Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Consumers often use mobile search at the beginning of their purchase funnel, and Google serves up reviews right at the top of the results for local searches of this type.

For example, this Google search for “brewery” prominently returns a map, plus ratings/reviews for breweries in my area. A specific search for “Upland Brewery” (my local favorite, owned by my friend Doug Dayhoff, who recently startedan entrepreneurship blog) shows that of the ten first-page results returned by Google, six of them include ratings/reviews: Google, Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Zomato, and Beer Advocate.

These are third-party reviews, residing on sites we don’t own or control. People believe in the veracity and accuracy of that content. In fact, 80% of Americans trust at least some ratings and reviews as much as they trust recommendations from friends and family members....

... because fake reviews are not only immoral -- but also illegal

It's never been easy to earn customer's favor, especially in terms of explicit public appraisal like an online review. As responsible business owners we all strive (or at least we should) to encourage our clientele to share their experience with our service and product. Unfortunately, waiting for a natural regular inflow of customer reviews is a "plan" that will often bring rather disappointing results.

The thing is You Need a Strategy. A strategy that is better than the one already adopted by your strong competitors. A strategy that will turn your customers into your private brand advocates. It will not take overnight to plan it and execute it but it will make a difference in the long run.

Having your own Review Gathering Strategy is important. So, if you are clueless of how your business could benefit from it, you've finally found out the reason why you suck at securing customer reviews, now you only need to work your way around it....