Why You Should Be Using Customer Reviews in Your Marketing Strategy

Maybe you’re scared to Google your business. Maybe you don’t want to “feed the trolls.” Maybe you think your business is doing just fine without monitoring customer satisfaction online. But regardless of your reason for avoiding online customer reviews, it’s time to stop. According to a 2017 Consumer Review Survey by BrightLocal, 97 percent of customers read online reviews for local businesses in 2017.

If you don’t claim your review sites and start leveraging customer feedback, you have no control over what information that overwhelming 97 percent sees about your business. But when you accept the ubiquity and unavoidability of customer reviews, you can start leveraging them to your advantage.

Here are three ways you can interact with your web-savvy, vocal customers and use their feedback to boost your business to greater success.

Leverage Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Your customers and prospects may not interact face-to-face, but word-of-mouth marketing is as effective as it ever was. The sheer volume of information on the Internet has forced consumers to learn to filter out claims and promises from pop-up ads and promotional email blasts. Instead, they’ve learned to trust honest feedback from people like them – and to sniff out inauthenticity among reviewers.

Numerous positive reviews – genuine ones – will drive new customers to your business, so why not give review platforms the attention and resources your might otherwise invest in a marketing campaign?

If you’re not sure where to start, the first step is to claim or create listings across the most popular review sites. The same BrightLocal Survey shows that the most trusted popular review sites include Yelp, Facebook, Google, and BBB.org. Make sure information about your business across these sites is accurate, including website address, location, hours, services, and contact info. A little error could deeply inconvenience a prospective customer and make them never want to come back – or worse, leave a scathing review.

When you see a positive review, don’t just smile to yourself and move on. Post it on social media and to a testimonials page on your company website. Show it off!

Manage Your Brand Image

While responding to negative reviews may not be the most enjoyable aspect of plugging into your customer feedback, it can be the most rewarding. More and more, people expect companies to provide social customer care and be present and engaged on review platforms and social media (especially Facebook, which is an intersection of both). You really can’t afford to let compliments or complaints go unacknowledged.

If you’re keeping your finger on the pulse of your company’s online image, you can mitigate or resolve issues that could quickly become catastrophic if the customer didn’t receive a satisfying response. You can also retain satisfied customers by responding to them personally and thanking them for their positive feedback. Responding to the people who love your brand could also help you identify potential brand influencers and advocates with the persuasive power to bring in new customers.

Make sure that the representative of your company who’s responding to reviews and/or social media mentions has mastered the brand voice as well as customer service guidelines. A mature, caring response to negativity goes a long way with other customers who are watching, and often with the annoyed reviewer themself. An offer to make amends with a volatile customer may mean swallowing your pride, but it’s worth it for customers to see your conflict resolution skills.

Positive reviews improve your local search results ranking, and often incensed customers will take down a negative review if you respond respectfully and attempt to solve their problem.

Reevaluate and Improve Your Business

There’s something to glean from almost any detailed review, be it positive or negative. While “I loved this place and will definitely come back” may give you warm fuzzies, it doesn’t tell you what you did right. Thankfully, many customers take the time to be a little more specific, which means that when you garner enough reviews, you can hunt for common threads that will tell you what to improve or emphasize.

It may make you cringe to read the details, but companies used to have to invest in research or  hand out surveys to learn what their customers wanted. Now, that valuable information is right at your fingertips, for free. Don’t squander it!

Overview

Reviews can build trust among prospective clients, influence your search ranking, connect you with brand advocates, and provide you with valuable insights about your customer base. And, importantly, responding to them can remind customers that there’s a human on the other side of that Yelp or Facebook review who’s willing to listen and say “Thanks!” or “How can I help?”

Hannah West writes about the newest technology tools and trends for TrustRadius and is the author of young adult fantasy novels Kingdom of Ash and Briars and upcoming Realm of Ruins. She holds a degree in French that rarely comes in handy and lives in Texas with her husband.