a great experience, they’ll be happy to provide a detailed review for your business.
Even negative reviews are important. They help you know what you can improve upon and help guide how you manage your online ratings and reviews going forward.
You should directly request reviews from your customers, whether it’s in-store, through text or email, or via a landing page or QR code. And with a review management platform like Synup, you can easily request reviews, create landing pages for customers to submit reviews, and even integrate with your CRM (to request reviews after a sale). Having a tool in your arsenal makes it much easier to manage your online ratings and reviews.
Tip: when constructing your online review management strategy, focus on getting reviews on sites with the most visibility. Focusing on your Google or Yelp profiles is a great place to start!
While having a 4 or 5-star rating is great, a lot of brands forget to respond to reviews. Responding to reviews and following up with your customers, whether they had a positive or negative experience, can help increase your rating and build lasting customer relationships. Plus, prospective buyers will see that you care about your customers – which is always a green flag.
A common mistake that businesses make is solely focusing on getting positive reviews – neglecting negative ones. It’s key to respond to both positive and negative reviews, as it shows that you care about your customers’ feedback and are willing to improve their experience with your business! Plus, potential customers love to see that when customers have a bad experience at your business, you take the time to troubleshoot and rectify it. With so many options available, consumers want to guarantee that they’ll have a great time and find the products or services they need. By showing your devotion to the customer experience, you can win customers and keep them coming back for years to come!
Responding to negative reviews can help salvage your star rating, too. 33% of consumers who receive a response to their negative reviews say they would likely change the star rating of their review.
Respond to negative reviews as soon as possible. Negative reviews hurt your business’ reputation, driving potential customers away. Responding to negative reviews shows that you are taking their concerns seriously and are willing to address any issues they had.
And responding to positive reviews is just as important! By thanking customers for their positive feedback, you show that you appreciate their business and are committed to providing an excellent experience for them in the future.
Responding to customers is one of the best ways to communicate with them. After all, besides interactions in-store or over the phone, you may not get a chance to talk to them directly!
The next step is listening to customer feedback. Whether you receive positive or negative feedback, make sure that you’re reading it and seeing what customers are saying in a holistic way. This means conducting a comprehensive sentiment analysis for your reviews!
To do this, go through your reviews and look for any common themes or comments – either across locations or focused on just one location.
Conducting sentiment analysis is tricky – especially when you have lots of locations and review platforms. To make the process much easier, use software like Synup. Synup provides review highlights that you can view across locations and platforms, or view sentiments by filtering for locations, platforms, and even star rating. This way, you can easily see actionable insights on how to improve your business!
Which brings us to our last step…
Lastly, after conducting sentiment analysis, make sure that you actually implement customer feedback!
Seeing what customers are saying is helpful, but by actually implementing what they say, you can vastly improve your customer experience for anyone who visits your store. Over time, this helps improve your online rating, fosters loyalty with the customers who pointed out issues, and ensures a better time for future consumers. Potential customers will also be glad to see that you actually address and implement customer feedback!
Effectively managing your ratings and reviews is an essential part of online reputation management – and a key part of any local marketing strategy.
Managing your brand’s ratings and reviews is key for any local marketing strategy. Reviews can attract customers, foster loyalty, improve the customer experience, and ultimately lead to more clicks and more revenue. By following the steps outlined above, you can effectively manage your ratings and reviews and build lasting customer relationships. And with a review management platform like Synup, the process is easier than ever!
And, less time obsessing about your local presence