Consider these numbers: 90 percent of consumers go out of their way to read reviews before buying a product, while 94 percent of shoppers say they have avoided a business after reading a negative review.
The message is clear: Online reviews can make or break your potential to turn a profit. The big question is, how can your business fully leverage them?
In this blog post, we go over how you can generate reviews, the best platforms for review generation and how you can use them effectively as part of your digital content marketing strategy.
Use Reviews and Testimonials on Your Website
Online reviews give people more reason to keep reading and scrolling down your page. And when site visitors keep viewing what you have to offer, your bounce rate (or the percentage of visitors leaving your site after viewing one page) decreases. This is an added benefit for your search engine rankings.
There are vital areas on your website where online reviews prove most useful. The best “real estate” for customer reviews and testimonials on your website includes the following:
- Customer testimonials on the banner at the top of your site
- Review photos at the bottom of a webpage
- Customer testimonials incorporated seamlessly into your site’s content
Other ways to incorporate reviews:
- Include video testimonials in your homepage or create a separate page for them.
- Use a review widget, a free tool allowing you to display ratings and reviews from Facebook, Google and the Better Business Bureau (BBB).
Enhance Landing Pages With Client Reviews
Using landing pages is part of any strategic marketing process. These strategic pages aim to capture a lead’s email address or encourage site visitors to sign up for a free trial. Landing pages usually focus on one call to action (CTA) – you can expand and emphasize that CTA by adding related customer reviews.
For instance, if your goal is to increase free trial signups, you can add video testimonials and other reviews on your landing page about people who benefited from your free trial offer.
Chances are, repeat customers will also end up on your landing page. You can highlight the importance of online reviews for your business and encourage them to leave a quick review right then and there. Again, add a review widget to your site to collect visitor reviews effortlessly.
Use Them in Your Marketing Emails
Adding customer testimonials in your marketing emails allows you to share compelling stories about your brand and its impact on your customers. It enables you to demonstrate your effectiveness, quality and value through the lens of your current customers.
You can fit online reviews into your overall digital content marketing strategy through newsletters and promotional emails. It’s an excellent way to put new products and services in front of your target audience without “selling” to them.
Include Customer Reviews in Your Blog Posts
Blogs are part of a strategic marketing process to boost your site’s rankings but you can also use them to showcase reviews and testimonials from customers.
Use the written reviews generated from your site’s review widget or email and integrate these into a full-blown article. This is precisely why you should emphasize the importance of online reviews to your clients and encourage them to leave one for your product or service.
PRO TIP: Make sure to place customer reviews near your CTA. It’s like giving your leads an extra push towards your desired action. In effect, you’re leveraging the value of the review to add power to your CTA.
Mention Client Reviews in Podcasts
The best reputation management consultants will tell you to incorporate client reviews into your podcasts. Podcasting has become quite popular nowadays. It’s estimated that there’ll be more than 160 million listeners by 2023 and beyond.
Here are some of the best ways to use podcasts as part of your digital content marketing strategy and review generation:
- End some episodes with a customer testimonial
- Always add a CTA after featuring a review or testimonial
- Make your value proposition within the first minute and then follow up with a testimonial
- Always feature different customers and select relevant reviews targeting them
- Find your best customers and ask them to guest host upcoming podcasts
As you should know by now, collecting written and video testimonials should be part of your strategic marketing process. Online reputation management companies can help your business create a review generation and review monitoring strategy.
Social Media Posts
You can increase the number of Facebook reviews by sending out emails to your current customers or through CTA buttons on your website. You can also create posts and polls on Facebook asking for reviews. Apart from Facebook reviews, you also should pursue reviews from other review sites, like Yelp or Google.
Consumers today tend to use multiple platforms to evaluate brands they’re interested in. It helps them get a feel of the company’s overall messaging and how it’s being perceived by clients or customers. Your interactions on these platforms also matter as they show how well or poorly you treat your customers.
The number of social media users is expected to rise to 4.41 billion by 2025, which presents a vast audience to generate reviews. For now, in addition to Facebook reviews, you can encourage your audience to make Instagram and TikTok short reels reviewing your products and services.
Yelp Reviews
Getting Yelp reviews and ratings can be tricky to navigate. Yelp’s guidelines specifically state that you can’t ask for reviews from people online, in person, email or any other channel.
You can’t even ask your grandma to post reviews on the site. Apart from that, you’re not allowed to offer rewards, freebies or discounts in exchange for Yelp reviews.
But you can’t miss out on the opportunities the platform has to offer. Each month, it has 178 million unique visitors. And currently, about 87 percent of customers read these Yelp reviews before trying out a product or service, stressing the importance of online reviews on this platform.
So, how do you generate reviews on Yelp? Our reputation management consultants share the following tips:
- Claim your business page on Yelp.
- Fill out all the details on your Yelp business page.
- Place a Yelp badge on your site (it’s free).
- Order Yelp’s free window cling sign and hang it on your office window where customers can see it.
- Share Yelp reviews on social media as they come along.
- Create check-in offers on the site.
- Post updates about your business.
- Run ads on the Yelp site.
- Respond to reviews.
Review Generation Best Practices
Now that you know the most effective channels where you can integrate reviews into your marketing process, the next step is to make the process of review submission easier for your customers. Always assume that they’re busy, so make it as painless as possible.
Consider the following tips from leading online reputation management companies:
- Use simple testimonial templates and embed them on your website and landing page.
- Offer incentives in exchange for reviews.
- Monitor review websites using a reputation management tool.
- Gather different reviews, including case studies, audio, photos, text, reels and video.
Do you need help with review generation and management? Rize Reviews offers leading reputation management services. We equip you with tools to monitor, respond and manage positive and negative reviews and integrate them into your marketing process.
Make the most of your online reviews and call today for a free quote.
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