Home Chattanooga Marketing Agency 5 Reasons Why Online Reviews Are Critical To Your Brands Success

5 Reasons Why Online Reviews Are Critical

As a Chattanooga marketing agency, we know how critical it is for brands to actively manage the process of earning good online reviews. Here are 5 reasons WHY they matter so much…

Online Reviews Help to Narrow Choices

Can’t decide which business to buy from? One supplier of a product may appear virtually identical to all of its competitors. If the choice comes down to proximity to your home or which store displays the most appealing logo, that’s fine, but today’s consumers know a little research can pay off big. Your brand definitely needs to appear on third-party directory sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc., with optimized listings that win the head-to-head battle of comparison.

Online Reviews Earn Trust

We can’t always count on a friend in real life to offer up a recommendation. Online reviews provide the next best thing. In fact, according to a survey by BrightLocal, 88 percent of consumers consider an online review as trustworthy as a personal recommendation from a friend. While brands want to compile a collection of at least 4-star ratings, the occasional bad review may actually help reinforce the credibility of reviews by highlighting that a brand did not simply cause less favorable comments to disappear. Rather, the way your brand handles negative feedback says much about it. Do you want to make it better? Do you get defensive or thank critics for letting you know where to focus on improving? You can potentially turn a disgruntled customer into a life-long evangelist for your brand by demonstrating that you care and want to do better.

Online Reviews Help to Shape First Impressions

How do people perceive a brand they just newly discover? Reliable? Offering expertise? Capable and professional? The testimonial from a happy customer speaks volumes more than the brand’s own marketing copy claiming to possess these qualities. Anyone can brag about their good qualities online, but what do the people who’ve done business with them actually think?

Online Reviews Encourage Higher Spending

According to recent statistics, customers may spend 30% more on a business with “excellent” reviews. Pre-loaded with excellent reviews, a brand can charge slightly more than a less favorably reviewed competitor based on the presumption that good service and/or a low rate of hassle or returns justify the additional expense.

Online Reviews Help Website Ranking

You increase search visibility by microformatting reviews on your site so Google can index them directly. Each new review written about a product on your site helps improve relevance and authority, boosting the chance of getting pages ranked better.

You may choose to respond to your brand’s reviews yourself or focus on running your business and let a Chattanooga Marketing Agency like Riverworks claim your presence on as many local review sites as possible, monitoring feedback and responding in a manner that minimizes the impact of negative reviews and reinforces your brand messaging on positive ones.