Do you also use the internet to look for a place to eat, a place to have fun, dance or relax, or a service to hire? Then you read online reviews or ratings to see if people approve of the place and if they would recommend it, so you can make a more informed decision?
That's right! And you're not alone in this! Many more people follow this same behavior.
To give you an idea, one in three people on Facebook use the platform to look for recommendations and reviews of places to go, eat, or shop.
This post is precisely about that: how adding recommendations and reviews on Facebook helps you close more deals.
Enjoy your reading.
Online business reputation: what are reviews and why are they important for your business?
Online reviews or ratings are feedback left by customers describing their experience with a particular brand. This feedback is left on sites such as Google My Business, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Fousquase, or Facebook.
Online reviews help other consumers make purchasing decisions and also help companies continuously improve the brand experience.
Furthermore, online reviews also play an important role in a brand's digital presence. It is through them that a business's online reputation is formed. Having an reputation management strategy is fundamental for companies for four main reasons:
1) Social proof
Online reviews are social proof. The greater the number of reviews approving the experience delivered by the business, the stronger the social proof in favor of the brand, impacting the purchase decision. You demonstrate that you receive a large number of customers by receiving a large number of reviews, and consumers are favorably impacted. Furthermore, you always have recent reviews, highlighting that, according to research by Bright Local, 40% of them ignore reviews less than 2 weeks old.
2) Local SEO
Online reviews are content that contains keywords relevant to a business, helping it rank better online. The more related and relevant keywords indexed by Google that are indexed for your business, the greater your chances of ranking first in local search results – 3 key factors for ranking on Google. In other words, online reviews and ratings are content generated by your customers about your brand, promoting your company. To give you an idea, online reviews impact more than 15% of local pack results. They appear in 3rd place on a list of key factors for ranking in a local search.
3) Customer experience
Online reviews are customer feedback. For this reason, they are an excellent source for discovering what is wrong with the delivered experience and knowing exactly what needs to be improved. This means less effort from your team to deliver a better experience. How online reviews help improve the customer experience.
4) Relationship
Responding to online reviews is an excellent opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your customers and show potential clients that you genuinely care about their satisfaction. To give you an idea, according to research, 45% of consumers prefer companies that respond to their reviews. Furthermore, responding to and engaging with these customers through their reviews demonstrates that your brand is customer-centric and humanized.
👉Check it out: 7 simple steps to never make mistakes again when responding to negative online customer reviews.
Facebook recommendations: what are you missing out on by ignoring them in your customer acquisition strategies?
You may have noticed that the old star rating system for businesses on Facebook has been replaced by "recommendations." In short, instead of your customer rating their experience with your business on a scale of one to five stars, they are now faced with the question: "Would you recommend this place?" Their options are "yes" or "no.".
According to Alex Himmel, then vice president of Facebook Local, people use recommendations to ask the community where to go, where to eat, or where to shop. By replacing the "stars" with recommendations, we are making those recommendations more relevant.
According to Facebook For Business, 1.6 billion people on the platform are connected to a small business, and more than 1.2 billion people on Facebook are connected to a small business in another country.
To give you an idea, one in three people on Facebook use the platform to look for recommendations and reviews of businesses.
In other words, reviews and recommendations are extremely important for any company's reputation. In the case of Facebook, people are accessing the platform to ask friends where to go, eat, or shop.
A recommendation from a friend or even a customer who has already had an experience with a brand is far more influential than any advertising pitch made by the brand itself. 92% of consumers worldwide say they completely trust a recommendation from a friend or family member, above any other form of advertising – (Nielsen).
You need to manage Facebook reviews to ensure your business receives the highest possible recommendations and is recommended to other potential customers when they are searching for a place to go, eat, or buy something. After all, we're talking about 1.6 billion users on the platform connected to a single business.
How can your company best leverage Facebook recommendations to attract more customers?
1) Your business made easier to find
Recommendations from friends are invaluable for getting your business discovered. More than half of the customers surveyed (52%) say they feel that personal connections on Facebook and Instagram help them discover interesting businesses or events.
Here I want to highlight the importance of you, who owns more than one establishment, creating a specific page on the platform for each of your establishments, for the following reasons:
- It helps potential customers find your company;
- It increases your chances of being found in a local search;
- A map showing the locations will be displayed on your Home page, helping customers find establishments near them;
- Customers will leave reviews on each establishment's page.
- You can promote each page locally and individually, helping potential customers discover locations near them.
Here you can find more information about creating a Facebook Page for each of your establishments and how to set up the structure of your establishment's Facebook Pages.
2) A more humanized business
Among consumers, 46% agree that information shared by local businesses makes shopping more personal. This makes Facebook recommendations a very valuable asset for companies to incorporate into their marketing strategies. To succeed in marketing your business on Facebook today, you must highlight the human elements of your company with content that includes your people, your culture, your values, and your involvement in the community as a whole. In other words, engage with your customers' recommendations as if it were a conversation.
👉Check it out: Relationship marketing: everything you really need to know
3) Business with the most influence in the digital world
Facebook recommendations offer the opportunity to obtain more robust customer feedback—richer in detail about what impacted their experience with your brand.
What does this mean for your business? Take a look at the keywords mentioned in the recommendations and keep them in mind with every interaction with customer service.
Remember the topic about local SEO that we talked about?
Investing in a strategy to generate recommendations for your business on Facebook is an excellent opportunity to boost your SEO and increase your chances of being found.
That's precisely because, for a customer to review your business on Facebook, they are "required" to write at least 25 characters describing why they would or would not recommend your business. This way, your chances of getting more genuine and informative feedback are much higher.
How to enable recommendations on Facebook
To activate recommendations for your Page:
- Click on Settings at the top of the page.
- Click on Templates and guides in the left-hand column.
- Scroll down and click Add a tab.
- Find the "Recommendations" tab and click Add tab next to it.
Facebook is just one of several channels where your online presence needs to monitor your reputation. See also: Google My Business: how to create a profile and use it to expand your company's reach.
What did you think of this article? If you have any questions, leave a comment below and we'll answer you! =D
Check out our webinar on the feedback economy.