7 Reasons Why Online Reviews are Essential for Your Marketing Agency

Easy access to the Internet has radically changed the criteria for choosing products and service providers. Consumers no longer need to settle for “blind” choices. They have access to online reviews from people who have already experienced the products or services offered, with just one click.

Nearly nine out of ten consumers check reviews before making a purchase. They do not want to read tea leaves when trying a new business. Online reviews are becoming a vital part of the lives of both consumers and business owners. Online ratings are an essential tool in the development of a marketing agency or any other business. They not only help the target audience learn about all the advantages and disadvantages of your products/services but can also increase revenue, improve reputation, get loyal customers, and much more.

Whether they are good or not, the reviews reflect the brand’s reputation on the web. Let’s further discuss why online reviews matter for a marketing business and how to use them to develop your brand. 

Who Needs Online Reviews?

Online reviews are equally important for all: customers, potential buyers, business owners, and even third-party companies.

1. Clients

The opportunity to speak out is one of the main reasons for the popularity of chats, forums, social networks, and any other platforms where you can share your own opinion. Having a negative experience is the most common reason why users leave reviews about a company or product. The desire to share their joy about the purchase or the experience of communicating with a company representative occurs much less often. However, positive reviews are also often found online. Companies motivate their clients to share their opinions and offer them additional discounts and bonuses.

2. Potential customers

Online purchasing has its pros and cons. The latter include the need to make a choice almost blindly. The user does not have the opportunity to touch the product, communicate with the seller face-to-face, and evaluate the product/service based on personal presence. Comments from other users help avoid mistakes, become a victim of fraud, and make the right choice.

3. Business owners

Customer reviews are an invaluable source of useful and essential information about your products, service, website, and company from the hands of an actual consumer. Positive user ratings affect the SEO promotion of the site and help attract new visitors from search engines. Besides, working with reviews on the web can be an effective tool for fighting for customers. Since reviews often influence the purchase decision, their presence will increase sales and profits.

4. Third-party companies

Review sites are not just platforms that allow anyone to speak out. This is a specific type of business that obtains its benefits. Such resources earn popularity and high positions in search results and income due to the creation of advertising space.

Word-of-Mouth Matters: Why are Online Reviews Important for Your Business 

Your company is what Google says it is. Try to enter the first product or brand name that comes to mind in the search engine. Most likely, you will be offered to read reviews in the drop-down suggestions. Do you want to know why this happens?

Search engines like Google or Yahoo strive to create the most comprehensive representation of the desired brand for a visitor. They will include the official website, videos, pages with social networks, and, no doubt, reviews. When choosing a product or service, people tend to trust other people. This is a genuine interest, and search algorithms play along with it.

An online review is a digitized customer experience. Here we have collected seven essential reasons why you should encourage your customers to leave feedback about your digital agency.

1. Boost sales

According to BrightLocal’s local consumer survey, 91% of consumers between the age of 18 to 34 are big believers in online reviews. Client’s turn to reviews to better understand the business. The more positive reviews you have, the better. Regardless of your business industry, a positive online presence will increase your company’s credibility and help strengthen your reputation as a market leader in the specific field. 

No doubt, reviews are one of the best ways to influence sales growth. With their help, you will also get additional unique content. How exactly to motivate customers to leave reviews? To do this, you can come up with many ideas, the most obvious of which is to provide a discount of several percent on the next order.

2. Understand your customers’ needs and improve your service

Client’s dictate their conditions in the modern market. With the development of competition, in areas where there is no monopoly, the satisfaction of needs becomes the key sales factor.

Business reviews give your agency feedback, help track overall customer satisfaction, and give a clear understanding of their desires. More than half of clients expect businesses to respond to their negative reviews. Use this information to improve customer service, quickly and effectively solve the problems they face. When your clients get a positive experience, they will return again and again for your products or services.

Remember, if a person left a negative review about you on the site, it does not mean the collapse of your company. It is an excellent opportunity to improve the quality of goods and services provided.

3. Enhance your SEO

To effectively display your marketing agency in online search, you need to have a competent search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Online reviews play a key role in SEO, as they influence how your company will rank in the search rankings. As you know, reviews form the star rating of the company, which, in turn, is one of the essential ranking factors in local search.

Customer reviews give you a steady stream of positive content highly appreciated by search engines when selecting results to display.

Moreover, Google experts note that pages with reviews that mention a keyword and/or city name have a higher rating in the local Google package. The presence of a keyword in the reviews significantly increases the frequency of displays in the search. 

One more way to be more visible in the search results is to improve the page snippet. Extended snippets have better click-ability, which allows you to attract more users to your site. All these points contribute to the growth of the number of targeted traffic and, therefore, to sales growth.

4. Build trust

Why do customers always use the services of some companies and avoid others? Why can’t some brands attract new clients, despite the expensive advertising and PR campaigns? Surely, you have guessed that it is all about trust. Either your customers trust you, or they do not. If your company looks unreliable in the eyes of consumers, then all your efforts to promote products and services will be doomed to failure.

91% of millennials trust online reviews as much as friends and family. When choosing a product or service, the consumer wants to dispel doubts. The safest way is to check the reaction of the others. If there are no responses, doubts creep in about the reliability of the company. No trust — no sale. Therefore, reviews should give potential customers a direct signal that they are real.

Show your customers real reviews in the proper design and quantity that no one will assume that they are fake!

5. Simplify decision-making

Reviews are a key to the decision-making process since they have an incredible power of persuasion. Reviews are a form of social approval. In this case, both the number and quality of responses are important. A good review makes your commercial offer more understandable, your brand unique, and contributes to the formation of trust.

Conflicting reviews distract from making a purchase. If people see conflicting comments, they will not find out who is right but simply choose a different product. However, this does not mean that you need to remove negative reviews because if your company has only positive recommendations, it can negatively affect customers’ trust.

Despite the popularity of including photos in reviews, 43% of shoppers still say that text-based reviews influence their purchase decisions most vs. photos (33%) and video (24%).

6. Communicate with your audience effectively

All reviews matter, regardless of whether they are posted on your site or third-party resources. Regardless of the type of review, you must accept responsibility for both the good and the bad. People expect to receive the company’s response to any feedback.

By responding to comments, you increase audience loyalty and get feedback on the quality of your work. It is essential to regularly monitor social networks, forums, company catalogs, and other similar websites. Personalized responses show your audience that you do care.

To look professional, answer correctly and politely. Do not get into a heated argument with a person and do not get personal – this will only aggravate the situation. Communicate with your clients, discover the pain points, thank them for the feedback! 

7. Use reviews as a source of additional advertising

Positive reviews on the web will bring huge benefits to your business. If used correctly, they can even replace an expensive marketing campaign. Reviews are similar to micro marketing campaigns that continue to work long after they are published, providing a constant positive image for potential customers, and building brand awareness.

The presence of reviews about the company on the Internet encourages other users to leave their reviews and express their opinion about the product or service. Thus, you get a permanent, and most importantly, free source of advertising among your target audience, which will also cause more trust than paid advertising materials.

How to Encourage Customers to Leave Reviews 

The purpose is a trustworthy, positive comment. We must try to ensure that customers do not limit themselves to concise “Thank you.” It is desirable to get a whole story with pros and cons, wishes, and contacts. Make it clear that the opinion is important to the rest of the consumers and the company. Stay tactful and polite.

Methods to receive more online reviews:

• Just ask. Nothing prevents you from simply leaving a text on the product/service page with a request to express your opinion about a particular product/service/cooperation. Even this simple step will encourage users to be more active.
• Send an email after purchase. You can set up an automatic email with a request to leave a review once ready.
• Offer bonuses. For example, introduce a saving bonus scheme that allows you to get a discount when you reach a certain level. And offer registered users to get bonuses for publishing reviews.
• Simplify the process. The easier it is for your clients to leave a review, the more likely they will do so. Therefore, place the call to action in a visible place, and as an addition to the comments form, offer the possibility of rating a particular product.
• Show your gratitude. People love recognition and appreciation. If you send a thank you letter for the high-quality reviews, they will return to your business again and again.

Agency Vista is confident that reviews are key to many buying and partnership decisions. The platform allows both marketing agencies and marketing tool profiles to have reviews from customers directly on their profile.

The reviews can be pulled directly from Google My Business and Facebook or they can be conducted through a profile’s internal review system. Agency Vista offers Reviews as a Service (RaaS) to verified members to help them get more reviews on their profile by offering an incentive to an agencies current or previous customers. Businesses can easily review agencies, and agencies can request such reviews from their current and past clients.

Incorporating an agency’s client portfolio and genuine customer reviews into the Agency Vista profile helps agencies turn happy customers into a great marketing channel.

Conclusion 

Today, reviews are the most powerful, mutually beneficial tool that any business and any consumer can use. People tend to trust other clients’ recommendations, so you need to make the most of the customer reviews for your marketing agency.

Monitor new mentions about your company and motivate satisfied customers to share their experience of cooperation with you. We wish prosperity to your company and only positive feedback from customers.