With more opportunities to leave and read reviews than ever before, it isn’t surprising to hear that online feedback can sway consumers’ purchasing decisions. In fact, 90% of consumers report taking the time to read online reviews before deciding to visit a business. While you may think reviews are out of your business’s control, a robust online review management system can help you monitor and capitalize on them!
What is an Online Review Management Strategy?
Online review management is the process of monitoring, analyzing, and responding to both positive and negative feedback posted about your storage business on the internet.
This feedback encompasses more than just formalized reviews on platforms such as Yelp and Google Reviews. Casual comments posted about your storage business on social sites such as Twitter and Facebook also play an integral part in the perception of your business online.
4 Reasons You Should Invest in Online Review Management?
1. Displaying Reviews Helps Breed Brand Transparency
Today’s prevalence of reviews is undoubtedly helpful for consumers but can be just as valuable for your business. And even though it may seem counterintuitive to display negative reviews, most consumers will value your brand’s honesty and transparency.
Quick Fact: Displaying reviews can increase your conversion rates by 270% especially since 92% of customers hesitate to make a buying decision if there are no reviews at all.
2. Your SEO Can Benefit From Reviews
While reviews can have a profound effect on swaying consumer behavior, they can also impact your storage facilities’ SEO too! Formalized review platforms such as Facebook and Google average out customer rankings and display a tallied average for your storage business. These ratings can go a long way in determining your overall online presence and improving your page rankings in organic results, since search engines like Google use them as a factor when choosing which pages to display.
3. Your Business Model Could Benefit From Feedback
While not every review will be 100% positive, your business can gain valuable information from those that leave constructive criticism. Understanding customers’ experiences and pain points is a great way to target areas that could use improvement and hold yourself and employees accountable. For example, seeing that multiple customers had a poor experience with your online bill pay is an excellent indicator that it may be time to reevaluate your system.
4. Which Kind of Reviews Should You Respond To?
Trick question – your business should be replying to all types of reviews, positive or negative! Responding to positive reviews shows your appreciation to the consumers who took the time to praise your company.
At the same time, it is critical that you don’t turn a blind eye to negative comments. While It may seem as though a one-off negative review isn’t worth responding to, in reality, 44% of consumers say that a great response to a negative review would win them back!
There is one important rule, however, that you should always follow even though it can be especially difficult when you are passionate about your product, service and business. Do not get defensive! As hard as that may be sometimes, it opens the door for an online battle between you and the reviewer that you may not want potential customers to see.
Instead, responding to negative reviews with a sincere apology for their experience and that you will investigate and address the issue. If the reviewer is vague in terms of what the issues were, ask them to reach out to you directly so that you may get a better understanding of their experience.
By approaching negative reviews in this way, you establish your brand as transparent, responsive, and in-tune with your customers.
If managing your reviews and social media sounds overwhelming, don’t fret! Contact Vivial today and ask about our All-In-One Marketing Platform—a comprehensive, cohesive dashboard that makes managing your reviews and online presence a breeze!