Managing and promoting your brand’s reputation is a full time effort that requires focus, determination and maybe just a little help from the giants out there. Both of the online giants, Google and Facebook, have begun rolling out specific programs designed to stress the importance of reviews to the continued success of every company. Reviews can make or break you and too many small businesses are not paying enough attention to garnering the great reviews that will help them to drive traffic and increase their brand awareness and conversions.
- Recent reported research found that if you ask your customers if they believe themselves to be a helpful sort of person, nearly everyone said they were and most were even delighted to give a company or product a positive review. You must be out there asking for reviews. It’s like asking or the sale. Send them a special discount or gift for participating in your survey and review process.
- Automate your review system if you can. After a customer makes a purchase or has a positive encounter with your company, set up a system by where it contacts that customer and asks them to participate in your review process. Create your own system or get some automation software that will send customers follow up emails thanking them for their patronage and asking for reviews as well as sending them a gift in the form of a discount or special item no one else can get.
- Make certain these rave testimonials and reviews are everywhere. Don’t just have them secluded on a special page at your website. Make sure there are great reviews on every page so as to get the mileage and brand awareness and trust you really need. Also, make certain they are everywhere on every social media platform where you have a presence. People these days are hugely influenced by peer reviews even if they don’t know the person giving the review.
- Finally, there really is nothing better than getting a rave review or heartfelt testimonial recorded on video. The profound affect that video testimonials will have will be staggering. Not only can they present true context, but the emotion presented will be far stronger than anything that can be written.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
