When you first launch your business, you probably don’t think about how your reviews will play a role. After all, isn’t social media just a way to share what you’ve got? You probably have no idea how popular and influential reviews are until you start receiving them.
To be honest, when this concept first hit my head, it didn’t sink in. I mean, how could my reviews possibly change anyone’s mind about me or my product? They had to be something else altogether.
But as I started thinking about it more, I realized that my reviews weren’t the least bit negligible in the grand scheme of things. To be perfectly honest, they were pretty damn important!
Definition of Review
A review is simply a word-of-mouth communication between a consumer and a business. It is not a guarantee or an opinion, but rather a detailed and objective analysis of a product or service. It is an unbiased account of the product’s quality, usability, and price.
It is often written by a trained and educated consumer and is meant as an endorsement or recommendation of the product. Before you publish a review, make sure you fully understand your intended audience. Ideally, you’ll know who you are writing for and what stage of life they are in.
For example, if you’re a new employee looking to pitch in on your way to success, you might want to review company-issued computers. If you’re a returning customer who wants a discount for your second year in a row, you might want to review the subscription box service you always use.
The Emergence of Online Reviews
In the past few years, online ratings and reviews have become more common. These are often compiled and published by online review sites, like Google and Yelp. There are thousands of these sites, and they all have their review systems.
These sites make it simple for consumers to add a review – just type in the product’s name and the word “good” in the search bar and you’ll see reviews from consumers who have used the product in question. These reviews usually have a few key elements:
- The product’s name and description
- The pros and cons of the product
- A detailed review of the product
Importance of Reviews When Starting Out
First things first, let’s get on the same page about why having a review is so important for you as an entrepreneur. You see, having a great review from the very beginning will give you a leg up in Grabbing Customers.
By increasing your chances of getting the interest of existing customers, your reviews will also help increase your chances of snagging new customers. Not only that but positive reviews have been proven to boost your business’s sales by up to 10%.
Role of Online Reviews
The reviews you receive will have a huge impact on your business. They’ll do a few different things for you.
Help You Understand Your Product
First, they’ll help you understand what your product is all about. The reviews left by customers will be vital when you are evaluating customer satisfaction. Whether positive or negative, the business may still get something from a review so make sure to read them all.
This can help you improve your product as well as your service. Understanding it before making minor or major changes improves the accuracy of the change towards better customer feedback and market position.
Help You Reach More Customers
As your online business grows, you will undoubtedly notice an uptick in customers who are looking for reviews of your products or services. Customers will often look for these reviews on social media platforms and some will even be looking for them on Google.
By including information about your products or services in online reviews, you can directly communicate to these potential customers that you’re a great place to shop.
Improve SEO
For your online efforts to be successful, they need to be optimized for SEO. Your website is probably the most important thing you can do for your business. It needs to be as SEO-friendly as possible so that it appears high up on search engine result pages.
By including relevant and useful information about your products or services, you can increase your chances of being discovered by future customers and get more views, tuition, and sales.
Know your Strengths and Weaknesses
Although you may never need to use these, it’s important to know how your competitors are doing it and how you can improve. By piggybacking off of existing reviews, you can get a head start on your growth and get a jump on potential problems before they turn into problems.
Know Your Customers
No matter how careful you are, you’re going to make mistakes at some point. Even the most careful business people fall into errors from time to time. By getting in touch with your customers and hearing what problems they are experiencing, you can try to anticipate these and offer help. This will help you avoid having a bad experience in the future and save you from potential lawsuits.
Role of Strong Online Presence
As an entrepreneur, the first step towards success is getting your business up and running. However, having a great product doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to attract customers if people aren’t even aware of it yet. To be honest, you’ll probably have a hard time even getting customers if you don’t have a presence online.
That’s where having a strong online presence comes into play. The truth is that you don’t need to have the most popular website in the world to capture a few lucky customers.
There are plenty of examples of brands that have managed to start their businesses without a single website. By having a blog, social media accounts, and an email list, you’ll have the perfect platforms to start building relationships with potential customers.
Having a Successful Online Review Campaign
The best way to sum up the reality of having a successful online review campaign? You have to get creative. You have to tailor your review campaign to your customer persona.
For example, if you’re a luxury skincare brand, you may want to have a luxurious write-up instead of a straight-up review. You also have to be mindful of your brand’s tone though. Some customers will respond better to positive reviews than others.
How To Get More Reviews?
Create a Great Website
One of the best ways to get more reviews for your product or service is to create a great review website. There are some resources online that will help you with this. You will want to include a mechanism where potential customers can easily leave you reviews.
This way, you’ll be able to directly communicate with your customers and know their perceptions of you. You’ll also want to make it as easy as possible for them to leave you a review. In this case, you’ll want to add relevant and helpful information to help you get the most out of your customers.
Be Responsive
Most brands and products don’t get their due from online reviews. You see, these are often buried in the hundreds of reviews for products that come right after yours.
But what if you could take the initiative and make a big deal out of them? What if you could proactively respond to the issues customers are having, rather than waiting for them to contact you? What if you could take the initiative to get more reviews for your product or service?
Incentivize Reviewers
One of the best ways to incentivize customers to leave you reviews is to offer them something in return. There are some ways to go about this. The first is free shipping.
This will get more reviews from customers who are willing to pay for your product or service. Another way to get more reviews is to give away a gift. This will get even more reviews from those who are willing to try your products out for free.
Apply suggestions
You can also try adding suggestions to your review website so that your customers can leave you. This may get you even more reviews in the long run. By leaving these options for your customers, you can encourage them to leave you 5-star reviews.
Conclusion
As you can see, having a review from a customer can have a significant impact on your business. By reaching out to those customers and having an honest conversation, you can learn a lot from them. You can also receive valuable feedback on your products or services that may lead to improvements in the future.
If you ever feel stuck when it comes to how to pitch or solicit a review, you can always ask other entrepreneurs for advice. You will also find tons of helpful resources on this site. Now, go forth and build your business and leave the competition in the dust!
The best reviews are those that genuinely help your business. And the best way to get more reviews for your product or service is to give them away. Online reviews are incredibly helpful when it comes to growing your business. Not only do they help you know what customers think of you, but they can also help you get more customers through the door.
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