How Your Online Reviews Improve Your Business’s Revenue

Word of mouth marketing packs a punch in the realm of small and mid-size businesses. Every good word from customers counts when the competition is fierce and hundreds of brands are fighting for the same audience. This type of referral marketing has shifted into the digital space and taken the form of online reviews, which have become increasingly vital to your revenue growth.

Find out how online business reviews guide your customers’ buying decisions, boost sales and, ultimately, grow your revenue.

Impact of Small Business Reviews on Organic Revenue Growth

Small enterprises that manage comments and consumer opinion well gain the advantage of improving their revenue in the long and short term. Forbes researchers say small business reviews influence an estimated 67 percent of online purchasing decisions. If your business is listed on Yelp, increasing your ratings by one star translates to a five to nine percent increase in revenue.

Here are some more exciting stats you should consider:

• Businesses risk losing 44 percent of their customers if they get at least two negative reviews on the first search engine results pages (SERPs).
• They potentially lose 59 percent of their prospects if three negative reviews pop up on the SERPs. You can lose 70 percent of them if you have four or more.
• Fifty-six percent of online searchers say that what they read online about a company influenced their decision to do business with that enterprise.
• Ninety percent of consumers will read local business reviews about your company before deciding whether they’ll do business with you.

These figures show that the buyer’s journey is greatly affected by ratings and reviews. As a small business, you can’t afford to lose out on leads and prospects by not having an effective business reputation management plan.

Rize Reviews has reputation management consultants who can help you generate reviews and develop a strong image for your brand online. Together with your other marketing efforts, this positive reputation leads your prospects from the awareness and consideration stage to the purchase stage of the buyer’s journey, ultimately increasing your bottom line.

Star Ratings and Reviews Boost Online Sales

Most owners don’t pay attention to small business reviews, unaware of the negative impact poor brand reputation management can have on their profitability. However, there is a correlation between your ratings and reviews and your sales volume: Each star rating you lose or gain creates a strong impression about your brand.

Local business reviews do more than boost brand awareness and increase trust – they contribute to your overall organic revenue growth. Around 93 percent of consumers say that online reviews influence their purchasing decisions. So anyone running an eCommerce business should invest in acquiring and monitoring these coveted customer ratings and feedback.

How Online Business Reviews Boost Your Revenue

1. They Streamline Your Credibility and Build Customer Trust

Make full use of your reviews and client quotes by placing them on your site’s homepage, service pages and product pages. They send a clear signal to potential customers that your brand has helped solve past customer problems and will likely assist with new ones.

Asking for feedback from clients also has another benefit: It helps bolster product descriptions. Many product pages have bland descriptions that drive away most users. You can spruce up your own pages by using actual feedback from your customers.

When you generate online business reviews from your most satisfied customers, it’s a good idea to lift actual words from the feedback and add them to your descriptions to make them relatable to prospects.

Important Tip: Create balance in your review content. Most consumers are familiar with generalized statements and meaningless buzzwords. So include real and specific pain points in the full reviews and testimonials you highlight, so they sound more natural and closer to home. You can monitor customer feedback using proven online reputation management software, alerting you to both negative and positive reviews online.

An often-understated aspect of reputation management is review monitoring, which comes after review generation. After asking for feedback from clients, it’s time to implement customer feedback management. A big part of which is review monitoring.

2. Review Generation Efforts Improve Customer Loyalty

Ideally, businesses have a close-knit community of loyal customers to generate reviews about their products and services. It makes review generation a lot easier. But in this imperfect world, you have to flex some marketing muscles to encourage more customer reviews.

Here are a few suggestions:

• • You can get more customers on board using an email marketing campaign and offer discounts when leaving reviews to new products they have tried.
  • Ask influencers on social media if they would like to try your products for free for an honest review online.
  • Give away product vouchers to your best customers in exchange for one-liner testimonials you will use on your site.
  • Send small rewards to customers who made verified purchases and left comments about the products they had purchased.

All of these strategies are part of effective brand reputation management. These tactics are a total win-win for you and your customers. You’re rewarding them for being loyal to your brand, and you bolster your marketing efforts and sales opportunities.

3. Ratings and Reviews Can Reduce Cart Abandonment

Review monitoring allows you to keep a pulse on your audience. When you get constructive criticism, it’s a chance to improve your offerings.

For example, after asking for feedback from clients, one of them suggests streamlining the store experience for your eCommerce site. They advise improving the visuals of your product pages by adding a more visible add-to-cart button.

This would be your cue to act and make the necessary changes to your site. Creating a better purchasing experience benefits your customers and enhances the buyer’s journey. But ultimately, it bolsters your revenue with more customers completing their purchases instead of leaving with an abandoned cart.

According to the Salesforce Q1 2021 Shopping Index, the cart abandonment rate went up to 87 percent. The mobile purchasing abandonment rate went as high as 94 percent. You can avoid becoming part of the statistic by implementing comprehensive review monitoring and acting on customer feedback.

4. They Help Your SEO Efforts

Customer-generated reviews increase the amount of unique content on your site. Your clients, at times, use keywords that can help improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. They can increase traffic to your site, encourage social sharing and improve your search ranking.

Work With the Best Business Reputation Management Experts

Supercharge your organic revenue growth strategy today with Rize Reviews. Our seasoned reputation management consultants have extensive experience in customer feedback management, survey campaign management and listings management. They apply these strategies to solidify your reputation online and turn your local business reviews into certified profit-generating assets.

We take your review generation strategy by equipping you with state-of-the-art online reputation management software. Our tool proactively garners and manages online reviews so you can sit back and do what you do best. 

Reach out today to see what’s in store.