What is Review Management?

• What is Review Management?
• The Importance of Review Management for Businesses
• How to Develop an Online Review Management Strategy?
• How to Select Review Management Software
• How to Generate More Online Reviews
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is Review Management?

Review management is the process of collecting, analyzing, and monitoring customer feedback across multiple platforms such as Google Business, websites, and social media platforms. Review management gives your business the visibility it needs to compete, customer acquisition to grow, and the customer retention to sustain that growth.

Simply put, effective review management = successful business.

In order to grow your business online, you need to not only build your online reputation by getting more reviews, but also manage them efficiently. This will help you to shape your brand’s reputation as that of a key player in the industry.

Here are some of the key components of effective review management:

Monitoring Reviews

If you want to get people talking about your business, the first step is to keep an eye on where and how your customers share reviews. This requires establishing a presence on popular review platforms such as Facebook, Google, Yelp, and the like.

Think of it like this: you build the platform, and the reviews will come.

Collecting Feedback

The next and most crucial step in review management is collecting feedback from your patients. Who doesn’t love it when the chef takes a round and asks customers what they really think about the lamb chop?

Collecting reviews digitally is similar, but you need to send follow-up emails, share QR codes, and offer incentives to customers to encourage them to share their experiences online. The goal is to get people talking online, to generate hype around your business and attract potential customers.

Responding to Reviews

Once the reviews start coming in, you need to brace yourself for impact. This is because the reviews can be both positive and negative. As a professional business owner, you need to respond to both.

Responding to reviews, even the negative ones, can help you build strong relationships with your customers. An empathetic approach to a disappointed customer can show potential customers that your business is one they can come to with their concerns, reinforcing customer loyalty.

So, start building your online reputation and respond to each and every review.

Analyzing Feedback

Reviews and testimonials, combined with customers’ online behavior, are powerful data points that can help you refine your marketing strategy. If you identify patterns in the reviews, you can leverage them to boost your credibility.

You can also attract new customers, knowing what works and what doesn’t work for your business.

Leveraging Positive Reviews

About 93% of customers check online reviews before making a purchase. This makes reviews the most powerful marketing tool at your disposal. As a growing business, review management can help you grow your business simply by positioning it as something that is raved about.

Not to mention the improvement in local SEO and search results that comes with a busy Google Business page.

The Importance of Review Management for Businesses

Think about the last time you bought something online without checking the reviews of the product first. You probably can’t remember. In fact, it’s more likely that you were influenced to buy the product and the online reviews gave you the confidence to click on the ‘checkout’ button.

Successful businesses know just how important online reviews are for reaching potential customers. This is why it is so important for businesses to incorporate a successful review management strategy.

Here are some reasons why review management is absolutely essential for a business’s success:

Building Trust and Credibility

Mielle is a popular hair care brand that experienced a rise and fall that will be talked about for years to come. From being featured in every beauty and hair influencer’s ‘empties video’ in 2023, it has now lost sway over its loyal customers, with videos surfacing of customers saying they are experiencing hair loss because of it.

Now, whether Mielle’s hair care products are responsible for the hair loss of its customers, we cannot say, but the dip in Mielle’s sales is something businesses should be concerned about.

Customers trust other customers, and that means they trust reviews. To make your customers see your business as trustworthy, you need to have substantial online reviews that say so.

Influencing Consumer Decisions

Speaking of Mielle, in the past few years, rosemary essential oil experienced a surge in popularity for being the ultimate hair growth product, despite scientific evidence suggesting otherwise. This is the best modern-day example we have of being ‘influenced.’

As a business owner, you can see clearly the effect that reviews have on consumer decision making. A positive review can persuade consumers to purchase something even if there is no scientific evidence that it works. Conversely, when the same product gets a negative review, it can topple the reputation a product has.

Businesses can use this as a lesson to not only encourage reviews but to do it strategically to better influence consumer decision-making.

Enhancing Online Visibility

We already know how important search engine optimization (SEO) is for a business. But did you know that collecting more reviews and ratings for your business can improve local SEO?

That’s right! Businesses that are talked about more are quite literally dominating the search results, and you can achieve this level of exposure by deploying a strategic approach to review management.

Providing Valuable Customer Insights

Customer insights are important when it comes to marketing your business, but they also give businesses an opportunity to make informed decisions about their products.

If your business is already selling a successful product or service and you are interested in expanding your range, you can use your reviews to get ideas about what your customers want or need.

Think of it as free and reliable market research with the ideal sample size and reporting system already in place.

Engaging with Customers

Customer service can highlight areas of concern that you need to address as a business to better cater to your customers.

Think about it: if there was something wrong with your product, you would rather the customers’ feedback loop highlights it. This way, you can work on it, and your customer doesn’t have to go to your competitor for the same thing.

Maybe you have a great product, but it only caters to a certain demographic. Reviews can bring this to your attention. By analyzing review data, you can open yourself up to a new market segment altogether, allowing your business to expand.

Engaging with your customers does what conducting market research does. Except this is free and doesn’t take years.

Crisis Management

Every successful business you know has had a bad review. What made them successful was actively managing reviews and doing so with empathy. Building a positive online reputation requires a positive attitude and strategy.

How to Develop an Online Review Management Strategy?

It is absolutely essential for businesses to have a review management strategy. This helps them engage with their customers better, attract new customers, and improve their brand’s visibility overall.

If you want to build your brand’s online reputation, here’s a step-by-step guide to achieving that:

Step 1: Set Goals for Review Management

Setting your goals is the first step to strategizing for your brand’s online reputation. In order to manage online reviews successfully, here are some objectives you should have. These objectives will help you establish a strong foundation for managing reviews and enhancing customer satisfaction levels.

• Increase the number of reviews

• Achieve an average rating on major platforms

• Respond to reviews in a timely manner to improve response rate

• Improve local SEO by increasing review volume and traffic

Step 2: Identify and Prioritize Key Review Platforms

If you are building your brand’s online reputation, you will need to maintain a substantial presence on all the popular review sites. Depending on the type of business you have, the platforms can differ.

The goal is to identify where your customers are most likely to leave reviews and prioritize those platforms.

Here are some popular review sites to consider:

• Google (important for local SEO)

• Yelp (important for reviews & recommendations)

• Facebook (important for social proof)

Step 3: Encourage Customers to Leave Reviews

Asking your customers for reviews will become a regular occurrence for you. Whether it is through follow-up emails, SMS, or personalized review invites, your customers need a little nudge to leave a review, and you should be ready for that.

Using QR codes is a great way to simplify the process of leaving a review. You can add QR codes to receipts or packaging. You can display them on your storefront, checkout counters, or waiting rooms.

Step 4: Invest in Review Management Software

A review management software will easily handle all the steps that come next. Whether it is sending review insights or reminders, or responding to reviews in a timely manner, a review management software is the perfect investment to ensure that you are on top of your game when it comes to customer service.

A specialized software goes beyond responding to reviews. It can analyze the reviews to help you tap into your business’s strengths and work on its weaknesses. A review management tool is also a practical way to ensure that your team is consistent in responding to reviews.

As a growing business, tools such as DemandHub will help you establish standard procedures for customer interactions, and this helps your business come across as more professional.

How to Select Review Management Software

Review management software helps businesses respond to customer feedback more efficiently, allowing them to use their positive online reputation to attract new customers. If you’re interested in investing in a review management software, here are some factors to keep in mind to pick the right one.

Identify Your Needs

Review management software is often designed in a versatile way to cater to the needs of different businesses. But in order to pick the right one, you need to ensure that it helps you achieve the goals you set earlier in your review management strategy.

You can ask yourself, “What platforms do you want to manage reviews on?” or “What reporting features do you need to measure your KPIs?”

Asking these questions will help you determine if the software will be an asset to your business or not.

User-Friendly Interface

When choosing review management software, it is important to note that customer service is often a team project. You want to ensure that the tool you incorporate is user-friendly.

This is because the purpose of using a specialized tool for customer support is to simplify day-to-day tasks, not add to them.

Integration Capabilities

Integration capabilities are very important for successful review management. This is because they allow your business to streamline inter-departmental tasks without any back and forth. Some of the integration capabilities that you should look out for include customer relationship management (CRM) systems and API access.

Analytics and Reporting

One of the most important features you need is analytics and reporting. This is because businesses need in-depth insights into customer sentiment and online reputation to identify areas for improvement.

Businesses can also use reporting tools to see if they are tracking KPIs successfully.

How to Generate More Online Reviews

Generating online reviews is a great way to build your business’s online reputation and acquire new customers in the process. Here are some ways to encourage your customers to leave positive reviews.

Automated Review Requests

Anything you can do, software can do better by automating it and saving precious time and resources. This is exactly how successful businesses get ahead of their competitors.

They reach out to more customers with review requests that contain a QR code or a direct link to the business’s Google Business page.

Offering Incentives

Successful businesses know that encouraging customers to leave a review sometimes means giving them a discount code for their next purchase. You can also encourage customer engagement by giving customers a token of your appreciation in the form of giveaways, exclusive content, or freebies.

Keep in mind that some platforms have guidelines against review manipulation.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How to Respond to Online Reviews

You can respond to online reviews to build your brand’s online reputation. We recommend being prompt in your replies and maintaining a professional tone, especially when responding to negative reviews. Make sure to thank your customers for their feedback so they feel encouraged to engage with your brand.

What is a Review Management System?

A review management system is software that allows you to manage, respond to, and request reviews. You can use a review management system like DemandHub to analyze patient interactions with the goal of improving your online reputation.

How Do You Manage Reviews?

Here’s how you can manage your online reviews:

• Monitor your business’s review platforms to stay updated on customer feedback.

• Respond to all reviews, both positive and negative, promptly and professionally.

• Ask your customers for their feedback by sharing review invite links.

• Analyze their feedback to determine what is working for your business and how you can improve.

• Assess the impact of reviews on your business’s local SEO, patient acquisition, and retention over time using reports.

How to Monitor Online Reviews

You can monitor online reviews by investing in high-quality review management software. This will help you consolidate all interactions on one dashboard for easier access.

Now you can respond, request, and analyze all the reviews efficiently. This will help you stay informed and updated on all the industry-specific trends and how your brand is performing on specific review platforms.

What to Look for in Online Review Management Software

Here are some features to look out for in a review management software:

• User-friendly interface.

• Integration capabilities.

• Analytics and reporting.

• Review request automation.

• Multi-platform support.

What is the Difference Between Review Management and Reputation Management?

Review management is the process of monitoring and responding to reviews on popular review platforms. Reputation management is the process of managing a brand’s reputation overall through PR, branding, and various marketing initiatives.

A brand’s reputation and reviews are both important, and using review management software can help you manage both effectively.

Elevate Your Brand’s Online Reputation

Simply put, a review management strategy is what makes successful businesses sustain their success. There is so much a business can gain from tapping into a customer feedback loop. Whether it’s engaging with your audience or demonstrating your brand’s commitment to quality, review management is the way to go.

One way to actively manage your reviews is by incorporating review management software such as DemandHub. This software can help you enhance your brand’s online reputation without adding any more burden of manual tasks to your team.

If you are interested in learning more about DemandHub’s capabilities, book a demo today.