Online Marketing Mahem - Handling Negative Reviews

Word-of-mouth advertising used to be something that you had no control over. People would say what people would say. If it was positive, sometimes people would come in and tell you someone recommended they use your business, but if it was negative, you might never know that it even happened.

Now, business owners have an opportunity to use virtual word-of-mouth advertising to their benefit. Review websites have given consumers a place to voice when they are happy with a business or product and when they are dissatisfied. Getting that pat on the back is always great, but should you do anything when the feedback is not so good?

YES, you should and here are just a few reasons why:

1. Retaining a client is much less expensive than attracting a new one.
2. Up-sales and repeat customers are two of the most common reasons for business growth.
3. Prospective customers are using review websites to decide if they should trust you or your product - good customer service is important for others to see.
4. Critical feedback can give you the information you need to grow and offer better services - engaging in the conversation will give you valuable insights.
5. The conversation will take place with or without you - your choice is whether or not you want to have a hand in steering the conversation to your favor. 

Every business will have its ups and downs and a negative review is sure to come along. Here are some basic do's and don'ts when handling a negative review:

DO

• Reach out to the customer and try to mend bridges - try a simple reply to the negative post that says something to the effect of, "I am SO sorry that this happened to you! I would like to gather some more information about what took place so we can make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else - would you be willing to give me a call?" Leave the business phone number and your extension, or let your staff know that the call may be coming through and they should send it through to you right away. Even if the person does not call, everyone else reading along will see that you are trying to work out a solution and that kind of customer service elicits trust.
• Find something for which to apologize. Even if you feel you have no fault in the situation, saying that you are sorry can deflate the anger and tension your customer is feeling. You can always find something to apologize for like: "I'm sorry you left here upset," "I'm sorry that we didn't meet your needs," or "I'm sorry we were not able to correct the situation to your satisfaction."
• Own up if you made a mistake. Most customers know that sometimes things just don't go like we want them to and they are much more willing to mend bridges when they feel you are being honest and taking responsibility.

DON'T

• Take it personally. You pour your life into your business and it is very easy to feel like it is a slap in the face when someone writes a negative review. Take some time and get away from the situation before you respond.
• Post anything publicly that sounds angry, defensive, or accusatory. A good rule is to take what you plan to post publicly and hand it off to someone you trust who is not emotionally involved in the situation. Let him or her give you feedback on how the post sounds and make corrections before you post your reply online. 
• Despair. Everyone gets a negative review once in awhile. Take the feedback, make any changes to your practices that you need to, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and do your best to provide quality services and products and you will find positives coming in again.

About 75-80% of the reviews online are positive reviews, so while business owners get worried about acknowledging that some clients may be unhappy, most customers are pleased and enjoy sharing their insights about their favorite places. Engage in the conversations with those positive reviewers too and watch how their recommendations spread the great news about what you are doing!

Ann Pearson is the CEO of Impressions Review Managing, LLC - a company committed to empowering businesses to manage their online reputations. For more information about the services IRM offers, visit www.impressionsrm.com or email Ann at impressionsrm@gmail.com.

Yahoo and Yelp - Promoting Your Business?

It is no secret that promoting your business through maintaining a strong online reputation and having a lot of positive content on the web is the best way to provide valuable information for prospective customers. Having solid star-ratings on the major review websites is one important piece of this process and the top search engines and review websites jockey to be the leading provider of quality information for consumers.

WSJ Article Photo: "Floor refinisher Dan Tringale
says nearly 50 reviews of his business have
disappeared since Yahoo made its Yelp deal.
'It's a slap in the face.' M. Scott Brauer"

While Google remains king of the search engines and thereby has the biggest impact with the reviews and star-ratings it lists, Yelp is growing and expanding its reach in the online reputation realm by making new deals with the other search engines, Yahoo and Bing. However, Yelp's methods are making many businesses "yelp" in frustration.

As this Wall Street Journal article notes, many businesses were aware that Yelp was joining forces with Yahoo so that Yelp reviews would be seen on Yahoo Local, but many were not aware that this would mean all of their previously posted Yahoo Local reviews would disappear!

For businesses that had few or negative reviews on Yahoo, this may have been a benefit, but some business owners had hundreds of reviews on Yahoo representing years of their reputation and often displaying the kind of quality customer service we all seek to provide, all gone and replaced with only the filtered reviews Yelp displays.

Yelp has come under fire for its filtering system in the past as many businesses feel that their positive reviews were filtered out while the negative reviews seem to have been given a more prominent place on their Yelp page. Others have reported that they were aggressively pursued by Yelp's advertising branch and felt that whether they chose to advertise with Yelp would make a difference in whether positive reviews would continue to be filtered - a claim that Yelp firmly denies.

Whether Yelp's move benefited or negatively impacted your business, it emphasizes the need to have reviews on a wide variety of review websites so your customers will be able to find a well-rounded base of consumer reviews from which to draw as they make their purchasing decisions. With Easter just around the corner, perhaps we should think of it as not having all of our review eggs in one basket.

Ann Pearson is the CEO of Impressions Review Managing, LLC - a company committed to empowering businesses to manage their online reputations. For more information about the services IRM offers, visit www.impressionsrm.com or email Ann at impressionsrm@gmail.com.

What are your questions on managing your online reputation?

Are you confused about online review websites? Wondering what happened to reviews that disappeared? Not sure that reviews are impacting your business? Have tough negative review to handle?  Post your questions below - I will do my best to help!

Online Review Sites Provide Free Marketing Opportunities

Small businesses don't have tons of money to spend on marketing, so we tend to be very careful where that money gets spent and watch for ways we can maximize free sources of marketing. 

Online review websites offer one of those opportunities!

The vast majority of people turn to the internet to research products, businesses, and services. No doubt you have a website to help get the word out about your business, but does it rank high in Google? When you type in your business' name, do you get more than one Google result that would attract potential customers?

Online review websites like Yelp, Yahoo Local, Google+ Local and many others give your customers a place to leave feedback, tips, and information for others interested in using your services or buying your products. These websites have set up a page just for your business by pulling information from public records or third party data aggregators. They have also made it possible for you to claim that page, update the information about your business, and even respond to your customers who have left comments. 

Take the time to visit each of the major review websites for your particular industry. Many of these sites do not charge a fee for claiming your business' page and making updates.

You can also generate positive web content by starting a YouTube channel where you post instructional videos for your clients. Think about the common questions and concerns your clients have - can you do a video to help?

Social media sites like Google+, Facebook, and Pinterest are great places to promote your business and connect with customers and having a page on each of these sites generates another link to your business that will show up in search engine results. 

Depending on the nature of your business, your staffing, and comfort with technology, many of the positive web content options can be used at no-cost to increase your standing on search engines and your presence as an expert in your field. 

Ann Pearson is the CEO of Impressions Review Managing, LLC, a company committed to empowering small businesses to use online reviews to increase their online presence, improve business practices, and market services or products. For more information on IRM's services and programs, visit www.impressionsrm.com. 

Losing Customers? Pay Attention to Your Online Reviews!

How many options do you have for where you go out eat? How about for where you do your banking? Where you buy your hardware supplies? Who grooms your dog?

As consumers, most of us have plenty of options and businesses to choose from and we will go where we feel we get that combination of excellent quality combined with customer service. This also means we are fairly intolerant of poor customer service. As business owners then, we need to be stepping up our customer service to make sure we foster loyalty that will not only keep our current customers, but will attract others!

An infographic put out by Drumbi (a customer service company), shared statistics from a recent American Express survey that suggests that many companies are simply not listening to the customer feedback being generated.

How sad is that?  They could have left angry and never said a word, but they made the effort to reach out to the businesses they frequented and they were ignored!

With almost 90% of consumers moving on to competitors after a bad customer service experience and about half of consumers giving companies only one week to respond to their questions before they choose to leave, now is the time to not only know what is being said online about your company, but also to be responding to your customers.

I was working up an initial evaluation of a company new to managing their online reputation and what stood out as I read through their many various #reviews was the number of times their customers posted questions they hoped would be answered by the company and the number of people who said something to the effect of "I'm posting this in hopes someone from (company XXX) will read this."

It left me wondering how many of those same people continued on with that company and how many gave up and tried one of the competitors.

We have a great tool in online review websites, IF we pay attention and IF we connect with our customers. Will you?

Ann Pearson is the CEO of Impressions Review Managing, LLC - a company committed to empowering businesses to manage their online reputations. For more information about the services IRM offers, visit www.impressionsrm.com or email Ann at impressionsrm@gmail.com. 

Online Marketing - DON'T Ignore Your Customers

I came across an excellent infographic today at Zendesk that gives spot on information on how some negative reviews end up being posted.

The part that really caught my eye was their statistic that 96% of online complaints were a result of double disappointments meaning that something had happened to upset the consumer and then, when they tried to get the matter resolved, they were wronged again.

These things happen to even the best of companies - a series of honest errors, a day where technology fails us completely, or the customer falls prey to a weak link in our system or staffing. It is frustrating to everyone, but when the customer goes public with his or her complaint, if we are paying attention, it can give us the opportunity to right the wrong... or wrongs as the case may be!

If you've checked out my website, you know that I advocate for very careful monitoring of reviews that are posted about your business for just this kind of situation. As soon as you know a negative post has been made, take action to reach the customer and work on mending those bridges. The longer you wait, the more people will see the negative review post and the more damage it will do.

If your business is one where you know your clients and have access to their contact information, the best thing you can do is to pick up the phone and call the customer with a personal apology. Work to determine where the problem(s) originated and offer a solution or recompense.

In situations where you do not have the ability to call the customer, be sure you reach out to them as soon as possible on the public forum where they posted the negative review. Don't go into great detail in your response, but let them know that you have heard their complaint and that you'd like to try to make it right. Ask him or her to contact you and make sure you provide both an email address and a phone number that you will personally check.

Be very careful when you post publicly - remember that your audience is no longer just the person who was wronged. Your audience is now that person and everyone else who is reading along - every potential customer deciding if he or she should use your services or turn to your competitors. It is always in your best interest to be kind!

Hopefully most of this is common sense to you and you can relate to your customer having experienced the double-whammy as a consumer yourself when things just don't go right.

Keep an eye on maintaining excellent customer relations, monitor all of the major review sites closely, and be quick to make amends and you should be able to avoid a customer service fiasco!

Ann M. Pearson is the CEO of Impressions Review Managing, LLC - an online review managing and monitoring service for businesses new to review websites. If your business is needing assistance handling negative reviews or monitoring the high number of review sites, please check our website and program information at 

Legit Reviews or Manipulated?

A friend sent over a question last night asking if I'd ever heard of a company she saw advertised on TV that claimed it could remove negative Yelp posts off of the first page of website search results. As a business owner, I understand the appeal of being able to make negative review posts go away, but I am always wary of burying problems when you have the option of getting them out in the open, so I did some investigating.

This particular company plans to have its own review websites where the businesses that they serve can manipulate the feedback that is left so that only positive reviews are seen. Then, this company hopes to flood Google, Yahoo, and Bing with many of these sites so that they will show up when the customer searches for the business they want to investigate and it will result in the negative Yelp link being moved to the second page of Google's search results.

In theory, this will work whether the business is trying to bury Yelp posts or Foursquare or Insider Pages or any of the legitimate review websites. Sound a little shady to you? Well it sure does to me!

Most negative review posts are based on a misunderstanding or honest mistake made by one of the parties. Now don't get me wrong, sometimes these reviews have roots in some pretty big and pretty ugly problems at these businesses and sometimes there are people who complain just to complain, but the most common negative reviews can be resolved with some good customer service and that is what most people are seeking when they go public with their experiences.

That being said, while negative reviews sting and can harm your business' online reputation, the answer is most definitely NOT to bury the reviews, but to contend with the issues. Fess up if the mistake was yours. Make changes if your business is having repeat problems. Do some extra staff development training if your employees are not meeting customer needs. Change your product line and services if they are not what your customers are asking for. Reach out to your customers if there have been misunderstandings and work to mend bridges!

While there are times we'd all like our problems to just go away, don't fall prey to these kinds of shady companies who will try to play the system and ignore the problems. It can and will come back to bite! Your reputation will soar if you work to reconcile with unhappy clients and let the review sites serve both your customers and your business!

  Ann Pearson is the CEO of Impressions Review Managing, LLC - a company committed to empowering businesses to manage their online reputations through monitoring and responding to customers on online review websites. For more information on IRM, it's services and programs, visit www.impressionsrm.com .