Customer reviews are essential for building a brand's reputation and organically attracting new audiences to a business. People trust others who have already used a product or service, and incorporating this social proof into your business strategy is a great sales and marketing opportunity.
Is your company paying attention to online customer reviews and giving them the importance they deserve? Let's talk more about this topic—stay tuned!
The Power of Online Reviews for Marketing
Online ratings, or reviews, are customer feedback about your product, service, or business in general , and they have a significant influence on how the market and the public view your business and its reputation.
These reviews are important for search engines to understand what your business is, what it offers and why it should be shown to users, being a crucial part of SEO and Local SEO .
According to Reclame Aqui , 70% of people say that, during their purchasing journey, customer reviews are the source of information they trust most. Furthermore, 63% are more likely to make a purchase on a website with user reviews.
Reviews play an important role in other consumers' decision-making and are a powerful sales and marketing tool. After all, there's nothing better than your own customer talking about your business, right?
These are valuable strategies that increase brand exposure to consumers by influencing brand rankings, increasing business credibility, and providing data and information bases so that the user experience is increasingly improved based on feedback received.
Building an assessment management strategy
For online reviews to be part of your strategy, it takes much more than simply receiving feedback. You need to have goals for where you want to go with them, have processes in place for collecting them, and have management and plans in place for responses, both positive and negative.
It's not enough to just wait for customers to send you reviews and do nothing more with them. You need to encourage them, understand what they're saying, use feedback as a barometer for business development, among other things we'll talk about below.
Encouraging positive reviews
Often times, customers like your product or business, but simply don't remember to review or don't want to waste a lot of time doing so. Therefore, you need to encourage reviews and not just wait for them to arrive on their own.
To achieve this, it's essential that this process is easy and intuitive: simplify forms, reduce the number of fields, and remind them how important the review is to your brand.
Of course, you can't overwhelm customers with constant requests, but it's important to create post-purchase communication strategies, whether through emails or text messages, as reminders to encourage participation.
Managing negative reviews
Not everything is perfect in business, and we know that, so you need to know how to deal with criticism and negative reviews effectively to manage your reputation.
Don't ignore or delete negative comments, but demonstrate how your brand acknowledges mistakes and is committed to improving. Respond proactively, be empathetic, and demonstrate your commitment to resolving the customer's issue and improving their experience.
And remember, it's not just about responding to negative reviews to look good to the algorithm and never looking at that feedback again. Track the customer's journey , seek to reverse their experience, and share feedback with the departments and people involved as ways to improve the various processes within the business.
Using reviews as social proof
It's essential to use reviews as a way to promote your brand, and they can – and should – be used as great social proof, increasing the trust of customers and potential buyers.
Incorporate positive testimonials and reviews into your ads, social media posts, email marketing, and website, for example, and let your customer talk about you at times.
It's also important to identify the most satisfied customers and potential promoters to go beyond online reviews, investing in videos or success stories, for example.
Engaging with customers through reviews
Responding to reviews can sometimes be a major challenge for companies, and it's important to understand this as a way to engage with customers and maintain their experience. Whether reviews are positive or negative, responses are crucial for both the recipient and other customers who will read the review and understand that your brand cares about its customers.
Have a process in place for this phase, be clear about the brand's objectives and how the company wants to communicate. This isn't about creating ready-made scripts to copy and paste, but rather about understanding what the customer is saying and responding personalized to each case.
This moment is part of the interaction with the customer and is also essential for them to understand a positive experience in their journey.
Performance monitoring and analysis
The larger your business, the greater the volume of reviews you'll receive, and you need to monitor them so they're all evaluated and responded to. Furthermore, they're part of improvement metrics; after all, if many of them are negative reviews about a particular topic, you need to monitor them to develop improvements, right?
Therefore, it is necessary to have a performance monitoring and analysis strategy, and this can be done through tools and technology.
Harmo , you can track and respond to all reviews with SEO optimization and reputation strategies.
Statistics that prove the power of online reviews for marketing
- 93% of consumers say that online reviews from other consumers influence their purchasing decisions. (Reviewtrackers Annual Research).
- Online reviews from other consumers top the list when it comes to trust as a source of information. (Kantar IBOPE Media Survey)
- 57% don't trust establishments with less than 4 stars. (Bright Local)
- 98% of consumers read businesses' responses to reviews. (Bright Local)
- 78% of consumers use the internet to search for information about companies more than once a week (Bright Local)
- 74% of consumers have left reviews for local businesses in the last 12 months. (Bright Local)
- 67% of consumers consider leaving a review for a positive experience, while 40% consider leaving a review for a negative experience. (Bright Local)
- Improving ratings from 3 to 5 stars can increase Google clicks by up to 25% (Bright Local)
- Businesses with 5 stars earned 69% of total clicks among Google's top listings (Bright Local)
- 45% of consumers are more likely to choose businesses that respond to online customer reviews. (Review Trackers)
- Consumer reviews impact 15.44% of Google search results. (MOZ)
- 80% of consumers consider it essential that the brand or product they are interested in receives positive reviews from other buyers before making their decisions. (Consumoteca Group)
- 72% of consumers say that positive testimonials and reviews increase their trust in a business. (Big Commerce)
- 88% of consumers trust online testimonials and reviews as much as recommendations from friends or family (Big Commerce)
- 72% of consumers make a decision only after reading a positive review (Search Engine Watch)
- Using reviews and testimonials regularly can generate approximately 62% more revenue (Strategic Factory).
- On average, testimonials on sales pages increase conversions by 34% (Impact)
- Sites that use testimonials have seen a 45% increase in traffic compared to those that don't (Yotpo)
Conclusion
Online reviews are crucial to a business's strong brand strategy and reputation, and investing in online reviews is essential for your company's bottom line and attracting new customers.
Whether positive or negative, receiving reviews is very good for your business. After all, no one knows better than the consumer themselves how to talk about a product or service they've already tried.
How do assessments fit into your business, marketing, and sales? Take advantage of this topic, reflect on the topics discussed, understand how this strategy can be further developed in your scenario, and count on Harmo for your results !
