{"id":9700,"date":"2017-08-28T08:32:13","date_gmt":"2017-08-28T06:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.invoiceberry.com\/?p=9700"},"modified":"2023-11-07T15:37:56","modified_gmt":"2023-11-07T14:37:56","slug":"use-customer-reviews-business-advantage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/use-customer-reviews-business-advantage\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Use Customer Reviews to Your Business Advantage"},"content":{"rendered":"

It cannot be overstated how important customer reviews are for your small business. If you don\u2019t believe me, check out BrightLocal\u2019s 2014 survey results<\/a>: 88% of customers treat online reviews the same as personal recommendations.<\/p>\n

Eighty-eight percent!<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not a fluke either. According to a Dimensional Research study sponsored by Zendesk<\/a>, 66% of all respondents reported reading online reviews before buying anything.<\/p>\n

Those are big numbers, and that\u2019s the difference between your business getting sales or not.<\/p>\n

So to the question of whether or not you should be getting customer reviews<\/a> for your business is easy to answer: yes!<\/p>\n

Now, we\u2019ll look at how you can use these reviews so that your small business will benefit the most.<\/p>\n

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\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tProven Customer Retention Strategies for Small Businesses<\/span><\/a>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIt can be 5-25 times cheaper to keep a customer than get a new one\u2014which is why small businesses need to work on their customer retention strategies.<\/span>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tREAD MORE<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Just ask customers for reviews<\/h2>\n

The first thing to tackle is to make sure that you can get some quality reviews from your current customers.<\/p>\n

That may sound difficult, but in fact it is not. BrightLocal\u2019s Local Consumer Review Survey<\/a> showed that 70% of consumers would be willing to leave a review if they were asked.<\/p>\n

Therefore, in order to get your customer reviews, all you have to do is ask your customers for reviews. Easy, right?<\/p>\n

Well, of course not. You just have to find the way to get the question to them. It can be on your website or blog. It can be in your brick-and-mortar store.<\/p>\n

You can even put it on an invoice. As long as you get the question out to them, you should be able to get a good amount customer reviews.<\/p>\n

\"One
One of the biggest secrets of getting customer reviews is to just ask<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And you don\u2019t really need that many reviews. According to the same BrightLocal survey, 90% of consumers make up their mind to purchase after reading only 10 reviews or fewer.<\/p>\n

Put customer reviews on your website and social media<\/h2>\n

Now that you\u2019ve got your customer reviews, you need to display it proudly so that others may see them.<\/p>\n

The others who you want to show the reviews to are your potential customers, so you should be putting up the reviews in places that they\u2019re looking for reviews.<\/p>\n

In this day and age there are two places: your Facebook page and your website.<\/p>\n

Potential customers will either type your business name followed by \u201creview\u201d into Google or they\u2019ll check out your Facebook page to see what the interactions are there. If they see negative comments or incidents, they will be turned off.<\/p>\n

However, if they see a customer who\u2019s had a problem and your business responding politely and professionally (and effectively), then that interaction will help convince them to buy.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why you should ask your customers to leave reviews on your Facebook page so that others will easily see it.<\/p>\n

You also need to put the reviews on your website, normally in the lower part (below the fold) of your homepage.<\/p>\n

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\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t22 Ingenious Social Media Marketing Tips from the Experts<\/span><\/a>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSocial media marketing is an absolute must for all businesses. So we decided to ask some business experts about their best social media marketing tips.<\/span>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tREAD MORE<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Use social reviews to boost sales<\/h2>\n

Another reason to use social reviews (besides what\u2019s mentioned above) has to do with trust.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not the first person in the world to realize that customer reviews are crucial for increasing sales.<\/p>\n

Many businesses have caught on to this fact, and those business owners can either be ethical or unethical.<\/p>\n

By ethical I mean simply following the steps I\u2019ve outlined so far. Get honest reviews from customers (without offering payment or reward) and use them in your marketing.<\/p>\n

Unethical reviews are when business owners (or their marketers) decide to fabricate reviews.<\/p>\n

These reviews have the same goal\u2014to get customers to buy. However, they are often easy to spot, having normally low-quality English or stock photography when they include the picture.<\/p>\n

Because of that, many customers have grown wary of reviews. Having the picture of the reviewer helps with that, but even then they can be skeptical.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where social reviews come in handy. A review on your Facebook page (or on your website with a Facebook plugin) can help alleviate that distrust by attaching a real person to that review.<\/p>\n

\"Make
Make sure your customer reviews appear on your social pages as well<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The potential customer can quickly visit that person\u2019s Facebook profile and see that the reviewer is a real, full human being.<\/p>\n

With this increased trust, you\u2019ll set your business apart from the many unethical businesses out there.<\/p>\n

Use reviews in your marketing materials<\/h2>\n

You don\u2019t only need to market to those people who haven\u2019t yet interacted with your business.<\/p>\n

It can be even better for your sales to nurture those people who\u2019ve read your blog, subscribed to one of your free offerings, or in some way gave you their emails.<\/p>\n

With that, you need to start sending out newsletters and other marketing materials with the reviews attached at the bottom of your post.<\/p>\n

The reviews shouldn\u2019t be the main purpose of the communication. For example, if you\u2019re sending out email newsletters, you should discuss the topic (new blog posts, updates, etc.) but make sure to include the reviews near the end of the newsletter.<\/p>\n

That way, the subscribers will become primed to buy from you. After all, by subscribing they\u2019ve taken the first steps towards becoming a customer.<\/p>\n

Your job is to remove any friction and get them to the purchase. Customer reviews will be a tremendous help with that.<\/p>\n

With the right customer reviews strategy, you\u2019ll be able to reel in those potential customers lurking close by but not yet buying. With increased sales, you can spend more time and energy into getting even more customers for your growing business.<\/p>\n

Good luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It cannot be overstated how important customer reviews are for your small business. If you don\u2019t believe me, check out BrightLocal\u2019s 2014 survey results: 88% of customers treat online reviews the same as personal recommendations. Eighty-eight percent! That\u2019s not a fluke either. According to a Dimensional Research study sponsored by Zendesk, 66% of all respondents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[126,487,51,486,47],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/feature-customer-reviews-advantages.jpg?fit=1380%2C580&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5m6q6-2ws","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9700"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19949,"href":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700\/revisions\/19949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.invoiceberry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}