For businesses today, it feels like the whole atmosphere of running one has changed compared to how it was in the past. Because of the evolution of technology, different strategies for running a business have improved. One of these changes has to do with the use of the Internet as a means to run and manage a business.
Apart from the usual ways of marketing your brand, you may now use websites and social media sites for marketing your brand as well. This works to your advantage, as the Internet has a robust and growing population. But, with this boon comes the expected disadvantages. Namely, with the implementation of online reviews, you should expect bad reviews along with the good. It goes without saying that these negative reviews could negatively impact your brand, so collaborating with branding companies in San Francisco could be the move to make to grow your online presence.
As you go on with your digital marketing strategies, it’s important also that your brand can manage your online reviews well. That way, your brand’s reputation remains strong and positive.
Here are some of the ways to manage your #online #reviews best. Click To TweetAscertain If You Need To Respond
Especially when you’ve received an overwhelming number of online reviews, you have to start by determining which among these reviews you need to respond to or not. It’s not about choosing the positive vis-à-vis the negative. Of course, even negative feedback needs action, too. Rather, it’s in selecting which among the reviews have an impact on you, and which don’t.
Here are some examples to keep in mind:
- There are negative comments made by an account that looks like a dummy, fake, or troll account. Leave these comments alone. You don’t need to reply to a fake or dummy account. This can easily be determined by checking their profile, too, if they’ve got real followers or not.
- The language or opinion made by an individual creating constant derogatory comments sound irrational and doesn’t even make sense. You can leave this alone, too. If you find these comments funny or you can’t understand them all, you can expect your loyal followers to feel the same way. These don’t hold water.
- There are comments, both positive and negative, that are coming from legitimate and relevant sites or accounts, with real followers and real activity. These deserve your full attention and response.
With these tips, it’s important also to learn how to remove a Google review. Removing reviews isn’t something that you do to those that leave negative feedback. It’s simply to those that you deem as irrelevant so it’s better to remove them. That way, they don’t take up space intended for the other reviews, positive and negative alike, that deserve more attention.
Proactively Request For Positive Feedback
There are ways that you can request for positive feedback from your loyal clients in the most subtle and proactive means. This begins with having a pop-up form, or a call-to-action, that encourages your customers to submit any comment based on their experience on your brand’s website. To make this more strategic, place it right after the customer has completed the order from your site. Before redirecting them back to your homepage, have this pop up to ask for feedback.
Here, your customers are most likely going to give positive feedback because the shopping experience has made them happy and excited. This positive feedback, you can include on your online reviews. Whenever there’s a negative one, these will always be overshadowed by the more substantial positive reviews that are present.
Deal With Negative Reviews
Never delete any negative review that’s on your site. Keep these. A negative review is still better for your brand awareness than having no review at all. This helps increase your presence, such that more people will know that your brand exists. A better way to go about this instead is to deal with negative reviews in the most positive way possible.
Take the H-E-A-T approach when dealing with negative reviews. It goes this way:
- H, for hearing them out. Read through the review most calmly, and don’t take anything personally. Try to be objective also in understanding what the customer leaving that review is trying to say.
- Empathize. Put yourself in the shoes of your clients. If you were to be delivered a product that turned out to be defective, wouldn’t you also feel that way? Empathizing enables you to understand better the side of the customer and where they’re coming from. There, you’ll realize that they’re not leaving a negative review to put you down. They want their problem to be solved, such that they still end up satisfied with your brand in the end.
- After weighing all facts and you realize that the customer is correct and you’ve committed the alleged error, apologize. Put this apology out in public also in the comment. When you apologize, too, don’t just end there. Go a step further by asking how they’d like for the problem to be solved. Would they want a replacement? A refund? Or a store coupon to purchase another product from your shop instead?
- Take action. Whatever the chosen recourse is of your customers, don’t sleep on it. Take action immediately. That way, you can solve and correct the problem as soon as possible. The sooner you get it over with, the more satisfied your customer becomes. After you’ve fixed the problem, the higher the likelihood, also that they’ll write a follow-up review on your post that you’re responsive and assertive to the complaints of your customers. Doing this brings you back in a more positive light for your brand.
Track Your Reviews
When you’ve started to receive reviews on your site, don’t just let it end there. Make time also to track your reviews. By this, it means studying your metrics. In a hundred reviews, how many of these are positive? How many are negative? What’s the implication of these values? When your reviews are mostly negative, then perhaps it’s an indication that for this next quarter, you need to improve more in the manner that you’re running your business.
In tracking your reviews, look through the negative ones also and enumerate all these. Then, study how often a negative review is repeated. For instance, is the bulk of the negative reviews about your service? Packaging? The product itself? That way, you can also dig deeper by trying to go to the root of the problem and really addressing it.
When you have this kind of system in tracking your reviews, you’re able to manage and use them effectively to your advantage. That way, you’re able to turn the negative reviews into positive strategies that will lead to an overall better brand reputation for your business.
Conclusion
Online reviews do matter. Whether you’ve got an online store or a brick-and-mortar one, before potential customers will even get to buy anything from you, they’ll most likely read through the reviews first. This fact is because of how information is now easily accessible to customers. Consumers are getting even pickier than ever, as they want an assurance that their purchase isn’t only going to turn lemon. Apply these strategies to help move you forward towards better brand awareness.