In our podcast’s recent episode of A Little Marketing, we chatted with Julia McLaughlin, Co-Founder of Review Robin, about the benefits of Review Marketing.
For businesses, reputation is everything. While some of your business’s reputation comes down to word of mouth, most have to do with online reviews. For example, 94% of consumers say that a favourable review makes them more likely to choose a business. Because humans innately trust others’ experiences. So as a business owner, you must stay on top of reviews and find ways to generate positive customer reviews.
Managing online reviews benefits any business. Review management means reaching out and asking for reviews, as well as responding to feedback from customers. All of this helps to build social proof – something that is so important for attracting new customers.
And while many business owners may think that good or bad reviews come down to fate, that’s not necessarily true. There are tools available that you can use for review management. Using a review management tool is a part of a review marketing strategy. Incorporating reviews into your marketing strategy can be very impactful – especially for local businesses.
Online reviews help businesses build social proof by increasing trust and credibility. It also has many other excellent benefits, which we’ll get into throughout this article.
Our favourite tool for review marketing is Review Robin. Review Robin helps businesses get online reviews through semi- or fully- automated approaches. Incorporating this software into your strategy can help your business generate more reviews while also managing these reviews simultaneously.
Review Robin’s Julia McLaughlin discusses the importance of online reviews for small businesses.
Benefits of a Review Marketing Service
Here are some of the ways that a review marketing tool, such as Review Robin, can benefit your business, according to our guest expert Julia McLaughlin:
- Reviews build trust and credibility with potential customers. “People take comfort in knowing that someone else has done it before them, had a positive experience with a business and are happy with that business,” says Julia.
- Many good reviews will boost your local SEO – the more reviews, the better you’ll rank. Optimizing for local search is crucial for location-based businesses, giving them a competitive advantage.
- Review Robin automates sending requests for reviews to customers (either through email or text message), which removes the burden off of you and your employees.
- Review Robin allows unhappy customers to leave internal feedback, enabling you to handle negative reviews privately.
Review Marketing 101 with Julia: Five Takeaways
Here are five things that Julia shared with us about review marketing that we want to share with all of you:
1. Review Marketing Boosts Your Review Rating
“How would your life change if you could become the highest-rated company in your area? First, think of the marketing potential,” says Julia, “If you’re consistent and you keep asking all of your customers for reviews. You do have a chance to become the highest rated in your area potentially.” The more reviews you acquire, the higher your chance of having an excellent rating, giving you a leg up against your competition.
And because the software filters unhappy customers to internal feedback, you significantly decrease your chances of obtaining bad reviews when using review marketing software.
2. Using Reviews as Social Proof
The thing people trust the most is people like them, which is why reviews are so powerful. “One tip is to put reviews on your website on your contact page. It’s a great way to build that trust and add in that social proof element,” Julia says. Consider taking screengrabs of your best reviews to place them on your social media pages too!
3. Who Should Use a Review Marketing Service?
Julia says that anyone with a large number of customers should be using a review marketing service. “Any service-based business… plumbers, roofers…dentists, spas.” Also, any business that has access to their customer’s emails or phone numbers. You could certainly benefit from review marketing software if this sounds like you.
4. Local SEO
We all know how important local SEO is. Suppose you’re in a competitive business area. In that case, Google will suggest the business with the best-optimized listings and the best/most reviews, which is why reviews are so important for local SEO. “If you’re Googling ‘restaurants in my area’ and one has 500 or 1,000 reviews, and the others have 20 or 30, it’s a shoo-in. You’re going to use the business with more reviews,” Julia says.
5. Boost Productivity
“It’s a great way to boost productivity within your business,” says Julia. Why? Rather than having your receptionist (or even you) follow up with each customer and ask for reviews, Review Robin takes care of the nitty-gritty work for you. Because following up with every customer can be highly time-consuming and gruelling. Review marketing software makes this process much more efficient, so you can focus on what’s important – running your business.
Julia’s Top Three Reasons Why Businesses Should Use a Review Marketing Service
Julia’s top three reasons business owners should consider a review marketing service? “[Review Robin] saves time, builds trust and credibility with prospects, and builds social proof to round out your marketing strategy.”
And these are just a few of the many benefits of review marketing.
Incorporate Review Marketing into Your Business’ Marketing Strategy
Generating reviews for your business is essential. Good reviews help build social proof and credibility and bring significant traffic (and ultimately more revenue). And using review marketing software will help you better manage those reviews. With software such as Review Robin, you can generate more reviews and filter out the bad ones (ethically, of course) by dealing with unhappy customers privately.
So, if your business can benefit from review marketing and management software such as Review Robin, we can help. 10|20 Marketing can help you get set up with this specific review marketing software, helping you generate more reviews and taking the burden off of you. Contact us if you’re interested in learning more about what this service can do for your business.
And if you want to learn more about Review Robin and what review marketing entails, check out the recent episode of our podcast with Julia here. And remember to subscribe while you’re listening, so you can catch up on the latest in marketing for small businesses.