How To Get Good Reviews

 

Everybody is a critic. It’s amazing how much we all rely on reviews and not just professionally written pieces but the “word of mouth” from our friends. How many times have you been turned off from a movie because your friend said it wasn’t good? Thanks to the internet we have even more opportunities to share our reviews. Giant ecommerce site Amazon was first to allow customers to post their own reviews good, bad or indifferent. Now every business that sells a product has gotten into the act with this very effective and low cost method of online marketing. While it is true that administrators of sites can edit or delete reviews it might be better to be honest with your customers. The hope is that the majority of reviews will be positive.

How can you get great reviews for your product? Try these helpful tips:

Write Them Yourself

This is nothing dishonest about this. You’re selling a product you believe in why shouldn’t you share your opinion? You also have direct access to your own circle of friends and family who can help your business a great deal by writing reviews and posting them. Don’t think for a minute that other businesses aren’t doing this because they all do!

Offer Rewards for Reviews

While it’s true that every customer will have an opinion about your product, that doesn’t mean every customer will be motivated to write and post a review. Why not provide them with a little added incentive? You can offer them a discount coupon or a free product for every review they post. Just ask them to send you the link for verification. This can be an ongoing online marketing campaign to help spread the good word of your company. You might also want to encourage them about disclosing the incentive. There’s nothing wrong with a review that says, “I got a coupon to write this but I would have written it anyway!”

Make It Easy For Your Customers

If you’re an ecommerce business then a lot of your customer interactions could be through emails. You can add a signature to every email that is sent out asking for a review and inserting a link where they can post it. For instance, it always helps to have reviews on your site but if you know you can get a good posting from a customer send them over to Yelp or one of the other review sites. When you provide them with the link you’ll not only make it easy for them but also introduce them to a site which could be beneficial for their own use. It’s win/win all around.

Share Your Reviews

Once the word gets out there is nothing stopping you from sharing those positive reviews on your own site. You can copy and paste reviews from Amazon or Yelp onto your own testimonial section of your website. Don’t have a testimonial section? Get one!

How Online PR Can Affect Your Ecommerce Sales

As the saying goes, the only bad publicity is no publicity. That’s a common refrain shared among PR folks and there is a grain of truth in that saying. Unless your target audience is aware of your business it will be extremely difficult to generate sales. That applies to a corner dry cleaner or an ecommerce site. Every business is dependent upon buzz and a good reputation. And the best way to generate that buzz is through positive press mentions. But you shouldn’t stop there. Good PR can come in many forms, especially through social media.

In this age, no one can ignore the fact that being online is a must for any business.   Gone are the days when your customers turn to actual yellow pages or pay attention to a TV ad to find what they need. Now most folks head to Google or ask their friends online to find just what they are looking for. What they will find could be your business ranked at the top of the search engine listings thanks to positive PR. Here are some ideas for generating that kind of proactive response:

Get involved in your target market’s community

Not every company can become an official sponsor of the Olympic Games but they can become a sponsor of the local youth hockey team or get involved with charity drives. All of those ideas can create positive a positive reputation that your business cares about the community you are targeting. Even if your market is nationwide, you can sponsor events or even athletes to build brand reputation. Start researching the interests and passions of your target market and see if you can find a way to get your brand involved in a positive way. Your involvement can often be mentioned by news organizations reporting on these causes. That’s terrific publicity.

Get to know your local TV news station

A good way to generate brand visibility is taking advantage of your local TV station. Many stations are affiliates of a larger channel so by promoting your PR angle; you have a higher chance of getting features, especially if it’s unusual. You can also re-post the news feature through YouTube and generate a lot of views. News producers need to fill up that programming with interesting features and not just the headline stories. Could you pitch an unusual segment to a local news producer? Suppose you have an ecommerce business that offers housecleaning products. You could pitch a segment about how your product can remove any stain in any home. If you can’t, then the winner will receive free cleaning services for life. Bottom line: think of how you can promote your business by providing something unusual that makes your company stand out.  

Get involved in online discussions

If your business is already attracting customers then it’s a safe bet those customers are talking about you to their friends or online. One of the most popular and largest online review sites is Yelp. Not only are they offering reviews for restaurants, but there are reviews for just about any other kind of business.

You need to plug into the various online communities to find out what is being said about your business. Set up a Google Alert for your company – this enables you to receive notifications if your company is being mentioned online. If you stumble upon a forum that your target market uses heavily, get involved. If someone has a problem with your company, go into customer service mode and try to fix their issue.

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What Google’s Acquisition of Zagat Means for Your Small Business

For months, Google has been telling everyone that local is going to be huge. With that in mind, Google purchased Zagat (a local restaurant review and group deals site) in September 2011. The acquisition helps Google provide some trusted review content and deals for their search users in their local region. By integrating Zagat content into Google search results, they offer a better experience for users, including a great offline presence that they can build off of. But, what does this acquisition mean for your business?

Local marketing is the new space

One thing that Google has noticed is that consumers are looking for search results that are related to their region. So, instead of providing general search results that are not relevant, it’s providing more results related to the city you live in (for example: “electricians in Toronto”). 

This has created a need for small businesses to optimize their website for local searches, targeting prospects for specific keywords related to their expertise and location. With the Google Panda update, search results have become more accurate, where businesses can target their prospects more accurately making SEO extremely important.   

Local reviews have become key to building credibility

Zagat offers small businesses the opportunity to build their credibility through customer reviews. Simply put, the more reviews a business obtains, the higher in the search results that it ranks, resulting in higher visibility.  

With more importance being put in a customer review, small businesses must account for integrating reviews as part of their online search strategy. So what should businesses do to take advantage of the newer local marketing trend? They can do the following:

·         Integrate Google Places page as part of their marketing strategy:  Make sure that you’re listed in Google Places, and are optimized with the proper keywords. 

·         Create a customer review strategy: With the mix of social media and search, businesses must now be hyper-aware of customer reviews in all spots from social media sites to directories. Your strategy must include how to deal with negative reviews.

Is mobile the new battleground?

The acquisition of Zagat has provided a Google a way to provide much deeper results for their Google Places, making them more competitive and providing a better user experience for both business clients and users.  

Most importantly, it has allowed Google to provide a great value for mobile search users through its Android apps and integrate Zagat / Google Places results into Google Map results. The best place for these results would be in mobile search. After all, when you search for a restaurant, don’t you always Google it on your phone before making a choice?