What Is Review Marketing?
Review marketing is a form of online reputation management in which your business works to get new positive reviews while managing neutral and negative reviews.
Most websites that allow customers to review your business operate on a five-star rating scale. This means that customers can typically give you a rating from 0-5 stars.
Here’s how we define negative, neutral and positive reviews based on a five-star rating scale:
- 0-2 stars = negative review
- 3 stars = neutral review
- 4-5 stars = positive review
Because star rating is the most important part of an online review for most consumers, businesses should work to obtain or maintain a five-star rating, but it’s a lot of hard work.
Here are a few ways Renown, our reputation management platform, helps businesses like yours generate new positive reviews:
- Gathering customer emails or phone numbers with our check-in feature
- Sending out a specific number of emails each month rather than all at once to try to consistently get new reviews over time—rather than getting a lot at once and then none for a long time
- Filtering out negative reviews by asking unhappy customers for private feedback
- Sending you instant email or text message alerts when a new review comes in so that you can respond and manage any negatives that make it through the filter
Why is review marketing important?
Review marketing and online reputation management are important for a few things:
- Many consumers base purchase decisions on review star rating
- A large percentage of customers will turn to your competition if you have too many negative reviews
- Most customers will return to your business after a negative experience if you respond to their negative review and try to make things right
- Reviews can help improve your local search ranking
Who needs review marketing?
All businesses need review marketing. Whether you’re a restaurant, roofing contractor, retail store, eCommerce business or anything in between. Everyone wants to read reviews of your business, product or services.
Why are some of my reviews filtered?
Some review platforms filter certain reviews that don’t meet their criteria for one reason or another.
Here are a few reasons reviews might get filtered:
- The reviewer has never posted another review before
- The review is too positive or too negative, making it seem like spam
- The review isn’t useful – some platforms allow users to up-vote or down-vote your reviews if they aren’t funny or useful
- The review has been flagged for removal because someone thought it was fake
Often, there’s nothing you can do about these filtered reviews besides contacting the website’s support team. You can, however work to consistently get new positive reviews on the platform so that when one of your good reviews is filtered, it doesn’t seem like such a huge hit to your business’s online reputation.
Can I get a negative review taken down?
Sometimes you’ll get a negative or fake review and want it taken down. Let’s start with negative reviews.
You probably can’t (and shouldn’t) get your negative reviews taken down. Negative reviews can be bad for your online reputation, but you can use those bad reviews as a good opportunity.
Here’s what to do to turn your negative online reviews into a positive experience:
- Reply to all negative reviews and try to make things right for the reviewer
- Work to get new positive reviews that bury the negative
- Remember that some customers actually want to see a couple of negative reviews because it shows that your reviews aren’t fake or paid for
- Use the negative feedback to improve the customer experience at your business