Increasing the exposure of your online business and improving its online reputation is the primary goal of digital marketing. Achieving this goal makes procuring unbiased and authentic reviews a must. As fundamental as these digital assets are, there is still a right way to go about getting them. Not only does the FTC enforce hefty fines for fraudulent review purchasing, but a business can suffer some serious image consequences to any trust they may have already built up.
Generating organic customer reviews is a healthy and genuinely beneficial way of increasing your brand’s trustworthiness. Fortunately, there is a whole range of ways you can do this for your business. Continue reading to learn more about some of the best and most effective ways to generate organic customer reviews, many of which we here at your Online Capital Group put into practice for our clients.
Review Generation Services
The key to review generation is monitoring your customer feedback. Review monitoring and responsiveness are huge contributors to great online reputation management and increased customer engagement. Additionally, businesses that are proactive in monitoring their customer feedback can minimize the effects of negative reviews.
Positive reviews help build brand loyalty and foster massive growth. Review generation services provide a combination of SMS campaigns, email campaigns, and online surveys. Using these tools can help increase your brand’s visibility as well as overall customer satisfaction when engaging with your brand.
Always encourage your customers to leave positive reviews, whether after a satisfying purchase or by offering free consultation calls and incentives. It is possible to capture positive reviews from non-customer leads using these methods. Although these types of reviews may not be as impactful as feedback from an established customer, they can still benefit organic growth.
Text Messaging Review Systems
SMS marketing can be effective for generating more sales and more positive reviews, but how do you get customers to leave a review? One way is to ask them directly or link to a survey or poll. Online tools (such as the text messaging system offered by our team of experts) are great for helping build interactive campaigns. Customers love to get their say, and you’ll see a higher retention rate by offering them a chance to share their opinions with other customers once you get their attention.
Aside from social media and email, SMS is an effective marketing tool for gathering online reviews. Almost 98% of customers check online reviews before choosing a business, and 68% of them trust local businesses based on reviews. You can send SMS requests to your audience in as little as 3 minutes. Text messages can also be received by simple phones with no sign-ups or downloads.
Email Marketing Review Systems
Another effective method is to use email marketing to ask your customers to leave reviews. Send emails asking customers to leave reviews and include a link to the review section of your listing. Email marketing is effective as long as you follow the rules of the CAN-SPAM Act. Emails containing marketing messages to unsubscribed customers may cause legal problems. Ask your Online Capital Group for more information about how to utilize a properly created and engaging email marketing review system to increase your business exposure.
Google My Business
The best way to generate organic customer reviews on Google My Business is to solicit feedback from your existing customers and encourage them to leave their honest opinions. However, you should never offer payment for reviews Those methods will skew the validity of reviews and have negative effects on your ranking. In addition to customers finding that they are being cheated, your company will be at risk of penalties for having violated the law!
Question and Answer Feature
The Question and Answer feature is an effective way to respond to feedback while simultaneously letting your customer base know you are there for them. It increases your brand awareness, enhances click-through rates, and boosts site authority. Fortunately, it can be made available to nearly any website owner. In fact, some companies even enable a “real-time” product question and answer section, which makes your customers feel confident about being heard by your brand. When answered in a timely manner, this feature can be a powerful tool.
A growing number of retail websites have incorporated a Q&A section on their product pages. They are also commonplace on e-commerce sites and marketplaces, where Q&As are powered by Generated Content providers. Yelp and Google My Business also feature Q&A features, which give potential customers the opportunity to ask other consumers questions about a product. This can help you identify keywords and phrases that resonate with shoppers. In turn, you can use this knowledge to refine your product and improve your services.
Including Reviews On Your Website
In addition to incorporating reviews on your website, you can use them to improve the search engine ranking of your company. Customers are more likely to believe reviews if they’re written by others like them. In addition, reviews help prospects decide which products or services to buy. When generating reviews for your business, you should consider the stages in their user experience journey. Once you’ve identified an appropriate stage in their journey for customers to leave reviews, you should include an automated review process that targets that timeframe asking them to do so.
In Review
Word of mouth isn’t just for older, more traditional marketing methods. While they may not be speaking from their mouths, their digital voices can carry a ton of influence on your brand (whether positive or negative!). Harnessing the benefits of authentic, organic customer reviews is an impactful method of digital marketing that is worth investing in, with many different channels and tools available to turn up their volume. Give your Online Capital Group a call today at (904) 600-3600 to learn more about how your business can begin growing its reputation.
