If there is one thing that is going to help your company boost its sales and widen its customer base, it is going to be its reputation. When you gain a good reputation, you should see that your sales go through the roof, with your profits following closely behind. Not only that, though, but your customers will be a lot more likely to recommend you to their friends and family, so you should also find that this strong reputation helps to bring you even more customers.
These days, people aren’t only going to recommend your brand through word of mouth, though. Thanks to the internet, there is now one other way the public are able to spread the word of new companies and brands that they discover – through online reviews. Using online reviews to help spread awareness of a company is known as referral marketing, and something that a lot of firms are now trying to focus their marketing efforts on.
Still not convinced that online reviews are all that important for your brand? Read on to find some more compelling arguments!
They Influence Consumer Decisions
You might be surprised by just how much online reviews influence consumer decisions. These days, though, a large portion of shoppers and customers will take a look online to research companies and firms before they spend money with them. They take a look at online reviews to get a sense of the brand’s products and customer services to make sure that they align with what they are looking for. If your company has mainly negative reviews, then most consumers will end up doing business with one of your competitors instead of you.
They Are Good For SEO
Online reviews can also influence your website’s SEO as well. That’s because they count towards your off-site SEO, so will have a big effect on the overall rating. In fact, some studies show that online reviews can influence a company’s SEO by up to as much as 13%. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, good reviews indicate to Google that your company is of a high standard and can be trusted. A high number of reviews shows that your firm should be highlighted to consumers. One other thing to point out is that it’s actually worth having a few bad reviews in amongst mainly good ones. That’s because it looks more realistic and doesn’t seem like you’ve paid people to make up some false positive reviews.
They Provide You With Natural Endorsements
These days, it is incredibly important that all brands try to appeal to influencers on various social media platforms. That’s because these influencers can greatly change their followers’ shopping and consuming habits simply by introducing them to new products and services. So, if you do build up a relationship with an influencer, you should find that it can greatly help you increase product sales. However, nowadays more and more social media users are starting to become immune to the power of influencers because they are now aware that they are being constantly advertised to. Since the recent regulations came into place that now means influencers are required to make all adverts obvious, more regular users are now trying to not be so influenced. In fact, some research shows that now the public are more likely to trust online reviews instead of social media influencers. So, you might not want to put all of your marketing efforts into social media influencers anymore. It’s worth trying to get those all-important good and positive reviews on various review sites. Once you have done that, you should find that your sales start to gradually increase.
They Help You To Look Trustworthy
Consumers also want to make sure that they are only spending money with companies they can trust. The more positive reviews you have online then the more reliable and reputable your company will look. As long as your reviews are largely positive and coming in on a regular basis, then this is a great way to slowly build up the trust between you and your customers. Generally speaking, most consumers don’t really trust firms that have less than a four-star rating, so it’s best to try to build yours up on online review platforms so that it meets this.
They Offer You A New Line Of Conversation With Customers
It’s always good to have multiple ways for your customers to get in touch with you. In fact, consumers really appreciate the various ways they can start a conversation with companies they use. Did you realize that online reviews are one further way they can get in touch with you? That’s because the majority of online review platforms give the company that is being reviewed the chance to respond to each customer. So, if you do receive a negative review at least you will be able to reply to the reviewer and have your say. Most consumers really appreciate this, as it shows them that the company is bothered about what they have to say and that they have gone to the effort of offering a professional response. Plus, this will also look good to anyone else who is reading the review. It shows that you do care about your customer service and that you are willing to do all that you can to improve it.
Reviews Don’t Only Influence The Writers
Don’t forget that it’s not only the people who write reviews who are influenced. There are a whole lot more people reading reviews who you need to think about. So, if you manage to get plenty of positive reviews, then you can be happy knowing that there are countless people being influenced to use your company.
So, there you have it. Online reviews are incredibly important to all kinds of companies and firms these days. From now on, it’s really worth reviewing all aspects of your company so that it provides your customers with the best possible experience. Then all the good reviews should come rolling in!
