Online reviews can have a tremendous impact on a business. Studies have shown that more than 80 percent of consumers are influenced by online reviews when making sales decisions. The logic is very simple. For example, if two companies offer a similar service and one has many top ratings and the other does not, consumers are going choose the better-rated company. Consumers may also travel further for highly rated companies and potentially never patronize lower-rated ones – sometimes sending them into a business death spiral.
Review sites like Google Places, Yelp, TripAdvisor and CitySearch can make or break a business that generates income from online search. Some metrics even calculate quantifiable changes in revenue when a company increases or decreases in star ratings.
In many instances, business owners come to us because they feel they have been victimized by negative reviews. Typically, there are three options.
- Ignore it (but it won’t go away)
- Remove it — which is an option we regularly perform.
- Balance the scale via suppression and a positive review campaign.
The tactic that works best to combat negative reviews — and also build a firewall against future bad reviews — is to implement a system to regularly secure positive customer feedback. This can be accomplished in a number of ways.
Businesses can simply ask their clients or customers to post a review online. This may be coordinated by printing postcards with information about review sites and handing them to customers after a transaction.
We also offer an automated system that systematically asks customers for their feedback on your behalf. It encourages positive reviews and helps identify those customers who may be inclined to write a negative review.
Our system can help generate positive reviews on a number of top review sites including, but not limited to:
- Amazon
- Angie’s List
- Avvo
- BBB Better Business Bureau
- Bed and Breakfast.com
- Bing
- City Search
- dexKnows
- Etsy
- Foursquare
- Google + Local
- HealthGrades
- Homeadvisor
- Homestars
- Houzz
- Insider Pages
- Lawyer Ratingz
- Manta.com
- Merchant Circle
- N49.ca
- RealSelf
- SuperPages.com
- TripAdvisor
- True Local.au
- Vitals
- Weblocal.ca
- Yahoo Local
- YellowPages.com
- YellowPages.ca
- Yelp
- Zillow
For more information on increasing positive reviews or combatting negative reviews, contact us at (888) 960-0086.