Do you search online when thinking about buying something? Your potential customers do too and, like you, rely heavily on customer reviews and star ratings. Consumers are spending more and more time researching online. Customer reviews have become one of the most important determining factors to influence buying decisions.

Importance of Customer Reviews

According to Local Consumer Review Survey, 87% of consumers say they are most likely to consider using a business that has an average rating of 3-5 stars.

Reviews are vital for establishing trust with potential customers. For local businesses to be found on Google, frequent and positive reviews are key. The challenge is a customer with a negative experience is more likely to leave a review. So, how do you target and capture the positive ones and get those stars?

To gain those star ratings, you need to drive a greater number of positive reviews. To do so, you need to manage your reviews through timely responses and maximize the number of customer reviews from existing customers.
You can effectively capture customer reviews, by doing these three things:

  1. Request feedback from customers
  2. Actively participate in online conversations about your business
  3. Ask your customers to provide online reviews and address any negative feedback offline

It is surely easier said than done. But in an era when your local footprint, star ratings and customer reviews are more important than ever, it has never been more crucial for local businesses to up their game.

Managing Customer Reviews

With more and more people relying on customer reviews, as a business owner, you need to focus on engaging current customers. The trick is to reach out when they are most likely to respond, which is right after they have visited or worked with your business. But how would you do it?

Manually reaching out and managing the online reviews on both first- and third-party review sites can be exhausting and time-consuming. Having a platform that enables you to monitor and manage reviews from a single dashboard, on the other hand, can be a critical component for business growth.

Benefits of Managing Customer Reviews

To thrive in a highly competitive market, it is important to understand the underlying power of reviews. Actively managing your first- and third-party reviews allows you to capitalize on it by doing the following:

  • Building your online reputation – Increased numbers of reviews helps build the online reputation of your business and enhances brand trust.
  • Winning more business with happy customers – Leverage positive reviews and improve online word-of-mouth for your business, resulting in increased sales.
  • Leveraging negative reviews – Use negative reviews to address genuine business issues and fix them.
  • Reaching your customers – Request reviews over text messages or email right after they have visited your business.
  • Boosting your local presence – Authentic reviews can help your business show up in searches, allowing potential customers to find you, in turn boosting the SEO benefits.
  • Engaging Customers – Reply to customer reviews in a timely manner to increase engagement and reflect a positive image of your business.

Online reviews are crucial to the success of your business. Using The Mike Agency’s Customer Voice tool, allows you to capture all your business reviews, and manage them from a single place giving you an edge over your competitors.

If you wish to gauge the online presence of your business, including how your customer reviews are performing, we offer a complimentary Snapshot Report to help you identify areas that need improvement and how you stack up against your competition. Click here to generate the free Snapshot Report.