Reviews are just another form of communication between customers and brands. Providing what your customers are looking for and doing right by them is one of the things that inspire you. What’s more impactful is the outstanding experience that you provided to the customer can be paid back with a good review.
Google reviews are highly impactful and hold the power to make or break a business. Positive reviews develop a sense of trust and prove to be valuable time and again. With positive reviews comes a risk of negative reviews as well. Repercussions of mismanaging negative reviews can be catastrophic.
Eight out of every ten customers rely on genuine reviews. Studies show that about 94% of people avoid investing in a brand because of hostile reviews. Managing negative reviews while encouraging positive reviews can be difficult. People can decide not to trust your brand because of mismanaged negative reviews.
The two most significant platforms for reviews are Google and Facebook. Let’s start digging into these platforms and figure out which might be more beneficial.
Google Reviews
Google is the go-to search engine for potential customers. Doing anything and everything to improve your Google reviews is a must. Along with increasing your SEO ranking, Google reviews can spur your business to the top of the world’s most important search engine.
Impressing Google can be easy with positive Google reviews. The first thing a user does for research is Google. With Google reviews customers get everything they need right from the first step, making it easy for them to have that initial trust in your brand.
Facebook reviews
Facebook has an active user base of about 2 billion people, its popularity is beyond question. It is a part of users’ daily routine and growing your reviews with Facebook can significantly benefit your brand. This way you not only build trust but improve your social proof.
Facebook is a social media platform that does not affect your SEO rankings but this platform lets people speak up and has been a part of their life. People are comfortable with Facebook as compared to any other platform. Facebook allows making conversations with brands making it, even, easier for people to leave reviews.
Where and how can you leverage reviews?
With the growing importance of reviews its essential for website owners to start leveraging reviews on their websites. Here’s how you can embed reviews into your website.
User-generated content platforms like Taggbox is one of the best approaches you can use to embed review widgets on your website. These platforms offer you various themes and designs with which you can develop fast-loading, responsive review widgets.
You also have the authority to display relevant content and eliminate unwanted reviews using the moderation feature. These platforms also offer you with analytics feature which allows you to get a detailed report about the impressions, number of views, user engagement, etc on the widget which helps you to maintain the widget’s performance,
You can utilize Google reviews on your social media platforms and embed Facebook and Google reviews on your web pages like the about page, or showcase reliable product-specific reviews on your product pages. Apart from this you can also feature reviews in your sidebar, footers, and header, or transform them into banners.
Advantages of Reviews
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Trust
Maintaining existing customer loyalty and acquiring new customers are the two most important aspects of brand growth. This can be achieved with trust. Reviews have the potential to gather trust within your customers.
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Improvement
Google reviews help you with finding what bothers your customers and give you the bandwidth to improve your solutions. Sometimes when customers mention specific features and what improvements can be done, it is a great approach to build better products that your customers relate to.
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Effective business decisions
Reviews on Google influences people to a great extent. With Google Reviews your brand can act on substantial information. Reviews help you make effective business decisions on improvement and offer you constant growth.
Disadvantages of Reviews
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Difficult to get Genuine Reviews
As it happens in most cases, people upload a review without giving it much thought and sometimes are not accurate. There is a small ratio of people actually posting genuine reviews. There is a chance some people bought your product just to leave a negative review and make it look authentic. It is very difficult to isolate such users amongst all the negative reviews.
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Increased customer expectation
When people provide Google Reviews especially highlighting a certain product feature, they expect the brand to mend it. It is extremely difficult for brands to mold their products according to every improvement review which users do not always understand. Such high expectations are unavoidable hindrances in marketing and promotion strategies.
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Biased Opinion
People are usually biased towards a competitor’s brand and no matter how efficient your product or service is, you will get a negative review. Such consequences are unavoidable and hold a great threat to the brand’s presence and growth.
Which is more important?
Both Google and Facebook hold the power to influence potential customers and encourage existing customers to leave reviews. Your current marketing strategy decides which platform is more important right now.
If you wish to drive website traffic, Google reviews will be more important as compared to Facebook. However, if you are currently focussing on acquiring more customers through social media campaigns, Facebook reviews are your best approach.
Well, do not worry, you don’t necessarily need to choose between the two. Focus on acquiring more reviews regardless of your platform. Feed customers with impeccable experiences to encourage them to leave more and more reviews.
Handle negative reviews efficiently. Reply empathetically to the reviews, understand the user’s problem and try your best to provide a suitable solution, and focus on transforming their experience into a positive one. Make it worth a while, good enough to convert their reviews into a positive ones.
