In today’s marketplace online reviews play an increasingly important role in influencing consumer behaviour. Whether shopping for a toaster, booking a holiday, or choosing a new solicitor, studies across the board show that positive online reviews act as a huge sales driver. Consumers, on average, are 63% more likely to buy a product after reading a positive online review, and spend around 11% more when they do.
With such gains on offer it’s surprising how many UK businesses choose not to use online reviews as part of their overall marketing strategy. Whether through fear of receiving negative feedback or a lack of technological understanding, many small businesses are not set up to solicit and manage online reviews effectively.
How do you effectively encourage positive reviews and testimonials? And how do you handle those negative reviews that have the potential to damage your online reputation?
Deciding how you are going to host your reviews is one of the key things to consider. Should you host them on your website, your social media pages, like Facebook or Google Plus, or via a third party review site such as Reevoo or TripAdvisor? For many small businesses the answer is all of the above.
Gary Kousoulou is the director of Good Looking Optics, an opticians that’s bucking the trend of struggling independents within the sector. Last year they saw the business grow by over 20% and Kousoulou puts this down to the firm’s wholehearted embrace of digital marketing; in particular their use of online reviews to dominate local search results.
“We use a range of platforms to host user reviews as each one plays an important role in helping us generate new business. The simplest method is to ask a customer to check in on Facebook with their smartphone and leave a review on our fan page, but other platforms have much greater benefits when it comes to getting found on Google.
“With Yelp, for example, you have to be a recognised reviewer so it’s more difficult to get a customer to log-in and leave a review, but these are then picked up and indexed by Google and will appear in local search results alongside your name.
“We also use Reviews.co.uk. Again, it’s a slightly trickier process but these reviews show alongside us on Google Maps, so the benefits are massive. We also encourage customers to review us on hyperlocal sites as the local community are always fully behind these.
“You can’t just rely on your website to generate business online, so it’s important to appear in lots of different places. When people search for services locally and they see you have reviews on lots of different platforms it does have a big impact.”
For businesses with national brand recognition local search results may be less of a consideration, but the positive effect of online reviews can be just as definitive. Kia UK work with Reevoo, an independent ratings and reviews provider, to gather reviews from their new customers.
“When we started in 2012, we were the first UK car manufacturer to do it,” says Melanie Minnetti, Kia channel marketing manager
She adds: “It has been so successful that we use real reviews in our offline and online ad campaigns to highlight customer satisfaction. We have over 13,000 reviews for car sales and 7,000 for car servicing.
“After a customer buys a new car, or services their existing one through one of our dealerships, Reevoo emails a questionnaire asking them to rate and comment on their experiences. We really feel that this has worked well for us and user reviews are now an integral part of our ongoing marketing strategy.”
Knowing when to ask your customer for a review, or even how, can be a tricky business. If using a third party specialist like Reevoo is not an option then it comes down to being forthright and confident enough to just ask. Something that culturally we are not entirely comfortable with, says Lucy Hall, who runs an independent web design agency specialising in small businesses.
“It could be a British thing, but I do feel awkward asking for testimonials and then promoting them on Facebook and Twitter, even though I do it all the time. We just aren’t used to blowing our own trumpet and telling everyone how wonderful we are. But I do it because I know how much it works.
“The best time to ask is right after finishing their website. I use Freeindex. I simply send them a link to my page asking they would like to write a testimonial, I then promote it via my blog and social media channels. I now have over 80 testimonials on Freeindex and I am frequently told that we won the businesses based on the number of positive reviews written about us online.”
Yet despite the obvious advantages, some small business owners are scared by the impact that a negative review can have, if they provide people with a platform to do so. But with so much potential to increase business out there the answer is to simply ensure that you have an effective strategy in place for dealing with them.
“The important thing is to be proactive. Try and see it as an opportunity rather than a disaster,” says Kousoulou. “We use tools such as Google Alerts and Mentionit.net so we are notified within 24 hours of any mention of our business online. We can then deal with the problem head on.”
“The best way to approach a bad review is to respond quickly and publicly by asking them to contact you directly so that you can discuss the problem. It shows that you care and that you are willing to do all you can to try and rectify the problem. As an independent this often sets you apart from your bigger competitors too.”
At Kia, they take a similar view, Minetti says:
“A bad review every now and again is unavoidable, but it proves authenticity. I think people would be suspicious if every single review you received was positive.
“When we get a bad review, we get in touch with the customer to see how we can put things right. I think if you are getting a lot of bad reviews then rather, than avoiding them, you should see it as a warning signal for your business.”
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Kia Fleet, sponsor of the Guardian Small Business Network Accessing Expertise hub.
Other articles from the Kia Fleet partnerzone:
No dramas: The security firm keeping the peace in Brighton - video
