What to Look For and What to Avoid In our recent blog post regarding Handling Negative Online Reviews, we acknowledge (and honor) the power of online business reviews.
To that end, here are a few statistics that highlight just how important online reviews are:
* 97% of people read reviews for local businesses.
* 90% of respondents who recalled reading online reviews claimed that positive online reviews influenced buying decisions, while 86 percent said buying decisions were influenced by negative online reviews.
* 89% of consumers read businesses' responses to reviews
* 93% of people who use mobile to research, go on to complete a purchase of a product or service. Most purchases happen in physical stores.
* 3.3 is the minimum star rating of a business consumers would engage with.
* 68% of consumers will leave a review if asked.
These data support just how important online reviews of an SMB are! This is precisely what creates a business environment for tech-savvy entrepreneurs to create & offer services to help SMB owners manage & navigate their online reviews. As usual, some are straightforward & responsible, while others attempt to "shortcut" the process with questionable strategies and tactics.In general terms there are two approaches to providing services to SMB owners regarding online reviews.The first is up-front, above-board, and generally considered "white hat". This approach assumes that the SMB is consistently providing very good to excellent services/products and justifiably deserves very positive online reviews. So, the business service provided is aimed at increasing the number of clients/customers that will leave a review. The results are multi-fold:
* If the business is excellent, the "encouraged" reviews should reflect the great products & services that the SMB provides.
* The increase in overall reviews (most of which should be very positive) will "bury" those one-off, often unjustified, negative reviews underneath the multitude of positive reviews.
* The emphasis of these services is to make it AS EASY AS POSSIBLE for your clients/customers to leave a review of your SMB.
* No attempt is made to influence the actual content of the review.
The second approach includes varying degrees of trying to "game" the system. We don't endorse these tactics since they often either appear sleazy on their surface, or violate the terms of service of many of the review platforms. Here's what we're talking about:
* Claims that Reputation Management companies can get negative reviews removed are usually exaggerated. For example, Google will not remove a negative review on your Google Business Listing unless (a) it is clearly libelous, (b) it violates their terms of service, or (c) substantial circumstantial evidence can demonstrate a non-objective motive for a negative review (e.g. a disgruntled former employee where it can be shown that the reviewer is, in fact, an ex-employee).
* Some Reputation Management or Review Generation services claim to focus on increasing the number of reviews submitted, but then turn around and attempt to "modulate" the flow of the review process based on the review rating. This process is termed review "gating" and generally works by having the automated system directly post positive reviews to the review website, but directs negative reviews in a different path that either encourages the reviewer to contact the business owner directly, or gives the business owner the opportunity to intervene. Review "gating" is a violation of Google's online review policy.
* Black hat" online review tactics can get much worse and become patently fraudulent. Paid fake reviews (good or bad), dishonest attempts to remove bad reviews, the list seems endless. You just don't want any part of this. Enough said.
So, do you need a review generation or management service?
It depends.
What IS clear is that you want as many published reviews of your business as possible.
AND, you want to reply to all, or nearly all, of them. What this requires is both a highly efficient, automated system, and the necessary time & effort to setup and maintain the system and workflow. As is often the case, you can either attempt to do it yourself, or you can hire someone else.As a small business ourselves, Doggone Good Technology faced this very question. Our published reviews are great, but we just don't have enough of them. So, we researched the landscape of available online review systems & services. What we found was a broad array of both costs & capabilities. Nothing was quite right so we're in the final stages of installing our own proprietary system & process. We decided to create an offering for our clients that we use ourselves.As we put the finishing touches on this system, be on the lookout for our next blog post on this topic. When it's ready, we'll provide a complete description of the service. AND we'll have a special FREE OFFER for those SMBs that aren't quite ready to use our online review system/service, but want to implement their own DIY review generation service. Doggone Good Technology will custom-craft and provide you some needed tools for your business absolutely FREE with no obligation!
Stay tuned for this one .. .. .. you won't want to miss it!
