What's Marketing Without Customer Reviews?
Sunday, July 11, 2010
The question you might be asking yourself is how to avoid bad reviews or eliminate them all together. The difficulty is that once a bad review is posted online and indexed by search engines, it may begin appearing in search results. Once there, it could be difficult (but not impossible to remove).
Here are a few strategies you can use to manage reputation and improve the customer review process:
1. Set up a customer forum on your website. Inviting customer feedback is a great way to monitor feedback and it gives you excellent control. Don't shy away from feedback, invite it. By doing so you can recognize and address problems before they are distributed all over the internet.
2. Give your customers access to popular review sites. A bit risky you might be thinking? Not if you're selective with regard to which customers you invite to comment. Be sure that customer service representatives email a list of review sites and an invite to comment to those individuals with whom they've had a positive interaction.
3. Focus on improving the ranking of third party assets. Do you have a Squidoo lens? Article on EzineArticles? Profile on a social media site like Facebook? Use search engine optimization best practices to improve rankings of these assets to push down negative listings.
4. If a particular comment is slanderous, contact the web site on which it's posted. In some cases, particularly negative comments can be removed. However, most sites will only remove if they've broken the site posting rules. It never hurts to ask to have a listing removed however. Don't hesitate. Reach out to the site and explain why the listing should be removed and the negative impact it's having on your business.
5. Take advantage of universal search. Produce content across a number of different outlets. Generate news by submitting a press release or create instructional videos that show how to use your product. By submitting this content to various distribution sites (youtube, prweb, etc.) you can get them indexed and showing up on search results.
Don't wait until it's too late. Start managing your online reputation today. Begin by proactively soliciting feedback from your customers and asking those with positive experiences to leave comments on your forum, blog, or popular review sites. In addition, work to replace negative comments with positive online assets like social media profiles and more. Just apply basic optimization techniques and watch your reputation sore.
Marketing Blog founder and top-selling author Michael Fleischner has been featured on The TODAY Show, ABC World News, and Bloomerg Radio. 
9 comments :
At present it is not uncommon that more and take more force the online marketing, which is becoming an excellent option for large, medium and small industries, as well as new entrepreneurs, providing the option of being seen and achieve more and more people interested in a specific product or service
Great post! The last company I worked for had a terrible time with 1 particular bad review - basically saying the company was a front for a huge scam (in a nutshell - someone in America used the real company name & branding etc in emails to trick people into giving them money)
This proved to be a significant problem as the review couldn't be removed at all - so forever the post will read about how a good, decent, family run business is nothing but a scam.
1 bad review really can make a whole lot of difference!
My guess is that we need to accept and adapt to comments of customers.
Hi there,I really enjoyed reading your post.Very informative.I'll come back soon to read your post.
-kathy
http://www.healthandwellnessconsultants.com
Of course we have to adjust to modern days, and customers have a lot to say.
The large problem is how much time it takes to stay up to date with it.. How about outsourcing this to YourManInIndia.com ?
Great post Michael,
This goes right along with what I have been reading about testimonials, very powerful business tool. I especially agree with your advice on slanderous comments, good stuff..
thanks for posting
matt
(http://marketmpb.blogspot.com)
clearly stated, Companies needs to adjust of the new trend in marketing, its one way to increase the profit..
I like the concepts of embracing feedback by trying to get it on your own forum. There is another side to focusing on "third party" sites. I agree about optimizing other sites you control in order to push down problematic sites.
But you can also work to help real third party sites that provide favorable reviews - I would go farther than giving your customers access to them. I would take steps to also push them up in the search engine results!
Great post! Testimonials are essential marketing tactic for most businesses. Those who direct their consumers to third-party consumer review websites such as www.yelp.com or Google are really ahead of the game.
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