The Biggest Misconception of Online Reviews

Whether you’ve been in business for five months, five days, or even five minutes, you want to do everything in your power to keep your customers happy. After all, without your customers, you don’t have a business. 

In the age of social media, it’s more critical than ever before that we keep our customers happy to prevent them from leaving a bad online review. Of course, it’s this fear of receiving bad online reviews that scares businesses from leveraging the power of online reviews to grow. 

The reality is that leveraging online reviews, even the bad ones, can generate untold amounts of growth. We understand it can be a little scary at first, but once you start collecting, managing, and leveraging online reviews you’ll see how safe, powerful, and easy they are. Businesses shouldn’t fear online reviews, they should embrace them and use them to take their company to new heights.

With this in mind, let’s explore a little deeper the biggest misconception of online reviews - thinking online reviews are dangerous for your business.

The danger of online reviews - are they something to be afraid of?

According to AdWeek:

“54% of businesses are afraid of online reviews.” They also reported that “79% of businesses believe that online reviews play an important role in influencing consumer decision making.” However, “75% of businesses claim that collecting online reviews helps to gain new customers.” 

 

What do these statistics about online reviews really tell us? In a nutshell, they tell us even though asking for and receiving online reviews can feel a little scary, having a customer feedback system like this in place can ultimately help a business grow. While some businesses stand by the fear that reviews could harm their business or that they hurt more than help, the facts and figures simply don’t support this.

Some businesses will even dip their toes in the water with reviews, and then run away scared the moment a bad review comes in. Their first thought is to abort the mission and delete everything being said about them because they think zero reviews are better than a bad one, but doing this isn’t the solution.  

Not having an online review strategy doesn’t mean you can escape negative reviews being written about your business. Human nature suggests it's far easier to complain than to compliment, and today it’s simpler than ever to hold brands accountable for their service. Social media not only facilitates this, but it also encourages it, and the impact and reach are exponential. 

A pro-active online review strategy ensures you’re set-up to capture the positive customer experiences and handle the negative ones, which means you’re able to build a more balanced online profile and customers can get an accurate reflection of your business.

Many of our customers have had this same fear with regards to online reviews and take the wrong approach of avoiding online reviews, but once they start collecting, managing, and leveraging online reviews with Hellopeter they begin to find comfort in their results. They realise it isn’t as daunting as they thought it was, and when they experience the tremendous value online reviews provide their business, they can’t help but think they should’ve done it sooner.

Working through the fear - the better way to handle reviews

In the coming posts, we’re going to share what you should do when reviews come in - regardless of whether they’re good or bad. We’ll also explain how you can develop an online reputation management strategy that will help you look good, not only to your current customers, but to your potential customers too. Finally, we’ll share how using reputation management software can save you time and money, while helping you build your brand into the powerhouse it deserves to be.

For now, we’ll leave you with this teaser of things to come:

• Online reviews, even bad ones, are a good thing when you use them correctly
• What your customers think about your business isn’t something to be feared
• Asking for reviews can help you grow your business in ways you might not even realise
  

Don’t want to wait for the next posts to find out about how online reviews can grow your business? Prefer to start collecting reviews today? Click here to download the complete guide