Positive online reviews are a goldmine for your business, no matter what industry you are in. Your online reputation is a powerful tool that you can use to attract more qualified leads and convert more customers.
Previously, we’ve explained the incredible method you can use to automate online review generation and how you can manage your reviews. Generating more reviews and responding to them accordingly is only the first step. Once you’ve obtained more online reviews and earned a higher star rating, there’s still more to be done. Next, you must focus on the key to growing your business with online reviews: leveraging them correctly.
On their own, reviews still help your business, but there are a few simple ways to amplify their impact tenfold. How can you best leverage your positive online reviews to help your business? In this post, we break down the simplest, most effective strategies for leveraging positive online reviews. Read on to find out more.
Organically
Online reviews automatically help you leverage your reputation and attract customers to your business. How does a top-rating naturally help your business? A high star rating and many positive reviews organically help your business!
SEO is a mystical creature, we but know that online reviews play a big role. Having a higher star rating, especially on Google reviews, helps your SEO. A higher SEO means that your business shows up on the first page for the relevant keywords, giving you greater visibility. Not only will you have an improved SEO, but your business maps listing will also show up higher as well.
Showing up higher in the search is only one organic benefit of reviews. Additionally, your online reviews make you the obvious choice compared to competitors. Imagine that you are looking for a local pizza shop. First of all, when you search for pizza one shows up higher on the search results. Regardless of the position, you will notice reputation. Are you more likely to try out the pizza place with 2 reviews or the one with 100+ positive reviews that describe the restaurant in detail? It’s a no brainer! Everyone would choose the pizza shop with an abundance of positive online reviews.
Set yourself apart from the competition organically by generating and managing your reviews. Online reviews allow you to naturally leverage your reputation from the moment potential customers begin to search for your kind of business. You will show up higher in local results, which is critical for local and multi-location businesses, and you will be the obvious choice.
Website
Your online reputation will organically help you by boosting your SEO and credibility, but there are more ways you can leverage the benefits of your positive reviews. Once your website shows higher in the search results, more people will end up on it. The next step is to continue to build their trust and grab their attention with your website. How can you do this? With your online reviews.
You should definitely include online reviews on your website. Online reviews are free promotion content that you can display throughout your website to further set yourself apart.
Social proof is a primary motivator that convinces prospective customers to choose you. When people decide whether or not to purchase an item or to visit a business, they want to first know what other people thought. It’s natural to be wary of a business’s trustworthiness when all you see is their website or online information. Break this barrier down and demonstrate your credibility right off the bat with your online reviews.
There’s no better way to get free, natural social proof than via your online reviews! You don’t just need to list your review in one spot. You can pull relevant reviews and place them throughout your website.
For example, include a few general reviews on your homepage. These reviews should describe the overall experience of working with your business and how you solved the customer’s pain point. Next, you can use relevant reviews on key pages, like your service pages or product pages. Include reviews that specifically mention one of your products or services on that specific webpage.
Heading back to the pizza restaurant example. On your homepage, you should include reviews that mention how great the service, atmosphere, staff, and food as a whole is. Pick reviews that cover many aspects of your business and promote your restaurant as a whole. Include a review that raves about your specialty BBQ pizza on the product page for the BBQ pizza. Create a dedicated reviews or testimonials pages where you put all of the best reviews. You can also list reviews on landing pages to help drive conversions.
There’s no reason not to include your reviews on your website. If you do not already display your online reviews on your website now is the time to start. Think of reviews as free advertising. In many cases, including reviews on your website is the difference-maker. In so many situations, listing your reviews on your website can be the difference between getting a phone call or turning that potential customer away.
Advertising
Online reviews can do wonders for your ads. Consumers are increasingly doubtful of branded content and ads. No matter how aesthetically pleasing and well-designed your advertising is, it won’t work if customers don’t trust it. Set your business apart with online reviews.
Leverage your online reviews in your advertising. This includes a search engine or social media ad. Reference your top-rated status and even consider including a quote from a review. Mentioning your top-rated status in your ads significantly increases your chances of earning a click-through and ultimately drawing in customers.
Keep in mind that reviews can increase your visibility for search engine ads, which is incredibly valuable. Three paid ads and Google map results show up above any organic results, so maximizing the efficacy of your paid ads is essential.
Google will display your star rating and number of reviews next to your search ad. Imagine the difference between being a search ad with few reviews or a low star rating, and the one right next to it with an incredibly high rating and a ton of reviews. Online reviews help you differentiate yourself from all of the other listings, even when it comes to ads.
Your reviews also serve as strong validation and social proof on your social media ads. Incorporating your online reviews into your social media ads helps earn engagement and demonstrate credibility. Highlight a quote from a review and share your star rating and the number of reviews.
The bottom line is that consumers trust ads more when they include online reviews.
Leverage Online Reviews to Leverage Reputation
By incorporating your top-rated status and real online reviews into your organic search, website, and advertising efforts, you can control the opportunities that come for your business. Once you’ve done all of the hard work to generate and manage your online reviews, it’s important to capitalize on your amazing online reputation.
There are so many different ways that you can take advantage of your high star rating and many positive reviews, but the three keys are organic, website, and advertising. Failing to utilize these elements means you are wasting your top-rated status! Your top-rated status is a tool that you can leverage to help your business grow, and the key is to capitalize on it immediately.
The Entire System
Leveraging your online reviews and positive reputation is only one key aspect of creating business certainty. First, you must manage reviews, which includes inviting people to leave reviews, generating reviews, and responding to reviews. Next, you tackle leveraging reputation organically, via your website, and with your ads. Once you are generating a high number of reviews and leveraging your top-rated status, the next step is to send that traffic to a high converting sales funnel. The high-converting sales funnel ensures that you have more selling opportunities, and it includes capturing leads, pre-qualifying customers, and following up.
As you can imagine, this powerful system is a cycle. After propelling customers through the high-conversion funnel, you will invite them to leave a review which helps you generate more reviews. You use your successful conversions to continue to power your business certainty system.
The only issue with this incredible system is that it takes time and expertise. Mastering each stage and subset of the process requires knowledge and tools for the best practices. When done correctly and efficiently, this strategy will help you grow your business beyond your dreams.
That’s where we can help. The experienced team at Attract and Close created this powerful system to help your business grow. Our system includes review generation and online reputation management, leveraging reviews, and sending your attracted traffic to a sales funnel. Not only did we create this system, but we also have the expertise to help you perfect it for your business. To learn more about how we can help you leverage your online reviews, schedule your free discovery call with Attract and Close HERE.