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Using Reviews and Testimonials in Your Marketing Plan
Customer testimonials and reviews are perfect, custom-made marketing tools. So are you encouraging customer reviews and putting them to work for you?
Reviews and testimonials have never been more important to the customer journey. Entire businesses have been built on reviews like Yelp and TripAdvisor! A customer’s opinion allows you to see what you're doing right, what you can improve on, and lets the rest of the world see what they're missing.
Don't be afraid of a negative review or try to hide it. Every business will have unhappy or angry customers. How you respond makes all the difference. Reply to negative reviews publicly and apologize. Offer to make it right and ask them to connect offline. Then if things really go south, it’s not on display, but there’s a record of you trying to fix the problem. Use those negative reviews as if they were a professional critique to improve your brand.
I always encourage a client to allow space on their website for testimonials. You can screen them if you are wary of being blasted with nonconstructive feedback, but don’t edit responses so much that it looks made-up. No business is perfect and prospective customers will be suspicious of what you’re hiding.
In addition to appealing to flesh-and-blood web visitors, reviews and testimonials will also boost your SEO. Include them in all your marketing from print pieces to emails, in organic social media and digital ads, and of course on your website. Together with comments on Google My Business and similar review platforms like Yelp, customer endorsements add to your website’s relevancy and authority.
If you aren’t encouraging customers to leave reviews and responding to them promptly, this is your wake-up call! Use what you already have and set up a plan today for increasing the number of testimonials. Then incorporate those testimonials and reviews into your marketing strategies.
Ready to get started? If you need a review page added to your website or want to feature testimonials throughout your site, the Sprocket team is here for you! Call us to talk it over and get a quote.
Photo by Mikael Blomkvist
This article is an update to “Reviews and Testimonials in Your Marketing Plan” dated 11/2/2016.
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Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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