5 Benefits of Online Reviews for Your Business

In our experience, one of the most important considerations for customers when choosing a business is positive reviews and ratings. According to Bright Local’s Local Consumer Review Survey, 9 out of 10 consumers read online business reviews. These reviews are marketing gold because they come directly from customers and clients. This is not marketing material that has been polished or spun. Online reviews are typically independent of the businesses being reviewed and appear on sites such as Google’s search engine results pages, Google My Business, and Yelp. Sites like these have proved that people listen to the opinions of their peers.

Reputation Marketing

Just as good online reviews are helpful for a business, a lack of reviews can be damaging or limit a firm’s performance. Bad reviews can be downright devastating. Reputation marketing involves taking your clients’ and customers’ positive comments and making the most of them as part of your marketing.

If you have a lot of overwhelmingly negative reviews, you have a problem. Don’t think that potential customers are going to scroll through pages of recent negative reviews to find the one customer that thought your business was okay. Reputation marketing can minimize the damage of negative reviews should you have them, get more positive reviews, and get more mileage out of them.

How Do You Get More Reviews?

In addition to earning them by having a stellar business and offering a great product or service with great customer service, you can ask for reviews outright. Don’t be shy about asking for people to leave a review you if they enjoyed what you have done for them.

Reviews are incredibly important to potential customers and it’s worth having updated reviews regularly to show that your business is consistently delivering great results. Asking for reviews can also deepen your relationship with a customer. By asking them to engage with your brand, you demonstrate that you value their opinion and increase the chance that they will become or remain a loyal customer. On top of this, you can get some valuable feedback and a five-star online review into the bargain, and like DIY SEO, you can do this all in-house.

Here are our top five benefits of online reviews to illustrate how much good they can do for your business.

5 Benefits Of Online Reviews

1. Improve your ranking on search engine results pages

Moz agrees that online reviews can help you rank better with Google. One of their studies revealed that 67% of consumers are influenced by online reviews. And online reviews are particularly important if you are marketing yourself as a local business. When people look for a business to work with, good reviews are a vital part of their decision-making criteria.

2. Click-through rates

Bright Local has demonstrated that one of the benefits of online reviews is that good reviews improve click-through rates. If you want people to take you seriously and engage with your business, demonstrating that others think you’re worth doing business with will help.

3. Build trust

Our recommendation is that you can’t have enough positive reviews. Keep them coming. Remember that online reviews are often time-stamped, so a positive review today may be worth more than that glowing review received a year ago. Positive reviews are proof that other customers have enjoyed your product or service. So you should consider generating and promoting online reviews as an ongoing part of your business marketing strategy.

4. Improve the effectiveness of landing pages with social proof

Wondering why people aren’t jumping on your latest offer? While your marketing content may be enticing, there’s nothing like one or more online reviews to provide that social proof that makes sure you come across as credible and reliable. Not only do online reviews make your landing pages more credible, but landing pages without reviews can come across as untrustworthy.

5. Build a better, customer-focused business

Positive reviews show you what you’re doing right. Do more of the things that are making your customers happy. Reviews are also useful for learning more about your customers. You may be surprised by the kind of people who are leaving reviews and the reasons why. You can learn from this information and tailor your business, your marketing, or both accordingly.

Remember that negative reviews are also useful to a business, perhaps even more useful than positive reviews. Negative reviews can help you improve things to please more of your customers more of the time. Honest feedback will let you know that things aren’t working.

While you may wish that negative reviews remained private, the public nature of these online reviews can provide an opportunity to show off your customer service prowess. Demonstrate how you deal with complaints, how you listen to your customers, and how you learn from your mistakes.

Bring it all together

One of the best things you can do to boost your business and your rankings is to have a positive reputation. Gathering and maintaining positive online reviews is essential to your business success. You can boost your rankings, increase the effectiveness and engagement of your marketing material, and improve your bottom line by keeping your eye on what customers are saying about your products or services. And remember that receiving criticism is one of the benefits of online reviews, so long as you don’t receive too much!

For help managing online reviews, get in touch with David Taylor Digital. Our staff is trained and experienced and we know how to harness the power of online reviews. We are here to boost your business by optimizing your website and we can pay special attention to your online reviews so that potential customers can see just why they should do business with you rather than your competitors.

If you want to increase engagement and enjoy the benefits of online reviews, get in touch with us today for a pressure-free discussion about how we can help you do business and quote with no obligation.