Online Reputation Matters!

Like it or not, your business’ online reputation matters.  You could be the best company that offers your products or services, but if online information it readily available that paints a different picture, it will negatively impact your reputation and ultimately your sales. 

Nearly seventy percent of customers admit that they check out reviews online before committing to a purchase. So it’s up to you to manage your online reputation. People are checking out Yelp, Angie’s List, Google, Yahoo Local Listings (and hundreds others) for information. From time to time, you will get a negative review.  In our culture, it is inevitable because you just cannot please everyone.  Knowing this, there are a two key steps to take:

1)    Be Proactive:  Don’t wait to generate your online reputation only after a negative review has been posted.  Have a routine part of your operation that encourages happy customers to post positive reviews about your business.  Most will not take the time to do so, so the key word in that prior sentence is “routine”.  You have to ask all happy customers to do it, knowing that only a select few will invest the time to do so.  It is OK to encourage them to write these reviews with some type of offer such as a $5 gift card or an entry into a raffle for a larger ticket giveaway.  The cool thing about these reviews, is that once they have been written, they are assets for your business that are permanent.  So there is tremendous value in a positive online review.  A volume of positive reviews takes the punch out of the rare negative review.

2)      Be Reactive:  When a negative review is written about you, respond… EVERY time.  An occasional negative review will actually make your profile look more legitimate.  So, take the time to get your side of the situation documented as a response to that negative review.  Your goal here is to be non-emotional, fact-based and ultimately to try to make lemonade out of lemons.  Rarely will you be able to change the mind of someone who has written a negative review, but you can write your response in a way that anyone who takes the time to read it, will see your side of the situation and feel that you handled it professionally.  That can, sometimes, carry more weight than a positive review because we all know things go wrong in life.  You want to portray that when things do go wrong, you make things right for that customer.  If you do succeed in turning around the opinion of the reviewer, as them to take the time to post another review conveying how you resolved their situation and turned things around.