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Importance of Online Reviews for Your Business
In this age of information technology, the importance of online reviews is something which cannot be denied. About 67% of the customers get influenced by reviews. This is the reason that Google has started preferring online review sites more than ever before. And since online reviews show up on the top of the search results, more people click on those sites first when they search for the product you are selling.
Due to the popularity of online reviews, there are many review sites that give customers access to the information provided by other customers about the businesses. Customers leave reviews on those sites and potential customers read those reviews to get help in making decision about purchasing or not purchasing the products. According to Moz, about 67 – 68 percent of people make purchasing decisions after reading reviews. About 88% of the visitors trust real Product Reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends.
Effects of negative reviews on businesses
One negative review can result in the loss of 22% customers who would have bought from the brand. If there are three or more negative reviews, this chance of losing reviews jumps to 59.2%. Negative reviews can result in the destruction of a business. Therefore, it is very important to take care of the customers. Now, you may wonder that how you can avoid bad reviews. The matter of fact is that the bad reviews will come down the road. What matters here is how you deal with those bad reviews. You need to have an effective customer support plan to satisfy your disgruntled customers.
Improving customer service
The customer service starts from placement of order by the customer. Customers want quicker approval, efficient delivery, product safety and flawless performance. Sometimes, you may not be able to keep up with the standards for a few products. Those customers are surely going to have issues and they will let you and other people know about the problem in the review section. When you receive such reviews, you need to act promptly by asking the customers about the problem they faced with the product. You also need to make sure that you do everything to compensate for the loss in order to satisfy them. This way, the bad review can actually become your strong point as people will know that you provide an efficient customer support in case of any issue.
Encouraging positive reviews
While it is the fact that negative reviews are going to flow in when customers will find your product not up to their standards, the ones satisfied with your product will review only when the reviewing process is easy. Therefore, you have to make sure that you have made the process of reviewing easier for the customers. Moreover, you can offer incentives to the customers who would review your product or service.
Importance of Online Reviews
A digital marketing strategy is the basic need of any business. But it doesn’t mean that word of mouth has lost its importance. Word of mouth is still very much important and it is worth mentioning here is that it has its footprints in the digital world as well. Several online channels, including the social ones, have made it easier for the customers to share their experiences with other people. In other words, online reviews have become the major aspect of word of mouth marketing these days.
Reason for the importance of online reviews
Review sites such as Google My Business, Yelp and TripAdvisor contribute heavily in making a business successful. The customers, both potential and current, use these sites to make buying decisions. One of the major reasons is that these sites are easier to find.
Another reason for the importance of reviews is that they are visible to the customers before they even click a link. It means that customers can first see the reviews and then make a decision about buying or not buying a product or service.
Help you can get from online reviews for your business
Online reviews can help your business in many ways. In this scenario, we are first talking about the SEO advantage. If you have your business page registered on the review sites, you are going to have an advantage in a sense that the link of your website will be present on those sites. This link can send valuable traffic to your website. And if there are people writing reviews on your page, the traffic will automatically increase.
Another advantage of having a business page on review sites is that it will help people make buying decisions. If you are working on the quality of your product and services, you are surely going to have a lot of customer reviews on those sites. These online reviews will help your potential customers in understanding the quality of your product and service.
Influence of online reviews
Talking about the influence of online reviews, we are going to explain the effect by taking Yelp as an example. Yelp has a star rating system. And this rating changes with fraction of change in the proportion between good and bad reviews and ratings. For instance, if a business has overall rating of 3.24 in Yelp, it is going to be considered 3-star rating. On the other hand, a 3.25-star rating would mean 3.5-star rating. This little change can bring huge chance in the number people getting influenced from your business.
Importance of Product Reviews in Content Marketing
When you are out there in the digital world to market your business, you have to have the fact in mind that you need a solid content marketing plan. This is essential because marketing strategies like SEO need good content in order to work.
While there are many content marketing strategies you need to work on, we are here to talk about product reviews. By writing helpful and detailed product reviews, you will be able to get huge traffic onto your site. The biggest advantage of writing product reviews is that it can help you build a strong following in your niche.
Now, we are going to discuss how you can use product reviews for the benefit of your content marketing campaign.
Make sure that you have good knowledge about your niche
If you want to write good product reviews about the products and services related to your niche, you first have to make sure that you have good knowledge about your niche and the products and services related to this niche. Readers like to read the reviews that are unbiased and provide good information about the product or service.
When you show that you have good knowledge about the products and services related to your niche, people start following you. This way, you find an opportunity to build an authority within your niche.
It is also worth mentioning here that huge amount of search traffic comes to the product review section of a website. It means that your knowledge about the products and services related to your niche can actually help you get that bigger chunk of traffic.
Provide value to your readers
While you may have the SEO factor in mind, you need to make sure that the product reviews you are writing aim at providing value to your readers. It means that your reviews about any product tend to encourage visitors to take action. And this action may be a purchase order. This way, you will not only be able to build your authority among the customers but you will also be able to have solid relationship with the businesses within your niche.
When it comes to writing a good review, you first have to have good knowledge about the product. For this purpose, you first need to use the product personally. You can either purchase the product or you can sign up for free trial to test the product. This trial should give you enough knowledge about the product. When you will have built an authority in your niche, the businesses are going to offer you the products to use in order to get product reviews written about those products by you.
With the help of reviews, you do not only build an authority among an audience within your niche but you also get much needed traffic to your website. Working with this approach, you will not have to think much about the content ideas as you will be able write content based on your own experiences.
Things to Know About Online Reputation Management
Did you ever wish to get something scrubbed from the internet for the sake of your online reputation? Whether you want a part of your personal information to be hidden or you want the negative feedback about your business not seen by your audience, you will need to work on the ways to manage your online reputation.
One of the major downsides of social media sharing is that it doesn’t put much of a resistance against the attempts by individuals to defame your online reputation. And what’s worse is that there is very little you can do in this regard to stop them from doing so. In this scenario, you can take help from online reputation managers who are the pros and they know how to promote a part of information about your personal self or small business to show your positive side.
The main job of online reputation managers
The main job of the online reputation managers is to let the businesses and individuals control the way their information is being shown to the public. It includes the information which they want to be shown the public as well as the information which they want to hide.
Reasons for someone to need online reputation management
Due to internet, there are many good things as well as there the things which are not so good. The major pitfall of social sharing is that your name can end in the hands of the people who you do not identify.
Now, such people can say many negative things about you or your business. If they have access to the channels which are being used by many people to get information, it may initiate a free fall for your business in terms of reputation.
In this scenario, it remains very important for you to make sure that you are managing your online reputation to make favorable information about your business more accessible to the people who may have concern with you or your business.
Why it is important to get someone working on your online reputation?
When you are looking for the professionals to manage your online reputation, you may wonder if you can do this job on your own. Or you may think why you need to hire professionals for this task. Well, think of an anti-virus. Can you get your computer free from viruses on your own? There are some people who do it but they are the serious programmers. If you have huge expertise in managing the online reputation, you can certainly do it but chances are you would rather pay attention to your business operations rather than getting indulged in something which can be time consuming.