Have you ever wondered how your brand’s online reputation could impact your company’s marketing performance?
In many industries, a brands’ reliability is essential to maintaining customer loyalty and reaching new buyers.
As marketing and branding trends continue to evolve, companies need to focus on online reviews to elevate their reputation and build loyalty among their customer base.
In this article, we’ll give you three reasons why every company should be leveraging online reviews to power their business forward.
Three ways to turn your customers’ words into better business results
1. Leveraging the power of social proof
Today, 89% of people admit that reviews influence their purchasing decisions and 92% of consumers read online reviews. As consumers look for third-party validation more than ever before when buying online, social proof is one of the best tools a marketer can use to boost conversion rates and build trust at every touch point of the journey.
Businesses leveraging social proof are usually seen as more trustworthy because social proof comes from customers, and, with declining trust in traditional advertising, your customers’ stamp of approval means much more to online shoppers than your self-proclaimed excellence.
Social proof can take many forms, but according to Trustpilot research, the most trusted types of social proof are reviews and ratings.
In 2019, it takes less than five minutes for shoppers to compare brands by cost, quality and customer experience. Showcasing social proof like online reviews on key pages throughout the customer journey, and on other marketing channels, can be a real game-changer and can help you stand out from the competition.
Using social proof throughout the buying journey
Social proof and reviews on social media
Leveraging reviews on all channels
If you’re considering consolidating your review strategy, third-party review platforms are the way to go. Indeed, platforms like Trustpilot are more trusted by consumers because they’re open to all feedback, meaning reviews can’t be edited, curated, or even deleted by retailers.
As Trustpilot’s CEO, Peter Mühlmann, puts it: “Using a closed review platform is like asking your own mother if you’re handsome.”
2. Turning bad experiences into positive ones
Today, 85% of people trust reviews as much as personal recommendations, so it’s only natural for companies to worry about the impact that bad reviews can have on potential new customers. However, that doesn’t mean you should be ignoring, or even deleting, bad reviews.
In fact, this is probably the worst thing you could be doing.
Indeed, 26% of consumers see responding to reviews as an important part of business activity and 68% of people trust a business more when it’s got a mix of good and bad reviews. Because, let’s be honest, 100% 5-star reviews is just too good to be true.
Online reviews give your customers a chance to share their shopping experience with you and with other consumers – and everyone has the right to give an honest review of their experience. No company is perfect and consumers understand that. Your customers don’t always expect you to get it right but they’d like you to try your best.
Receiving bad reviews is, in fact, a great opportunity for your business to make things better and turn negative experiences into positive ones. If you can solve your unhappy customers’ problems quickly and efficiently, 95% of them will return to your business.
In 2019, 76% of consumers say they view customer service as the true test of how much a company values them. This means it’s your company’s responsibility to solve your customers’ issues before they turn into bigger problems.
3. Using consumer insights to get better
Collecting online reviews is a great first step towards understanding your customers better and gaining fresh consumer insights. But how can you detect patterns and trends? How can you use your customers’ feedback to better your business?
Did you know that today, 88% of consumers read reviews to determine the quality of a business’s customer experience?
This means that using your customers’ feedback to identify areas of development and working hard to improve your customer service will help you improve customer experience and boost your online reputation in the long run.
Embracing both positive and negative is the best thing you can do to power your business forward. Trustpilot uses artificial intelligence to pull insights from your online reviews and highlight trends and customer pains for you.
Trustpilot’s Review Insights Tool
Using online reviews to gain new insights into your company’s processes is a great way to help you grow and become closer to your customers. And as you learn and deliver greater experiences, it’s likely you’ll receive more and more positive reviews and get better business results.
In 2019, consumers trust reviews because they know that if they leave a review themselves, it will be created to better inform future consumers. It’s a self-serving community in the best of ways and it can benefit businesses as well.
Online reviews ensure that the best brands are rewarded by new and repeat customers – and that new companies are encouraged to deliver better experiences, grow their online reputation and better their business by leveraging consumer insights.
By focusing on how to best serve customers, brands can be rewarded with better reviews, and as a result, more business.
Find out how reviews can help you out. Read more on the Trustpilot blog.
About Trustpilot
Trustpilot is the world’s most powerful review platform, free and open to all. Our mission is to bring people and companies together to create ever-improving experiences for everyone. For consumers, we’re a place to connect with and influence consumers and businesses. For companies, we’re a platform for progress; a way to improve and innovate by engaging and collaborating with consumers. With Trustpilot, people have a place to share and discover reviews of businesses, and every company has the tools to turn consumer feedback into better business results.
To find out how Trustpilot can help you power your business forward, request a free demo or check out our website. And for more insights about consumer reviews, take a look at the report we co-wrote with Brightpearl here.
