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How to Respond to Online Reviews to Boost Your Business

Responding online reviews
Responding to reviews, both good and bad, can help business owners promote their business.

We’ve talked about the importance of online reviews before, but when you receive a review, what should you do? Should you respond or leave it alone? What if it’s negative? Responding to reviews requires tact and strategy. If done right, responding to reviews, even negative ones, can give your business a boost! Here, we’ll talk about the importance of responding to online reviews and how to respond to both positive and negative ones.

Why You Need to Respond to Online Reviews

It’s important to respond to both positive and negative online reviews. Responding gives your business a voice in the ongoing conversation consumers are having about your services. It also lets readers know that you’re engaged and care about what they have to say. Even if a reviewer was dissatisfied, a simple and polite response can make a world of difference. But how do you respond to reviews in a way that’s tactful and boosts your business?

How to Respond to Positive Reviews

Every business loves receiving a positive review, so responding is easy. But you can maximize this opportunity , connecting with your customers and promoting your business by remembering these key elements:

  • Remember your manners- Always thank a reviewer for taking the time to write about your business. It’s polite! “Thank you! We’re happy to hear you enjoyed your visit!”
  • Make it personal- Personalizing your response to each review shows customers that you read their reviews and care about what they have to say. To personalize a response, thank the reviewer by name and highlight specifics of their review. For example, if they appreciated your attention to detail, mention that thoroughness is something your business prides itself on. Doing this also allows you to re-emphasize the positive qualities of your business.
  • Invite them to come again- Inviting the reviewer to visit again shows that you care about their repeat business and makes them feel welcome. You can also use this as an opportunity to promote a special event or sale you have coming up. “Come see us again for our semi-annual sale starting on June 1st!”
  • Use keywords- Reviews can show up in search results, so utilize industry keywords and your business’ name when responding to a positive review so more readers will see it.

How to Respond to Negative Reviews

Receiving negative reviews hurts. However, they are a great tool for growing as a business, improving the customer experience, and even mending relationships. As expected, responding to negative reviews can be tricky, but with these tips, you can make negative reviews work for your business.

  • Understand what happened- What made this customer unhappy? Speak with your employees and try to piece together what happened or what went wrong. This will give you a better idea of how to respond and what you can do to remedy the issue. Was there a misunderstanding? Did your business drop the ball? Or was the customer in the wrong? This is something you should already be doing to improve your business and your customers’ experiences.
  • Remain calm- When responding to a negative review, it’s important to maintain a level head. Sounding angry or defensive will only reflect poorly on your business. Remaining calm shows that you are a professional and can take criticism.
  • Apologize and sympathize- Even if the customer was in the wrong, always apologize for their poor experience. This shows humility and acknowledges the reviewer’s feelings. This will also show other readers that your business cares about its customers and their experiences. “We’re sorry to hear you were dissatisfied with our services. We always try to put our customer’s satisfaction first, but it seems we’ve missed the mark.”
  • Take the conversation offline- Include your contact information and offer to resolve the issue outside of the review forum. This gives you the opportunity to make things right with the disgruntled customer and shows them that you value their patronage. It also shows readers that your business cares about its customers and takes their experiences seriously. If you are able to resolve the issue, politely ask the disgruntled customer to update their review to reflect this.
  • Don’t use keywords or your business’ name- As mentioned earlier, reviews can appear in searches. Avoid using keywords or your business’ name when responding to negative reviews so these reviews won’t be seen by other customers.

Reviews are an important part of any business. With these tips, you can maximize every opportunity to connect with your customers. Do you want more reviews for your business? Contact MLT Group at 507.281.3490 or sales@mltgroup.com and ask about our review campaign services.

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How Online Reviews Are Affecting Your Local Ranking

We all know that positive online reviews are important to your business; they build your reputation and are highly influential to consumers. But did you know that good reviews can also influence your local search ranking on Google?

Here is an example of Local Three Pack results for carpet cleaning in Rochester, MN.
Here is an example of Local Three Pack results for carpet cleaning in Rochester, MN. You can see the online reviews prominently displayed.

As far as local searches are concerned, every business wants to appear in Google’s Local Three Pack which shows the top three local search results. The Three Pack takes up prime real estate on Google’s search results, appearing before organic results and just below the paid ads. Having your business appear in Google’s Local Three Pack means that potential customers are more likely to find your services and click through to your website.

However, the Local Three Pack results are determined by more than content, relativity, and keywords. In a continuing effort to provide users with the best possible results, Google’s algorithm is rewarding businesses that have positive reviews, by helping them rank in the Local Three Pack.

How to Appear in the Local Three Pack

So how can you help your business receive positive reviews and boost your chances of appearing in the Local Three Pack?

First, make sure you’ve claimed your business on Google My Business. This way you can start directing customers to write reviews on Google.

Second, you will need to develop a strategy for encouraging your customers to write reviews of your business. Here are 3 tips for promoting positive reviews.

  1. Ask. It may sound obvious, but many businesses forget to ask their customers for reviews. Try including a prompt on receipts or in follow up emails.
  2. Learn from your existing online reviews. Learning from your existing reviews, both positive and negative is important for your business and will help promote positive reviews. Capitalizing on your businesses’ strengths while addressing its weaknesses will help you to provide a better experience for your customers, leaving them more likely to leave a positive review.
  3. Make leaving online reviews easy. Your customers aren’t likely to go out of their way to review you. Offering them a simple and direct option for leaving reviews will increase the likelihood that they will participate. Include direct links to your review profiles in emails, newsletters, and other communications to your customers.

There’s no time to lose! The experts at MLT Group can help set up and optimize your Google My Business profile and help you promote positive reviews for your business. For more information, please contact one of our professionals at 507.281.3490 or sales@mltgroup.com.

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Protect Your Business’ Online Reputation

 

Watch our latest Theo Talk about managing your online reputation.
Watch our latest Theo Talk about managing your online reputation.

You’ve worked hard to build your business and provide quality services. After all of the time and energy you’ve put into your business, it can be heartbreaking to see your business’ reputation under attack from online reviews. As our Director of Operations, Theo St. Mane, explains in our latest Theo Talk video, too many good businesses are marred by just a few negative reviews.

But how can just a few bad reviews have such a devastating impact? Imagine the last time you paid for a good or service and had a good experience. Did you feel compelled to write a positive review about it? Now imagine the last time you had a negative experience. You were probably more compelled to share the story. There is a psychological reason for this. Positive and negative experiences are processed differently in the brain. Negative experiences take more processing power, causing us to ruminate on them. This makes it more likely for consumers to share their negative experiences on review sites.

What Should You Do With Bad Reviews?

No matter how well your business operates, bad reviews happen, which is why it’s important to have a plan for how to handle them. First, deleting isn’t the answer. Most review sites such as Yelp and Google Business won’t allow businesses to delete reviews unless they can prove the review is false or attempting to inflict undue damages. If they did, these sites would lose all credibility. But if you can’t delete a bad review, what can you do?

  • Research the complaint– Who is the customer? Is their complaint valid? What were the circumstances surrounding their experience? This is information that will be helpful for understanding the complaint and how to respond.
  • Respond to the complaint– Sharing your side if the story can help repair your relationship with the dissatisfied customer and improve your image with potential customers reading the review. In responding make sure you sound reasonable and professional. The quality of your response can completely neutralize a negative review in the eyes of other consumers.

How to Receive Positive Reviews

If consumers are more likely to share negative reviews, how do you get consumers to share positive experiences about your business?

  • Make it easy – Include links to your business’ review profiles on your website, social media, emails, and newsletters. Customers aren’t going to spend time looking for your business on these sites, but if you make it easy for them they may take a few moments to leave a positive review.
  • Give incentives– Customers are more likely to leave reviews if they have some incentive. It is important, however, that you are not seen as paying for reviews or paying for good reviews. Monthly giveaways and other chances to win prizes are proven strategies for encouraging reviews.
  • Ask– It seems so obvious, but many businesses fail to ask their customers to write reviews. Make it part of your daily work practice for you and your employees to solicit reviews from customers.

Your business’ reputation is invaluable so make sure you protect it. To find out how MLT Group can help your business with its online reputation and SEO, contact one of our professionals at sales@mltgroup.com or 507.281.3490. Also, watch our latest Theo Talk video about managing your business’ online reputation here.

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How to Bounce Back from Bad Reviews

There’s no denying how bad it feels when you receive a negative online review. It’s easy to write off a bad review as just an over critical or cranky customer that doesn’t deserve your attention but with 67% of consumers making their decisions based on online FrownyFacereviews, it’s not wise to ignore them. Here are a few tips on how to learn from bad reviews and to bounce back with grace to be better than ever.

Don’t Delete Them 

Most review and rating sites such as Yelp! will not remove negative reviews unless the business owner is able to prove that they are false or malicious. If they did, how could consumers be expected to trust reviews at all? Besides, leaving up negative reviews offers you opportunities to show potential customers how professionally you react to customer concerns.

Research the Complaint

If you can, look up the unhappy customer in your records. What project was done for them? When? Who was involved? Also, talk to your employees and get their side of the story. Did the customer appear unhappy and if so how did the staff work to correct the issue? This is all information you will want to know when addressing a bad review. However, this sometimes this isn’t possible as some review sites allow reviews to be posted anonymously.

Respond

Responding to a negative review is the perfect chance to not only possibly reconcile with a disgruntled customer, but to share your side of the story. While responding privately is an option, it is usually best to respond publicly so that other potential customers can see the response that balances the complaint. Providing a humble, reconciliatory and constructive response makes you look like the company consumers want to do business with.

Learn From It

While negative reviews sting, they are a great opportunity to better your product or services. Was there an issue with scheduling appointments? Ask yourself how you could make the process more efficient. Was there a miscommunication with an employee? Ask yourself how this can be prevented in the future.

The truth is that even if you do everything perfectly, your business will get bad reviews. But rather than ignoring them, make them work for your business. Maybe you’ll be able to turn that frown upside down.

For more information on digital marketing and website design, give us a call at 507-281-390.

 

 

 

 

 

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MLT Group Unveils New Digital Marketing Scorecard

Website Design and Development in Rochester, MN by MLT Group

 

MLT Digital Marketing Scorecard
MLT Digital Marketing Scorecard

MLT Group – Creative Solutions has been hard at work developing a new reporting system for our clients. Throughout the brutal Polar Vortex(es) and countless parade of blizzards, the talent at MLT has been hunkered down in our brain-storming creativity bunker crafting and fine-tuning our newest quarterly report; the Digital Marketing Scorecard. We are very excited to offer our clients this new digital marketing service in Rochester and Minneapolis, Minnesota, and throughout the country.

The scorecard provides a score from 0 to 100 that can be assessed for both current and potential clients. With an assessment of 6 different aspects of digital marketing, MLT’s new scorecard is a simple, streamlined way to determine what else your company could do to improve its digital marketing, online presence, and rankings.

A look at the details:

Web Presence – This section deals specifically with the set-up of your current website and reviews it based on both user experience and digital marketing expectations (read: Google’s algorithms).

On Site SEO – When you work with MLT Group to SEO your website, we ensure that nothing is left undone, and that the site is thoroughly optimized as it should be from the biggest picture on the home page to the smallest link in the footer.

SEO Building – SEO is a process that continues long after the content is optimized and the site has been launched. We focus much of our energy on consistent blog posting and backlink building. Page Two of the scorecard also lists examples of your search engine rankings at the time of the report.

Social Media – Now more than ever, it’s important that your business be found through a variety of platforms. In addition to ensuring all information is consistent and correct, it’s also important to continually post fresh content to your social media sites.

Other Digital – In the world of smart phones and tablets, your site must work on all platforms of technology, or you miss out on business. To optimize your presence in the digital realm, no form of communication should be left untapped.

Stats – We want to make sure you have quantitative evidence of your successes with MLT Group. We provide stats information so you can see your quarterly progress, all in one convenient document.

MLT Group is very excited about our newest digital marketing scorecard and how it will help us better serve our clients. We hope that this will be a great resource for both those that currently work with us and those that may be considering MLT Group.

Contact us today for assistance with your digital marketing and web design. From Rochester, MN, to the rest of the world, MLT Group – Creative Solutions is prepared to help advance your business and digital presence in our ever-expanding local and global marketplace!