Your company's online reputation and credibility is of upmost importance as this can make or break your business's success.  All too often in today's environment, people are taking the time to research and get to know businesses before they buy from them. With a few keystrokes in a search engine, potential customers have all they need to do their own research and one of the first things they look at is what your customers are saying about you online.  

To potential customers, it's important to have several reviews to look at but more than the number, it's the quality of them that matters most.  Just the opposite is true for a marketing agency that is representing you.  That said, of course an agency wants to work with a client that has outstanding reviews as this helps all the marketing components and future lead generation to work cohesively, but it's the number of reviews that can determine how effective your digital marketing efforts will often grow.  

HOW REVIEWS HELP BUSINESS
From a customer standpoint, reviews help provide valuable insight into your business.  They show what others have experienced working with you.  Whether it's a specific product or service you offer, reviews help show the good, the bad, and potential concerns before that customer takes action with you.  It's important to note that how you as a business owner respond to positive and negative reviews is vital to the emotional connection with your business.  

From a marketing standpoint, the number of reviews a business has helps marketing efforts in a multitude of ways.  For example, when looking at Google specifically, the more 5-star reviews a company has, the more opportunity there is for Google to place higher credibility on your business.  This means that you have a higher likelihood to see more favorable organic search engine optimization (SEO) placement in local search queries, placing your company's website higher in search than your competitors and that is the name of the game. 

Generating good quality reviews also helps assure your company of being ranked higher in the local 3 pack map, the area you see on the first page of a Google search result that rests under the top sponsored ads but before the organic websites that rank.   

WAYS TO GENERATE REVIEWS

• Internal Reviews - Your sales department and management team should be leading the charge as they are the most effective way to generate reviews.  These will typically be the strongest relationships between customer and company but much like asking for the referral, you must work on asking for reviews.  

• Email Generated Reviews - Maybe you want to hand select the customers you know will leave your business a good review.  A great way to generate new reviews is to send a personalized email that includes a link to where you want the customer to leave a review for the company.  You could include these after client meetings or other office correspondence like monthly invoices, surveys, or newsletter blasts.  

• 3rd Party Platform Reviews - There are all sorts of online reputation solutions and platforms available for business to take advantage of today.  These systems can help do the heavy lifting for you, often at a price, but their job is to improve your company's reviews by acquiring more of them while protecting your online credibility from malicious activity.   

• Other Approaches to Reviews - Every business is unique.  There's no right or wrong way to ask for a review.  In many cases, your services or products might be that good to where you just receive reviews from customers that you didn't prompt to do anything.  Or maybe you want to think outside the box and create your own customized way to generate more reviews.  The sky is the limit on how you do this. 

HOW TO FAVORABLY RESPOND TO REVIEWS 
Over the years, Critchfield Consulting has analyzed businesses across the United States, and we've seen the responses that business owners reply to reviews with all over the spectrum.  Too often, we see long drawn-out responses if a negative review is given, mostly to try and discredit or dispute the person leaving the poor review. We understand why this happens as a lot of bad reviews are bogus and disappointing to receive but stay away from this trap.