Introduction
“I don’t know what to do about our online reviews!”
You live in a time when online reviews are prominent and powerful, and you may have even written a few reviews yourself, but if you’re like many business stakeholders, you’re confused or overwhelmed by online reviews. Some businesses prefer to hide their heads in the sand, and others take an uneducated stab at dealing with reviews and find themselves facing negative consequences.
One friend of ours, a restaurant owner, told us that he used to read his reviews every night, feeling thrilled at the positive ones and furious at the negative ones. He never shared negative feedback with his head chef—“That would only upset her!”—but he did post angry anonymous responses and eventually got banned from the review site.
Another friend, a boutique owner, told us that she doesn’t look at her online reviews. She’s been running her business for 30 years, and it’s difficult to shift gears now: “I can’t change them, so why bother looking?”
And we’ve lost count of the number of marketing managers who tell us they don’t want to add product reviews to their online stores because they are afraid they’ll all be negative.
Lots of businesses make up their own rules about review responses and management, or choose to ignore their reviews altogether. But there’s a better way.
Managing your reviews does not have to be a white-knuckle ride or a stumble in the dark. There are effective strategies and proven processes that you can apply to your work with online reviews, and there is a large and growing body of research that illuminates the way toward best practices and improved outcomes.
Smart businesses—some of which may be your competitors—are already doing this right. They’re maximizing their visibility and customer acquisition via reviews, using review feedback wisely, responding to reviews with candor and humility (and with future customers in mind), and avoiding unethical practices. This set of activities, which we call online reviews management, is a relatively young area of online marketing, and the businesses that are doing it well have mostly improvised their way to the best practices.
We’ve talked with a lot of businesses in the course of writing this book and as part of our daily consulting work, and we’ve encountered a lot of unproductive misconceptions about online reviews. Perhaps you’ve bought into some of them yourself:
Now that you’ve been relieved of bad ideas that could be holding you back, read on to find the information, tools, and techniques you need to put your online reviews to work for your business!
What’s Inside
This book combines how-to instructions, advice from experts, insider tips from review venue representatives, and insights into consumer behavior that you can use to improve your own online reputation, achieve greater customer satisfaction, and leverage your reviews for customer acquisition.
We’ll also tell you stories of real businesses so that you can learn from their good ideas and avoid the mistakes they made. Here are some of the true stories in this book:
- A service professional who wasted time and money trying to fix a bad review that nobody saw
- A hotel that has it all figured out on TripAdvisor
- A small business owner who attributes $100,000 in yearly revenue to leads that have been generated through reviews
- A restaurant manager who developed a simple, repeatable process for learning from her reviews
Here’s what you’ll find in the chapters ahead:
Conventions Used in This Book
This icon indicates a task assignment. Get your gears turning with practical step-by-step exercises to help you make progress in your own reviews management efforts.
Ethical concerns abound in online reviews. You’ll see this icon to alert you to be cautious about techniques that have the potential to veer into unethical territory, or when we describe examples of businesses that have unfortunately already crossed over to the dark side.
Hang onto your wallet! This icon indicates that we’re talking about your precious greenbacks. Sometimes we’re steering you in a cheap or free direction; other times we’re letting you know when a technique tends to be pricey.
We know you can handle the truth, even when it hurts. This icon indicates a difficult or inconvenient fact that may be hard to hear but is well worth knowing.