How to Maximize the Benefits of Your Online Reviews

There is no denying the powerful benefits of online reviews. But, you are missing out on many opportunities if you are not re-purposing them to maximize those benefits.

Here are the 3 easiest ways to maximize the positive benefits on online reviews:

1. Respond to all online reviews

   • Responding to your online reviews, both negative and positive, can be very beneficial. This is an opportunity to display your customer service and company culture.  For example, a customer of ours in the mortgage industry received a negative online review because their ‘process’ took “too long” and they weren’t “cut and dry”.  Our customer took this opportunity to apologize to the reviewer and explain that they strive to provide excellent customer service and their customer’s entire experience is important.  Having this kind of negative review may seem like a bad thing, but in retrospect it will actually help attract customers who are looking for that experience and inform customers who are wanting a rapid, “cut and dry,” experience that this company is not for them.   Online Reviews, and the responses, can not only attract more customers, but also the right customers.

2. Share online reviews on other social media platforms

   • Some sites make it easy for you, and your customer, to share the review on other social platforms. However, for those that do not, you can still take a screen shot of the review, share it on other social sites.  Online reviews are your best form of marketing so treat it as such and include a call to action when you re-purpose the review. Invite other customers to leave a review for you and include the link to the review site, or ask for business.  Include a link to your contact page so they can have the same experience as ‘this’ happy customer.

3. Use widgets to display a feed of your online reviews on your website

   • Many review sites offer widgets that can be used to display an auto-updating stream of their online reviews. This is an example of the SurveyLocal widget. It displays the 3 most recent, positive reviews, and all reviews can be seen by clicking ‘read more.’ 
   • The primary benefit of widgets, besides beautifully display your customer feedback, is they automatically update.This will save you the trouble of checking your pages and having to manually update your widget or worse, manually type in the feedback. It also counts as an ‘activity’ on your website which will show search engines that you have an active website.  This will increase SEO as search engines only want to display ‘active websites’ rather than websites that are not managed or visited by customers.