Trying to build a strong marketing strategy to boost your Brand’s sales or clicks? Nice, but have you seen online reviews on your business? If not, then you better make sure to take advantage of them. Why? Because a review marketing strategy is one of the best marketing strategies for your Hook, line, and sinker bait for customer attraction. Not like bait for a fish but like a recommendation from a friend.
Starting with “What are reviews?” we will also go through how they are helpful and how to incorporate review marketing strategy in your marketing campaign to make it stand out more than others. And everything between them, so do not leave the page halfway. As people say, “Half wisdom is more harmful than not knowing it completely” We will keep engaging you and giving you some tips for your success in the marketing industry.
Reviews? What are they?
Well, if we talk in a material language, then Customer reviews are a kind of open feedback that may be found on Google, Yelp, Facebook, and hundreds of other review platforms. Each rating reflects the opinion of a different patron who attended and shared their thoughts online.
These reviews affect your online star rating, affecting where you appear in search results (at the top or the bottom of the pack). And whether or not potential consumers would want to visit your business (half of the customers require a 3-star rating or more to even walk in the doors).
But why are they important?
If you believe reviews are not that important, think again. When you’re doing your online shopping, what do you do first? It probably reviews, which are increasingly crucial for consumer activation and retention.
We now trust online evaluations as much as we make recommendations from our friends and family because of the falling significance of digital advertising on Google, Facebook, and other social media.
Reviews, in a sense, have replaced the once-valuable “word of mouth” advertising for businesses.
The good news for online retailers is that UGC, like customer reviews and social proof, is 35% more remembered than other media and 50% more trusted by customers. Integrating these messages with UGC significantly enhances customer reviews and sales, especially considering that the conversion rate for opt-in channels like email, SMS, and online push messages increased by 100% year over year in 2020.
This raises the question of whether your whole e-commerce marketing plan includes review marketing.
But before we get into what review marketing can accomplish for your organization, let’s learn more about the value of social proof.
also read this marketing strategy – 5 Most Intriguing Marketing Practices you can’t miss but implement
This article will delve deeper into review marketing strategy, including the most efficient means of collecting reviews, the most useful applications of customer feedback, and the most helpful software for implementing a review marketing plan.
How to Build a Reputation Management Strategy
To help you construct a more effective plan for using customer reviews, we’ve compiled the following checklist; continue reading to discover more.
Star Rating
Most buyers place the most weight on reviews’ overall star ratings. They will go on to a rival with a higher star rating if yours is less than three on the search engine or website they use to find local companies.
When reading evaluations, most customers have a floor rating in mind. Customers are likelier to purchase from a company with at least three stars.
Let’s examine the bare bones of what customers expect from a star rating:
- Only 8% of respondents stated they would only patronize a company with a rating of five stars.
- 38% of people are satisfied with a 4-star rating or above.
- More than a third of consumers (42%) will not do business with a company with fewer than three stars on Google+.
- 9 percent of customers with a two-star rating or worse will still patronize the firm.
- 5% of potential customers won’t even bother with a company-rated one-star.
Customers will be more likely to give you their money if you consistently receive at least three out of five stars from their reviews.
In the eyes of the public, a minimum of three stars indicates a reliable company.
Review Quantity
Besides quality, the number of reviews posted online is a significant factor for buyers. When considering your company, how many reviews does a potential client need to read before making a decision? Although most individuals need to check out four or five testimonials, the amount can be from two to twenty-one.
Evaluation Quality
Despite what you would expect, review quality matters not just to the platforms that display them (some of which might conceal reviews they don’t trust) but also to the real people who are reading them.
Not much can be done to fix this problem, unfortunately. Getting an essay from some clients and a simple “Great service!” from others is possible.
Do you wish to learn the secret to receiving many excellent testimonials? Maintain a higher review count over time.
The Most Recent Reviews
Consumers won’t put much stock in more than a year-old review. Customer reviews that are older than six months have less credibility.
How exactly do you develop a marketing plan centered on customer reviews for your company?
Techniques for efficiently amassing and using reviews
If you set things up properly, gathering reviews will become a seamless, ongoing process that yields feedback in many different forms. To maximize your chances of success, adopt the following policies and procedures.
Make it as easy as possible.
Customers are becoming more favorable in their ratings, yet only 28% will voluntarily share a pleasant experience. Requesting a review should be as straightforward and trouble-free as feasible.
Post-purchase messages should include a link to your chosen review site, and this link should be prominently displayed and easy to discover.
Customers will appreciate your honesty and feel more invested in your company’s overall success if you take the time to explain why you’re requesting a review and how you plan to use the information. If you’re feeling kind, you may offer the consumer a discount for a review. You’ll get a review, and you could have a return buyer sooner than you think.
In 2020, the click-through rate on customer review emails was 22%, while the conversion rate was 13%. Read on for advice on how to write a review that customers can’t stop talking about.
Review management software should allow you to quickly and efficiently send out review requests to customers using a variety of pre-designed templates that can be tweaked to meet your specific needs. In the following sections, we’ll go deeper into tools.
Keep your presence on all Review Channels.
Customers often hunt for evaluations of your business elsewhere, such as search engines, social media sites, and e-commerce sites like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. The ability to influence a consumer’s buying decision may be achieved through various channels.
Whether on Instagram, Yelp, or your eCommerce site, responding to reviews (particularly unfavorable ones) should be an integral part of any review marketing plan. You may show that you care about comments and are eager to improve by responding swiftly to bad reviews and presenting your story.
You need a strategy to deal with negative feedback so that you may learn and grow from the experience and use it to improve your Brand.
Use your reviews effectively.
You seem to have accumulated a respectable number of helpful customer reviews. Congratulations! Putting these social proof examples to good use is the next logical step. Think about showcasing your five-star ratings on these platforms:
BE Social: Transform your evaluations into interesting social media updates. Convert the review into a sale using pre-made graphics, user-submitted content, and even the reviewer’s name, if you can find it. People like to be heard; this is a fantastic opportunity to share your opinions with a broader audience.
Emails: Since email marketing is your primary source of income and has the best return on investment (ROI) of any marketing channel, emails are an ideal place to showcase your excellent customer service and products. Brand-new email subscribers or shoppers on the verge of giving up could be swayed to buy by the confidence inspired by a well-presented, positive review.
Website: Since most of your website’s visitors will be first-time visitors, this one is crucial. Adding good reviews to prominent areas like the homepage, product pages, during checkout, and wherever else where assurance and real-world examples of the utility of your product are beneficial is a great first step in creating trust with your customers. Be sure to incorporate product reviews within your welcome email sequence.
Advertisement: As we said before, we are inundated with adverts, and as a result, people have less faith than ever in direct commercial advertising. Statistics reveal that adverts containing user-generated content earn four times greater click-through rates because people greatly appreciate and trust their peers’ opinions. Highlighting things like reviews and other forms of social proof in your advertising is a good idea.
An Overview of Search Engine Positioning.
Reviews of your company might affect its position in search engine results. By accumulating more positive evaluations, your website will increase on the search engine results page (SERP), where it will be presented to potential customers before your competitors.
Imagine you and your family searching for a Thai takeout hotel for tonight. To find the most excellent Thai restaurant close to me, they type “best Thai restaurant near me,” and Google returns a list of five options. Do you want a two-star rating and seven reviews, putting you at the bottom of the list? Or would you rather have 300 satisfied customers and a perfect 5-star rating on Google? Is that the case? Which eatery will your clientele most likely choose when you recommend it?
Listings that have received recent, regular, and extensive evaluations tend to rank higher in search results. That implies a company with 75 reviews and a steady stream of new reviews can outrank a competitor with twice as many reviews but no new ones. You’ll rise in the search results if you keep the feedback and comments coming.
For example, let’s say we are looking for a restaurant to eat at in San Fransisco at night, and we search for it on Google. From the above image, you can see the first three restaurants have 4.6+ reviews, and Sotto Mare Sea Food Restaurant is at the top position with more than 2.9 thousand reviews alongside 4.6 stars. Despite having 4.8 stars, Lazy Bear is placed in the second position because it has only 898 customers who have given their opinion on their business. From this short analysis, if we put other vital elements on the sideline, like your location, reviews affect the ranking of your business more than you have thought before. So make sure to get reviews and resolve them for more good opinions.
Final Thoughts
Consumers place more stock in the views of their peers than they do in marketers’ claims. Now more than ever, setting yourself apart from the competition depends on your ability to develop, acquire, and showcase user-generated content efficiently.
For many customers, finding and evaluating your company’s internet reputation is the only way to become aware of its existence. It’s always early enough to begin planning for personal development. You may use review marketing for more than just increasing your online popularity. It may affect your company’s income.
You’re missing out on a goldmine of marketing resources if you aren’t routinely and methodically soliciting feedback in the form of reviews. User reviews are a great way to gain social proof without breaking the bank.
If you’re ready to start listening to your customers, connecting with their comments, and creating trust with their reviews, try some of the tools and strategies discussed in this article.
