Reviews are powerful and can have significant influence on the customer purchasing stage directly impacting your sales metrics positively or negatively. Gathering reviews allows businesses to gain new promotional assets, as well as the chance to collate insights directly from the customer.
Understanding how to incorporate customer reviews into your overall strategy is therefore a critical skill – and we have put together this blog post to help you achieve this.
Not a fan of reading? Watch our video interview of Trustpilot’s Partner Manager, Ed Bolton, about the power of reviews.
Why is it important to gather feedback?
Reviews can be like gold dust for businesses, offering a plethora of benefits and advantages. Some of these include:
They Allow Businesses to Discover and Learn From Problems
People who have had a bad experience will usually go out of their way to post a one-star review - maybe even just to be heard by the company. Whereas happy customers might not think about leaving a review unless they're specifically prompted to by the business. This obviously won't help your overall rating!
Rather than despair, try to see negative reviews as a learning curve – your customer is asking to be heard on a particular topic. If the business isn't aware that a problem exists, it is likely to assume everything is fine. A negative review, therefore, can be a chance to learn, grow and improve your offerings - learning from negative reviews is critical for businesses and not something to shy away from.
They Can Generate Brand Awareness
Having reviews can also help to build and generate awareness of your brand. For example, Trustpilot is a review platform which has a high domain authority, and reviews and profiles posted here will often appear at the top of search results but you have to be in it to win it!
Investing some time setting up review profiles allows your company to benefit from Search Engine Optimisation and reach a wider potential audience. This not only helps your business to gain some social proof and authority through reviews, but also supports brand reputation. When combined, these two elements can create conversion rate uplifts and have a positive impact on your business.
They Can Impact The Purchase Process
Perhaps unsurprisingly, positive reviews can have a major influence on decisions in favour of a company, especially testimonials or reviews speaking about your effectiveness, ease of use, or customer service. Reviews drive decisions, and studies show that 88% of customers will use an online review to make a decision. If a customer knows that others have had a positive experience, they are more likely to choose you over the competition.
How to leverage your reviews
Collecting reviews is not enough on its own – you also need to know how to leverage these to your advantage. Make sure that positive reviews are showcased on company websites, as well as being visible at various touchpoints of the consumer’s journey. For example, an e-commerce business could add reviews to the cart or basket page to minimise cart abandonment. For a B2B business, reviews can be utilised in nurture journeys to help reinforce why people should choose their business over another. A Google Business Profile can also be a great place to collect your reviews, alongside key information about your business.
Your five-star reviews are essential – so use them widely. The information and detail they contain can help you gain a better understanding of how to sell your company and have a significant influence over the content that should be included in an advertisement, or key points for a landing page. Essentially, your five-star reviews tell you what you are doing right and what your audience values, and can give insight into the path you should be taking.
Managing bad reviews
Bad reviews are, to a degree, unavoidable – and so the trick is to learn how to use them wisely. As discussed, this involves looking into the review to discover what can be improved – but you also need to know how to manage bad reviews at the “front of house” – and this means not being afraid to respond and communicate in a professional and constructive manner as this will reflect on the business.
While it can be tempting to simply ignore a bad review in the hopes that it will be buried, this can be a bad look for your business. For example, if a business prides itself on its customer service and receives one-star reviews which criticise the service received, then a calm, helpful and measured response is the perfect way to counter this, showing prospective customers that you are engaging and will take feedback on board.
There are, of course, some instances where companies may not want to respond – this may occur in cases where the individual has already tried to get in touch through various platforms and a response may further provoke them. Malicious reviews can also be tricky, but can be managed – many platforms have an obligation to remove illegal, harmful, or malicious reviews from their sites, allowing businesses and consumers to flag reviews to be assessed and managed appropriately.
Getting started with reviews
The importance of reviews for businesses cannot be underestimated, and getting a collection of reviews established should be a key priority. An absence of reviews can cause prospective customers to turn away, as they have no reason to trust your brand.
Once you've got a good collection of reviews under your belt, it is time to start using them! Add them to your website and key touchpoints to allow potential customers to gain a deeper knowledge of the experience they’re likely to get from your business.
Here at Innovation Visual, we understand that getting started with using and leveraging reviews can be a challenge – and that's why we're here to help. Our talented team has a wealth of experience in helping companies boost their digital marketing strategies with a myriad of tactics – including making use of reviews, both positive and negative, to take your business to the next level.
Get in touch with Innovation Visual today, so we can help you to take full advantage of the power of reviews within your digital marketing strategy and transform your business.
Watch our Digital Marketing Answered episode on this topic
During one of our Digital Marketing Answered episodes, Innovation Visual’s CEO, Tim Butler, interviewed Trustpilot’s Partner Manager, Ed Bolton, about the power of reviews, which was used as inspiration for this blog.
Watch or listen to the full conversation here:
