Since 82% of the people looking at online reviews are potential clients, it only makes sense to make sure your online reviews are in good shape! (Source: Martech Zone)
Here are the top 5 mistakes many businesses make regarding online reviews:
- Not claiming your FREE online review platform (Google My Business, Yelp, Healthgrades, Vitals, BBB, Facebook, etc.) Most of these platforms auto-generate a online portal with review capacity that all you need to do is CLAIM them! Make sure the Name of the company is correct, the Address is accurate and the Phone number is correct. (Often referred to as the NAP profile.)
- Not responding to online reviews – You should respond to all reviews both positive and negative. See our blog post: 5 Tactics To Handle Negative Online Reviews for Dentists if responding to negative reviews gets your blood boiling.
- Not having regular consistent reviews -we recommend getting more than 1 per month! See our blog post: The Number One Tactic to Get More Positive Reviews!
- No recent reviews within the past 3-4 months. Most people looking at reviews will look at between 6-10 reviews before making up their mind. If the bulk of your reviews are older that 3-4 months they considered “stale”.
- Blaming, criticizing, confronting, or criticizing the reviewer. Handling negative reviews inappropriately can cost you not only clients but also EMPLOYEES. These days, many prospective employees will check out your reviews online and if they see a lot of negativity online, they won’t show up for their first interview!
This next tip could be in the top 5 but since it’s more generic, we wanted to separate it out. Spending too much time on all the other review sites besides GOOGLE could actually DILUTE your efforts. Two reasons. It confuses people and splitting up reviews on multiple platforms gives you fewer reviews on the primary one. Google is the largest Search Engine in the world and with the introduction of Google My Business, your reviews show up immediately below your name for all to see. They don’t have to click on anything, register or hunt for them. Your reviews are attached to your business search listing.
This is why Max choose to keep things simple and focus on the top search engine on the market. This doesn’t mean we don’t encourage people and friends posting positive information on other pages like YELP or Facebook, because we do. Let those come more organically or casually. Parrot™ has automated a predictable repeatable process to help you grow your online presence.
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