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Countering Bad Reviews Through Effective Digital Marketing
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(Posted on Apr 23, 2014 at 01:57PM )
It happens all the time: The hard-working crew at a small business loses customers thanks to the sour grapes of one person.It could be a disgruntled employee, an angry customer or even a competitor, says V. Michael Santoro, coauthor with John S. Rizzo of Niche Dominance: Creating Order Out of Your Digital Marketing Chaos.
“Anyone can post a bad review online and hurt your business,†says Santoro, who is a managing partner with Rizzo of Globe On-Demand, an internet technology company. “Unfortunately, most business owners are not even aware that these bad reviews are out there.â€
Seventy-two percent of buyers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 70 percent trust consumer opinions posted online, according to a 2012 Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Survey.
“A bad review published in a newspaper, or broadcast on radio or TV, is short-lived, but a bad review posted online can live indefinitely,†says Rizzo. “With consumers now researching an average of 10 reviews before making a buying decision, and 70 percent trusting a business that has a minimum of six reviews posted, business owners need to be proactive in developing their online reputation. You need several positive reviews.â€
Online searches have been streamlined, combining reviews with maps, pay-per-click advertising, local business directories and Facebook Fan pages, Santoro says. As damaging as bad reviews can be, positive reviews can be equally constructive, he says.
Rizzo and Santoro offer an Internet marketing strategy called “reputation marketing,†described in the following steps:
- Develop a 5-Star Reputation: Begin by having your happy customers post great reviews about your business. Strive to have at least 10. This needs to be a continuous process. Proactively ask your customers to post reviews.
- Market Your Reputation: Once reviews are posted, use a well-designed online marketing strategy to drive targeted traffic to your website. Ensure that your website can convert this traffic into customers. Additionally, showcase these third-party reviews on your website.
- Manage Your Reputation: Regularly check that the reviews being posted are positive. You can use Google Alerts for your business name; however, you will need to check the local directories, too, since they’re not picked up by Google Alerts. By building up the positive reviews, you can counter a poor one by sheer volume. You should also quickly post a reply to a negative review if they occur. Always be professional and indicate what action you have taken to remedy the situation.
- Create a Reputation Marketing Culture: Train your staff to proactively ask customers for reviews and to deal immediately with any customer who appears unhappy. A positive culture will encourage customers to post positive reviews about your business.
Also see Increase Your Sales & Improve Your Reputation
The Securities and Exchange Commission should be applauded for its new guidance on third-party review sites and financial adviser testimonials, and for clarifying what advisers can and can't do when it comes to client reviews that are posted on sites such as AngiesList and Yelp.But the move to define social-media ground rules also raises important and difficult questions: Who will enforce the guidelines that the SEC has developed for taking advantage of these review sites, and how are they going to go about it?
Like it or not, social media is part of our culture, and neither advisers nor regulators can stick their heads in the sand and ignore it.
As Liz Skinner reported, a survey conducted by Corporate Insight in December indicated that 67% of Generation Y/Millennials and 28% of baby boomers said that they would use an online search tool to find an adviser.
Such searches often lead to sites that feature customer reviews. Slowly, the SEC has come around to realizing that social media is here to stay and has tried to help advisers adapt to it to enhance their businesses, while at the same time protecting investors from its abuses.
(Don't miss:Â Client reviews and you: What you need to know)
First, some background.
Since 1940, the SEC has barred advisers from using testimonials in their advertisements. The rationale is that such testimonials, by their nature, are misleading in that they emphasize favorable comments and ignore those that are unfavorable.
NEW ERA
However, social media wasn't around 74 years ago.
According to the SEC's new guidance, it is now OK for advisers to link to testimonials on these third-party websites as long as the adviser has no control over the reviews and the sites include both favorable and non-favorable comments.
The SEC said that advisers are allowed to cite their average client rating from these sites.
That is all good news, but advisers and the public need to know that these sites aren't without controversy. There have been serious allegations that at least some of the reviews on these sites have been written by freelance writers hired by companies to post favorable comments about the companies' services.
Last year, the New York Attorney General's Office fined businesses more than $350,000 for generating phony reviews online.
Yelp acknowledges that 20% to 25% of the reviews submitted to its site are suspicious, though the company claims that many of them are filtered out before they are posted.
Is the SEC prepared to start monitoring sites such as Yelp to make sure that unscrupulous advisers aren't rigging the system to attract more clients? And if such an adviser can pay to have a positive review posted, would he or she also pay for a fake review that is critical of a competitor?
PROCEED WITH CAUTION
Until such questions can be answered satisfactorily and review sites can do a better job of policing the people who are posting reviews, advisers should proceed with caution.
Advisers must remember that they can't pick and choose the reviews to which they want to link.
Advisers who link to a site should make sure that they know what the reviewers are saying about them and their businesses. At the very least, advisers should learn how to challenge a review they deem bogus or one that uses inaccuracies in its assessment of the firm's services.
As one social-media consultant told our reporter, “There's always a bad apple who figures out how to game the site.â€
Advisers shouldn't let that bad apple take them down. Take the time to monitor what people are saying about your business and be prepared to fight back if necessary.
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