Online reviews can make or break any local business, regardless of their tenure as a reputable company. Complete strangers can sing praise or spread harmful negativity about your company with little effort or thought; for this reason, managing your online reviews is quintessential to your longevity and success.
Online Reputation Management
Managing your online reviews falls under the larger umbrella of online reputation management, which is done as a preventative measure to ensure that when your business is Googled only positive results are found. This preventative measure has sparked an entire industry, with professional companies such as Guaranteed Removals of Burlington Ontario leading the charge. The experts heading the online reputation management campaigns at Guaranteed Removals graciously took the time to dive deeper into the importance of managing your online reviews, by providing statistics and basic mitigation tactics.
The Truth About Reviews
Unfortunately, the ugly truth is as follows: dissatisfied customers have the ability to share their negative feedback instantaneously to the entire internet through social media and review platforms such as Yelp. Guaranteed Removals shares that 90 percent of consumers will read online reviews before they visit a business – this fact speaks wonders to why you need proper online reputation management. Furthermore, 88 percent of consumers believe that online reviews are as trustworthy as a personal recommendation, which becomes a cause for concern when you have a disgruntled customer leaving false and damaging reviews.
One negative online review has the power to deter about 30 customers from using the business, this is further solidifying the need for positive reviews. To contrast this statistic, it has been determined that an increase of one star on a rating can provide a boost of anywhere between five and nine percent in a business’s revenue. Boosting your business rating to a five-star profile should be the goal for all business owners, this shows potential customers that your business is reputable and responsible. Guaranteed Removals shares that in order to obtain a Google review rating, your business must have a total of five unique reviews from individual sources.
If the need for accurate online reviews and a proper Google rating isn’t clear yet, consider this fact: approximately 92 percent of consumers say that they will use a local business if that business has a rating of at least four-stars. Additionally, 72 percent of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a business more. So, what does this mean to you? A four-star rating and positive reviews immediately provide access to consumers that already trust and value your business. Guaranteed Removals goes on to state that consumers are likely to spend 31 percent more on a business with excellent reviews, so ensuring your reviews are meaningful is in your best interest.
The average consumer will read about four online reviews before they feel they can fully trust a company, the key messaging here is that consumers are heavily influenced by reviews – regardless of where the review is found.
Managing your Online Reputation
To mitigate the effects felt from a negative review, an online reputation management company will actively follow up and engage customers to ensure their reviews are accurate and fair to the business. Managing your online reputation and reviews comes down to strategic thinking and a well thought out plan that addresses every platform that a review could be found on. A plan must help you to cultivate positive reviews and must involve a system of analyzing feedback to see how you can improve your processes and products.
Properly managing your online reputation is a preventative measure that is intended to get positive news published for the public, so that consumers recognize the positive attributes your business offers. A comprehensive plan will involve a system of responding to negative feedback, which is an area of expertise that online reputation management companies understand – this is not an easy task to complete and without proper care could escalate the situation into something much worse than a single review. Without the help of a company like Guaranteed Removals, business owners run the risk of missing a poor review and letting that review affect your business is poor reputation management.
The need for serious online reputation management strategies should be clear, your business is directly affected by the reviews being left online. Online reputation management is much more complex than it appears, hiring an agency will ensure your position as a reputable business.
