A good review is a brilliant thing, it has the power to boost your position in the search rankings, bolster your star rating, or even bring you a new customer. Conversely, a bad review has the power to do exactly the opposite. It’s super important that you work on making sure your good reviews do the most work possible for you, whilst making sure that you avoid bad reviews at all costs. If you haven’t put together a review section in your marketing strategy yet, then we’ve got some tips that will help to make sure your business shines for all the right reasons.
Customer Reviews
The first kind of reviews you’re going to want to make use of in your digital marketing plan is your customer reviews. These can come in the form of thank-you emails, kind words if you run a face-to-face business, or through dedicated reviewing platforms, like Yelp or Google (we’ll come onto these later). In order to make sure you’re always achieving good reviews it’s important to give your customers the best experience you possibly can. This goes further than having an excellent product, which we hope you have already! One of the secrets to good reviews is adding value wherever possible. If you’re selling a physical product then this could be as simple as gift wrapping as standard. Invest a little money into some good quality wrapping paper, some thank you cards, and maybe some ribbon or string to finish off. Your customers will feel like they’re receiving a gift whenever they shop with you and might review you more favourably. If your product isn’t physical then consider sending personalised thank you emails, or similar. You’ll need to work out what works best for your individual business.
Specialist Reviewers
The next sort of review to look at is specialist reviews. These reviews come with a lot of clouts, so it’s important that you make sure your business hits all of the criteria that reviewers are going to be looking for, it’s also important that you approach the right reviewer. For example, in the online gaming industry, Arabian Betting is the go-to reviewer for casino sites in the Arabic world. They publish independent reviews of online casinos that allow customers in this part of the world to make an informed decision about the online casino that they would like to use. Their reviews include the bonuses on offer, as well as the selection of games available and the security features of each site. If you’re in the casino business then the work is done for you, but if you’re in another area then find a reviewer who specialises in businesses just like yours. Which? Can be a good place to start if you’d like to get in with one of the big names in specialist reviewing.
Where Your Reviews Appear
Now that you’ve hopefully got a whole host of glowing reviews, it’s time to put them to good use. The specialist reviews will appear on the specialist reviewer’s website, but that’s not to say their use ends there. You can pick out high points of the review, for example, star ratings, or particular praise and feature that on your website. You can do the same with customer reviews, some businesses even have success creating a whole section of their webpage dedicated to testimonials. Before you include excerpts from your customer reviews on your website be sure to ask their permission to include their words. Some might even be helpful enough to provide you with a photo of them and your product, or a video testimonial to which it has been shown consumers react positively to.
As well as your own website, getting your review onto sites that are frequently used by consumers is incredibly important. Google is an obvious place to start, it would be hard to think of a business that wouldn’t benefit from a few positive reviews on Google. Once you’ve started that, you could move on to Yelp. Next up you should look for websites that are more dedicated to your sector. For example, if you have a plumbing business you would ask for reviews on TrustATrader, or if you have a hotel, you could ask for reviews on TripAdvisor. These sites are here to help you, so it’s essential that you make the most of them.
