5 Strategies to Manage Your Company’s Online Reviews

Customers have the power to either boost companies’ sales or decrease them through online reviews. Without a doubt online reviews are the new word of mouth marketing. Businesses in service, retail, hospitality, and healthcare industries in particular rely on company online reviews to yield higher profits. As a marketing driven entrepreneur, you need to manage your company’s online reviews in order to promote positive feedback. In turn, your online presence will increase your ROI.

Read on for the top strategies to manage your company’s online reviews.

Respond To Every Review

One of the best strategies to manage your company’s online reviews is to respond to every review you get. Marketers assume that it is best to not draw any attention to negative reviews. However, you can reverse potential damage made by negative reviews by responding to them. If a customer has a negative experience with your brand, reply to their comment with helpful information. Explain how you can help solve their issue or makeup for a problem that occurred during their experience with you. Use a positive tone and provide them with contact information. Not only will this improve that customer’s experience, but it will also show other consumers that you deal with negative situations head-on. They will see that your brand cares for their customers. This customer review management tactic improves companies’ online presences.

Avoid Posting Fake Reviews

Secondly, avoid posting fake reviews to manage your company’s online reviews. When marketers try to improve their ratings through fake reviews, they are only promoting dishonest content on different platforms and reviews. Typically, consumers grow suspicious of these reviews. They dislike the lack of honesty and transparency and see them as spammy. After all, they are covering up customers’ problems rather than working to fix them. Additionally, most review sites do not allow companies to post their own reviews. You could end up breaking the terms and conditions that you signed off on. As a result, you put your business at risk of dealing with legal disputes. Refrain from posting fake reviews to avoid such a negative outcome. Then, you can focus on effectively managing your company’s online reviews.

Ask For Positive Reviews

Another highly effective strategy for managing online reviews is to ask for positive feedback. Avoid putting pressure on your customers when you request reviews. Instead, thank them for working with you and ask them to kindly leave a review for your goods or services. We encourage sending your review request emails to your customers close to when they purchased your products, so your brand is still top of mind and the experience is fresh. Include direct links to your review pages in each email you send so customers can easily leave you a review without having to search for your profile. You can link review platforms to your website too. Doing this shows credible review platforms to users browsing through your site, and brands with reputable review platforms will give users a boost of confidence for your brand. For instance, Welcome Wagon reviews are shown in a banner on their website allowing users to scroll through reviews consumers left for their brand on Trust Pilot. Ask for quality reviews on reputable platforms from happy customers to manage your company’s online reviews well.

List Each Location Separately

Marketing professionals achieve efficient review management by listing each of their locations separately. If you work for a brand that has multiple store locations, keeping up with the reviews can get difficult. This is especially true if a different marketing professional is assigned to manage reviews for each location. To avoid dealing with unnecessary hassles, request for your brand to list each of their locations separately. Another benefit of splitting locations up on review platforms is that you can determine issues specific to each location. Then, you can improve the overall business more efficiently. Simplify your duties and boost sales with this strategy to manage your company’s online reviews.

Purchase Tracking Software

Additionally, track your company reviews in order to properly manage them. To track many platforms and locations, you might need review management software. With this type of software, you can view all of your brand’s feedback on one screen. The best software systems combine reviews from every platform and put them into one dashboard. They also allow you to track your competitors’ reviews. If you see that they are surpassing you in positive reviews, you can implement some of their tactics to boost your rates. Expedite your management efforts for your company’s online reviews with this strategy.

Since positive customer reviews power sales, you need to effectively manage your online feedback to increase your ROI. To do so, thank positive reviewers and tackle negative reviews in a professional way. Never resort to posting fake reviews and avoid making consumers suspicious. Ask your customers to leave you positive reviews while making the process easy for them. List each location separately to avoid confusion. Finally, purchase tracking software to gain insight into your overall review rates as well as your competitors’. Using these strategies, you can manage your company’s online reviews successfully.