Love them or hate them, online customer ratings and reviews are a fact of life for brick and mortar retailers. Sites like Yelp, Google+ and TripAdvisor influence 3x more sales than a brand’s own website. Nearly three quarters of customers are swayed by what they read in ratings and reviews, and their trust in online reviews is growing. Simply put: ratings and reviews matter to your brand. The bad news: most retailers don’t have a dedicated review management strategy.
The good news: if you’re reading this, you’re one step closer to developing your own strategy and getting on top of your reviews. Leveraging a strong and proactive review management strategy will allow you to turn negative reviews into customer-winning experiences and can actually turn into more foot traffic for your location. Here are 6 Steps to making your reviews work for you.
Step 1: Claim your pages
Start by claiming every individual location on the most valuable review real estate: Google+/Google My Business, Bing, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, TripAdvisor. After you’ve claimed your page, make it interesting. Add photos and videos and keep the information relevant and useful. Make sure you include your hours and maps to your location!
Step 2: Track your reviews
Use a review management tool to ensure that you are aware of every historical review written about your company and to keep track of them in the future. Some review management tools (ours included) will send you real-time e-mail notifications if a negative review is left about your business. This will prevent you from stumbling across a devastating tip on your Foursquare page that has unknowingly been there for 5 months and caused who knows how much damage?
Step 3: Respond immediately.
Respond to positive and negative reviews as soon as you see a fresh one posted. We agree with Upwork here: Respond as soon as possible so they know their concerns are heard. Although a negative review can impact what people think of your business (and your brand), customers are even less likely to visit if you don’t respond (Evans, 2012). Respond to the good ones, too. Keep a management reply in the top ten reviews so customers don’t have to go far to hear what you have to say (TripAdvisor, 2014).
Step 4: If it’s negative respond with empathy.
Follow our guide for a CAP response:
- Care: show them you empathize
- Action: how will you fix it?
- Perspective: give them some context
Step 5: Get more reviews!
The more reviews yours business has, the more prospective buyers will trust your listing when it comes up on Google. Click here for tips on how to get more customer reviews.
Step 6: Measure your results
When you start to accumulate reviews you may be able to see trends across your successful locations or the ones that need some attention. Figure out what’s working and what isn’t working, then adjust your strategy as needed.
Liked this post? Check out our Review Management Whitepaper for more!
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