How to use online reviews to boost your business

One thing that you cannot overlook when running a business is online reviews. Whilst the relationship between businesses and online reviews has been a bit love-hate over the last few years, it is one that needs to be monitored at all times.

Good reviews online can be very effective towards driving new customers to your forecourt, however, negative reviews can have a detrimental effect. Therefore, it is important that you are doing all you can to get your satisfied customers to tell the world about your fantastic service on high profile review websites.

If you do overlook online reviews then you will come to regret it. They are an amazingly effective tool for your business and should be embraced with open arms.

Why are good reviews good?

‘What a silly question’, you may be thinking to yourself. But it’s important to understand just why you need to get good online reviews. The main reason for this is that many potential customers will browse review websites to get a gauge on how your business operates. They want to know if you offer a good service and want a chance to see whether you offer good value for money.

But, one thing that some people don’t know is that good reviews on high profile review websites will help your company’s own website rank better on Google. So, here is our guide on how you can manage your online reviews and ensure that you are attracting more potential customers to your forecourt.

Encouraging reviews from customers

Before you come up with a number of creative ways in which to get your customers to leave reviews, you will want to focus on the basics. You need to begin by getting your company set up with a presence on all of the top external review sites, as well as on all of the relevant social media channels.

Two of the main sites on which you will want to establish a presence for your business are Yelp and Google My Business. Once you are set up on these websites it is time to start asking your customers to leave good reviews, however, you need to be clever when doing this.

You need to focus on your satisfied customers and ask them to write reviews. Whilst you are bound to get the odd negative comment on review sites, if you continue to focus on your satisfied customers, then the positive comments will far outweigh the negative ones.

Other good sites to send your customers to when reviewing your service include:

• Brownbook
• Freeindex
• Tipped
• Reviewcentre

On your own website

The value of reviews on external review sites is, as we have already discussed, very important. However, it’s also a good idea to set up a reviews or testimonials section on your own site. Remember that your potential customers will be visiting your site and if they stumble upon a number of positive reviews then they are more likely to trust your service and may end up turning into customers themselves.

You should always make it easy for your customers to submit reviews onto your site. If you do this you will be able to ensure that there is always fresh user-generated content present. Having reviews on your official site is also useful for dealing with unhappy customers. They can voice their concerns to you and you can deal with it directly, without them having to head to social media or another site to publicly rant about their displeasure with your business.

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