Getting Reviews and Ratings to Build a Positive Brand Reputation

Businesses have started to pay more attention to online reviews understanding how important these are. The challenge businesses are faced with is how to maximize the number of positive reviews and maintain an overall positive presence.

How to Increase positive reviews

Asking consumers to leave reviews isn’t solely a way to improve your business’ ratings, but it’s also an opportunity to establish a connection with people who could eventually be a fan of your brand. Thus, businesses should encourage positive reviews:

Know where the reviews are — The biggest platforms for reviews include Yelp, eBay, Facebook, Google and Amazon, but don’t ignore the smaller ones that are specific to your niche. Be present on all of the sites that are relevant to your business and monitor them regularly.

Ask your existing customers — Your customer bought your product or service for a reason. Be straightforward and do occasional campaigns to generate positive feedback. Encourage more reviews by making it easy for customers to find review pages, by including a direct link in your campaigns or communication emails.

Try incentives — A small incentive like a gift card, a cup of coffee, or a branded accessory can go a long way in convincing people to leave a review.

Share positive reviews on social media — The manifestation of social proof in the digital era comes in the form of online reviews. Positive feedback boosts brand awareness and puts a glowing light around your company’s image. Whenever possible, tag the reviewer to encourage them to share, too.

Respond to negative reviews — Not everything is rosy with online review and some negative feedback may come through. The first instinct may be to ignore the haters, but getting back to them with a positive message shows them that you take customer satisfaction seriously.

Test to see what works — Managing an online presence is an on-going process. As with all things in digital marketing, you need to test, optimize, and repeat. Whether you’re requesting reviews via email or social ads, you need to analyse and test subject lines, copy, images, and any other variable that could lead to more clicks and responses.

Maintain High Review Numbers

To ensure reviews are relevant, positive, and plentiful, maintain regular contact with your customers and continually provide the best possible product and customer service. This may seem obvious, but you need to consistently fulfil the expectations:

• You provide customers with same-day assistance
• The customer is central to your approach in everything.
• You regularly reach out to customers to ask for a review.

Given the wide variety of product choices and the much more knowledgeable consumers, the brand image is a reflection of how focused you are on the customer.