A crucial part of any company’s marketing strategy should be dedicated to online review management. Businesses can leverage social media, multiple review websites, and various other digital marketing channels to creatively engage with customer feedback and improve their marketing materials and overall customer experience.
A survey featured in Forbes further emphasizes the importance of managing online reviews – it highlights that 63% of consumers always read reviews before they make a purchase and 86% share that, after interacting with a business, they prefer to leave a review themselves.
Properly managing online reviews comes with many benefits – companies can increase revenue, build customer satisfaction and trust, and boost business performance by responding to and analyzing online reviews. Neglecting to manage online reviews can harm their business reputation, influence search engine performance, and impact their relationship with existing and potential customers.
At first glance, online review management might seem straightforward, but there are a handful of actionable strategies that your business should be aware of to ensure that you’re effectively handling customer relationships while simultaneously striving to improve overall business performance.
6 Tactics For Managing Online Reviews
1. Set Up a Review Management System
Businesses that use multiple channels to handle reviews piecemeal are setting themselves up for a tedious and painful experience. Monitoring online reviews by platform, responding promptly, and splicing and dicing data from disparate sources to discover actionable strategies can be overwhelming; thankfully, online review management software exists.
Companies can leverage these systems to manage reviews from one place. Customer feedback populates in real-time making it easy to stay on top of addressing customer concerns, and online reviews can in turn be classified by ratings, sentiment, and keywords – data that can help cultivate a positive brand image and supportive business practices.
2. Encourage Customers to Leave Reviews
Negative reviews are a red flag for customers, but the absence of online reviews can also be a deterrent. That’s why it’s essential to request reviews from your audience. Asking customers directly for feedback on social media, for example, is a surprisingly simple way to garner new online reviews, and there are other notable tactics you can weave into your online review management strategy.
Sending out monthly feedback emails or programming pop-up forms to materialize after purchase are instances of automating existing processes to generate more online reviews, and you can even encourage other customers to share their experience by offering incentives, such as discounts, loyalty points, and more.
Successful brands keep online reviews flowing by making the process quick and painless for customers, who can easily become irritated if leaving valid feedback becomes a hassle. Conversely, if buyers are conveniently prompted during the customer journey, the greater your chances are to bring in more reviews.
3. Handle Negative Reviews Professionally
Unfortunately, negative reviews are inevitable. It’s critical to handle negative reviews with grace and agility, as timely and level-headed responses demonstrate that your brand cares about customer sentiment and that you’re dedicated to rectifying difficult situations. It’s generally best practice, with some rare exceptions, to respond to all negative reviews and to keep things short and sweet. With that in mind, here are some quick tips that can help you deal with difficult feedback:
- Stay Polite & Professional: Inflammatory online reviews can sometimes feel like personal attacks, and while your gut reaction might be to lash out, staying even-keeled can help de-escalate the situation and demonstrate your dedication to working toward a solution.
- Get Personal & Pinpoint the Problem: Responding to online reviews, whether good or bad, with a generic template is a surefire way for disaster. Address customers by name and be sure to restate their main concern in your response – this shows you’re engaged and listening.
- Apologize & Adopt a Solutions-Oriented Approach: Acknowledging a customer’s negative experience by starting with an apology goes a long way to diffusing negative reviews; however, apologies mean nothing if they’re empty. When appropriate, be sure to provide solutions to customer concerns. This could range from offering a refund to simply moving the conversation to a private channel or offline to work with the reviewer to remedy the situation.
For reference, here’s an example of how you might deal with a customer who had a bad experience at your business.
“Michael, we’re so sorry you didn’t enjoy dining with us last weekend. Our team prides itself on offering excellent service that’s paralleled only by the food we serve. We’d love a chance to make this up to you – please get in touch with us on social media or drop by in person, and we can work toward a solution. Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback, and we look forward to hearing from you soon.”
4. Leverage Positive Reviews for Growth
Integrating positive reviews into your overarching marketing strategy, and across review sites, is a wonderful way to drive growth. You can spotlight positive feedback with social media posts, integrate positive reviews into email marketing sequences, and even use these resources as the bedrock for case studies.
Beyond content creation, positive reviews can help highlight the features or services your customers value most. Going a step further, they can inform new offerings or even establish internal benchmarks. Overall, enhancing your review management strategy means leveraging positive reviews, and your company would be remiss if it weren’t taking full advantage of all the insights feedback offers.
5. Optimize Your Online Review Management Strategy by Platform
While replying to customer feedback is a crucial component of review management, businesses need to take a broader perspective and understand how community management fits into their overall marketing strategy. Focusing solely on replies can overshadow the many other ways businesses can leverage specific platforms to optimize their online review management.
Creating a Facebook Group for your business, for instance, is a way to build an interactive community for your customers. X lends itself well to letting your business organically engage with other brands and gives you a chance to see how your audience is interacting with trending topics or competition. LinkedIn allows you to mine industry insights and more formally connect with peers in your vertical.
Aim to keep a relatively uniform tone across all platforms, but tailor your content and responses to the medium. Not only does this demonstrate to customers that you’re savvily maintaining your online presence, but it gives you access to a variety of data and other sources you can use to improve operations.
6. Fight Fake Reviews
Generating a steady stream of authentic online reviews is important for businesses and fighting fake reviews – whether they’re positive or negative – is just as crucial. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission detailed how they are cracking down on online review fraud, which broadly encompasses stopping AI-generated fake reviews, preventing businesses from buying reviews, and outlawing the practice of review suppression.
Advancements in technology have made it harder than ever to weed out bots and identify fake reviews; however, review management software and the expertise of a dedicated review manager can help keep fraudulent feedback in check. Make it common practice to audit your platforms so that you can report fake reviews – to that end, here are some tips to keep in mind:
- Study the Style: Fake reviews typically sound unnatural and tend to generically praise a business without offering any concrete details that tie back to their experience. Further, if the language used in the review sounds like it was ripped out of marketing materials or if it’s slammed with superlatives, then you’re likely dealing with a fake review.
- Audit the Account: Looking into the history of a reviewer can go a long way in helping you spot a bot. Usually, these accounts lack verification badges, have been created recently, and demonstrate a track record of putting out reviews in a short flurry during irregular times.
- Reflect on the Reviewer’s Reasoning: Real reviews avoid black-and-white reasoning – if the review in question is exceedingly glowing or overwhelmingly negative with no nuance in between, this could be a red flag.
Reap the Rewards by Revamping Your Approach to Effective Review Management
Review management should be a core aspect of your digital marketing initiative, and failing to optimize your tactics can negatively impact your operations. Properly managing your company’s online reputation can lead to increased revenue, drive customer growth, and reveal important insights into your business. Having a dedicated review manager makes generating new reviews, flagging fraudulent reviews, and putting together a holistic marketing strategy much more streamlined, and can be a great resource if you feel like your business is struggling with inconsistent messaging and branding across different platforms.
If you need help staying competitive, Intellibright’s team of digital marketing experts can help you stay ahead of the curve through a variety of personalized and tailored services to ensure that you’re confidently navigating consumers’ evolving expectations and the industry landscape in 2025.
