How To Improve Your Brand Reputation Using Online Reviews?
With the rising inflation and increasing competition, the businesses are challenging themselves to keep themselves in pace by acquiring more customers and finding organic ways on how to improve their brand reputation. As per the statistics, 90% of the customers buying decision is affected by the online reviews, and 72% of the customers say that they trust the business if they read a positive review about it. So, it is important to invest time and effort in building your brand authority. A recent survey has found that only 36% of the business is focussing their time in review marketing.
Why do online reviews carry so much importance?
The online reviews vouch for a positive opinion about your brand, and it removes the psychological barrier associated with it. When prospective buyers read that the customers had a delightful experience with the business in the past, they can conclude that they might also have a similar experience with the brand. There are various platforms that can help you to build your brand authority.
· Amazon Reviews
· Trust Pilot
· Trip Advisor
· Facebook rating
· Choice Reviews
What are the benefits of an online review?
Due to cut-throat competition, the online review has become a barometer for a successful digital marketing strategy. A review is like feedback. It gives the organization a chance or opportunity to learn and create a different business strategy. Using reviews as feedback, you can learn about the brand journey in detail. Even the negative reviews are not killer.
The brands anticipate that if they post a survey, they may get negatively affected by it. Contrary to this belief, the reviews serve as a platform to rate a customer product or experience. It is through this feedback the customers can interact with the brand. With appreciation, it is easy to respond; the brand must also react to the negative reviews and try to solve their concerns. It reflects the commitment of the brand towards the customer.
How to build online reviews?
The most difficult challenge that a business face is how to build ethical online reviews or how to let people talking about your brand or how to build a creative edge! Well, here we have enlisted some ways on how a business can do it and improve its reputation
1 Research
The best way to improve your online presence and build reviews is to check whether your store has the right social media exposure or not. Apart from search engine optimization efforts, the business can showcase their products or services on Facebook and ask directly for the customer reviews. Beyond that, you can consider other sites like Yelp, Bing, Yahoo.
2 Make it easy for the customers
In today’s digital age, no one has time to write detailed reports on your services. So, make it easy for them by sending an e-mail or categorizing the experience into different subsets. For example, if you have a restaurant business, you can obtain the feedback in the form of ratings like services offered, cuisine served, overall ambiance, other feedback if the customer wishes to mention.
3 Reward them
Getting reviews is not an easy task, so some of the brands reward or offer incentives to the customers to start with. Here, we are not mentioning the paid review. The business can offer incentives for authentic reviews in the form of customer loyalty programs or other freebies.
4 Send an e-mail
You can send a follow-up mail to the buyers asking about the review. This could enhance their purchase decision and influence them to buy your products.
5 Ask the customers quickly
After purchasing the products, it is important to ask customers to review impromptu. But not too quickly as it could turn out to be a menace for the customer. Imagine you are leaving happily from the store, and someone suddenly pops up, asking for your experience. It may be frustrating for the customer, especially if he is in a hurry. The viable alternative is to send the customer an e-mail about their feedback and their experience in the store.
6 Send a newsletter
You can send newsletters to the people who are buying from your store and ask them to write reviews and publish the same on the home page of your website.
7 Survey
The surveys are the best way to get detailed information about your products or services. You can partner with survey companies that can help you to prepare the right survey questions. You can even ask them to rate their services in the survey. This way, you can get an accurate picture of your business.
8 Mention it clearly
Ask the reviewers about what exactly you want. If you want, long answers to the questions rather than ratings, write them
· Tell shoppers about your experience in words
· Do you wish to shop again from our retail store, and why?
· Did you get what you wanted, and are you happy with our services?
9 Make it mobile responsive
The best way to garner brand reputation is to make your survey mobile responsive so that they can adapt to different screen sizes. Designing the mobile responsive survey makes a big difference and persuades the customer to respond.
10 Thank the reviewer
It is not easy to influence or draw customers, so the best way to garner their attention is to thank them. With that being said, make a task to thank your customer son every review site. A simple thumb up can do wonders for your organization.
In the end, we would like to conclude that it is important to generate more reviews for the business. The more reviews you have, the more trustworthy your business is. It will give the shoppers a chance to discover your brand, and it will directly affect your retail sales. The easiest way to get customer reviews is to understand the customer needs and ask them at the right time. The more reviews you have, the more trust the customers will have on your business. A good online review can help you to stand tall among the competitor.
