Should You Stop Asking Your Customers for Reviews?

Because businesses have actively solicited customer reviews (and other feedback) for years, many online review sites look like over-caffeinated click-a-thons. It’s hard to sort out the helpful from the hype. But it’s clear that consumers want to consider other customers’ opinions and experiences before they buy – in other words, businesses need reviews. Savvy online shoppers, however, are becoming jaded, as they know they must read between the lines, sorting the real reviews from those that were planted or paid-for.

Business owners are sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place, too.

Yelp and Yext are both trying to help, in different ways.

Yext, the New Kid on the Block

Most people probably have heard of or have used Yelp’s reviews. These reviews live only on the Yelp site and help educate Yelp visitors on the businesses listed on Yelp.

Yext reviews are different. Yext reviews appear on only your site so are visible to all your visitors, and importantly, no competitors’ reviews appear (unlike on Yelp, where competitor reviews are 1-click away).

Also, and very notably, the average number of stars your business receives will appear in-line with Google’s search rankings.

How important is that?

According to Yext, internet users click 50% more often on starred listings than those without: because the stars make them stand out and because reviews truly influence buying behavior.

Remember, Search Engine Optimization (getting more traffic from search engines) is a 2-step process. First, your page has to rank well in Google’s search results (ideally on the first or second page) and second, visitors have to click on your listing rather than all the others on the search result page.

Most people forget that second step and that those noticeable stars will lead to more organic visitors to your site. (Read more about how the stars can can boost local rankings.)

Yelp Reviews

Since 2004, Yelp users have written about 150 million reviews, and the company works hard to help consumers sort out what’s real and what’s helpful. So while it may sound counter-intuitive for a review platform, Yelp strongly, clearly, and repeatedly has told businesses using its site to STOP asking their customers for reviews.

In 2018, that’s probably just a little too idealistic. “Everyone’s doing it” isn’t the best defense, but let’s be real: everyone’s doing it.

Wherever sales are made – online or off – shoppers are implored (and incented) to provide reviews. Receipts from Taco Bell, CVS, Kohls, Famous Footwear (among others) beg shoppers to rate their services, sauce packets, shoes, and to describe their service experience. Most of those requests come with incentives, and customers who complete reviews earn rewards ranging from points, coupons and free sandwiches to sweepstakes entries.

For its part, Yelp doesn’t seem to mind going against the grain. The company’s clearly-stated policy prohibits listed businesses from soliciting reviews directly from customers. Yelp regularly identifies organizations it believes is “gaming the system, ” and penalizes them.

But Everyone’s Doing It – And You Should Too

We like that Yelp is doing what it can to actively weed out reviews that don’t meet its standards.

The ground rules it has established for businesses are designed to serve customers as well as listed businesses (and Yelp of course).

In our opinion, Yelp should be concerned about the businesses that are trying to game the system (contests, discounts, fake reviews) but not target those which are acting in good faith when requesting that customers rate and review their products and services.

It should be noted that Yelp does recognize that most businesses are playing fair: the company points out that it recommends nearly three-quarters of the reviews on its site.

So Ask Your Customers for Reviews – And Don’t Stop There

Your prospects read reviews and weight them heavily in purchasing decisions. According to Forbes, “88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.“

We recommend that our clients structure their businesses and train their staffs to stack the odds in their favor of getting good reviews by providing great products and services. We also recommend they manage those reviews by requesting that happy customers post reviews using Yext. The reviews can be automatically fed to a website – usually the Home or Testimonials Page, * and their stars will also appear in Google results when prospects are searching for your business.

Takeaway: Yext reviews and ratings being displayed on your website is good – and at the same time, your website gets more natural search traffic. A no brainer given Yext’s modest cost.

In other words, as long as you’re treating your customers (and review site partners) honestly, asking for reviews is good – and Yext reviews can make a good thing even better. Yelp reviews appear only on Yelp, but, that’s not necessarily bad. If you’re a local, B2C business in fact, it could be critically important so Yelp has its place in the review universe too. (Yelp may be all a local restaurant needs!)

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Questions about managing customer reviews, Yext, local search, or understanding how reviews sites affect buying behavior? Contact us.

* you do have a Testimonials page on your site, don’t you?

Best of Growth Spurts – Focus on Customer Feedback and Reviews

In this month’s content roundup, we’ve focused on the many different ways businesses use customer feedback and reviews in their day-to-day marketing and business development. Reviews can be used to boost your online, local presence via SEO. Through reviews, your fans can help do your marketing for you. Survey feedback can be used as a source of ideas for your content marketing plan. Feedback can be used for product development and changes, and also to retain customers by making them feel valued, respected, listened to.

Here are 5 timely and relevant posts that look at getting the most from customer feedback and reviews.

Three Customer Feedback Myths That Deserve Busting, marketingprofs.com – Surveys are invaluable tools for making sure you’re meeting customer expectations. Learn why simplicity is probably the best route to go. Read the full article here.

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Maximize Your Local Listings Presence with Online Reviews, yext.com – In today’s mobile-first world, reviews drive awareness and consumer decisions. Businesses need a comprehensive review strategy to beat the competition. Read the full article here.

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How User Reviews Can Drive Your Business – A The New York Times article looking at how online reviews and social connections are causing a shift in the balance of power from marketers to consumers concludes that no longer do marketers have the ability to fully control their sales messages, as consumers are using online reviews and ratings to inform their purchase decisions. Read more about the study here.

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Creating Magnetic Marketing Content with Surveys, surveygizmo.com – One of the many uses of surveys is to generate content for your blog. You can ask for feedback, report on findings, create a “top questions asked” series, and much more. Read more here.

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How Successful Companies Engage Customers During the New-Product Development Process, marketingprofs.com – From large-scale intelligence gathering, like crowdsourcing or social listening, to a narrower, targeted approach, like focus groups and advisory councils, successful B2B businesses use customer feedback to ensure they are on track with product development. Read more here.

Client’s Collaboration with Sales Renewal Leads to New Strategies, Brand, Site, Marketing Programs and … a Blue Ribbon

It is generally rare for two different companies, let alone a client and its vendor, to work together so thoroughly, on so many levels, that the resulting whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

However, thanks to Sales Renewal’s revolutionary JointSourcing Solution (a unique hybrid combining elements of joint venturing with elements of outsourcing, in which shared risks and rewards align Sales Renewal’s economic incentives with those of its clients), such synergies are the norm.

If you’ve been wondering how JointSourcing and its three, Blueprint, Build and Sell steps actually works in practice, in the real world, this latest installment of our JointSourcing in Action Case Studies series is for you.

This issue provides a detailed, step-by-step view of how Sales Renewal partnered with our client MATsolutions to overcome their business, marketing and sales challenges to produce a marketing & sales system neither company could have developed as quickly or efficiently on its own. One result of the collaboration: MATsolutions receiving the prestigious Blue Ribbon Small Business of the Year for 2014 award from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

As Steve Wedler, VP Sales and Marketing, MATsolutions has said:

“Over the last year with Sales Renewal’s critical assistance, we’ve rebranded the company, launched a new e-commerce site and introduced marketing programs and supporting technologies that truly distinguish MATsolutions from its competitors. Having two highly dedicated and bright teams responsible for this transformation has allowed us to deliver something far superior than either team alone could have. This award is a great acknowledgement of the advances we have made.”

Read the JointSourcing in Action case study.

How to Grow, and NOT, Grow Sales: SalesMemes 26 – Review Magic

Quick Tip Tuesday: July Digital Marketing Advice

Each month we start our Quick Tip Tuesday series with a roundup of useful, hands-on digital marketing advice from experts in their fields. We’ve extracted the most useful information into tips you can use, and we’ve also provided a link to the full articles in case you’d like to learn more.

Looking for more information like this? The Sales Renewal Advice from Across the Web page features a selection of the best, actionable marketing & technology advice and, importantly, adds our perspective. Think of it as a Marketing Clipping Service for the modern world.

Here, then, are our favorite tips for the month:

Customer Reviews to Drive Revenue: We’ve written about this before, but we can’t emphasize it enough. Customer reviews and testimonials are important for all businesses, but are essential for businesses with a local presence. From providing excellent customer service and never paying for reviews to making sure your site has the correct schema markup for the search engines, this article offers five helpful tips for managing local reviews. Not sure where to get started? As you can see from this Infographic on MarketingProfs.com, Yelp is often a good place to begin.

Making Sure Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly: With more and more ways for visitors to view your website, having a responsive site (one that adapts to the screen size and platform of the user) is a given. As reported on TechCrunch.com, Google is now helping address this poor user experience in two ways. First, it will let users know if the website is not properly set up for smartphones and instead of sending you to the search page you’ve requested sends you to a single home page (“faulty redirects”). Then it lets you decide whether to proceed or not. Second, if you have Webmaster Tools enabled, Google will send a message if it detects that any of your site’s pages are redirecting smartphone users to the homepage as well as any faulty redirects it detects in the Smartphone Crawl Errors section of Webmaster Tools. Details here.

Twitter Tips to Keep Followers Following: This Ragan.com article offers some useful tips for managing your Twitter account. Highlights:

• Don’t rely on automatic reposting of your content – write content specific for your Twitter feed
• Stay away from ALL CAPS
• Don’t overuse #hashtags
• Use a shortened URL service for links – makes a better visual presentation of your content
• Interact with others – use mentions in your tweets, for example

Content Marketing Idea Generator: Stuck in rut with your content marketing? Facing a writer’s block? This article introduces five keyword-based tools – like Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator – that may just help you get going again. Read more here.

How to Grow, and NOT, Grow Sales: SalesMemes 36

Sales Renewal’s Critical Assistance Helps Client Win Small Business of the Year, Blue Ribbon Award

Everybody strives for excellence, but only a small portion of American business people achieve it. In fact, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, each year only the “cream of the small business crop” are worthy of receiving its prestigious Blue Ribbon Small Business of the Year award.

That’s why it’s so gratifying that Sales Renewal client MATsolutions, of Irving, Texas, today announced it has been named a 2014 Blue Ribbon Small Business of the Year Award winner by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The award is given each year to the elite group of small businesses best demonstrating exceptional business practices in specific areas, including: strategic planning, marketing, employee development, community involvement, and customer service. In 2014, MATsolutions is one of only 100 winners selected by the U.S. Chamber from a record number of applicants from across the nation.

“We’re pleased to receive this prestigious Small Business of the Year award, ” said Steve Wedler, VP Sales & Marketing, MATsolutions. “Over the last year with Sales Renewal’s assistance, we’ve rebranded our company, launched a new e-commerce site and introduced marketing programs and supporting technologies that truly distinguish MATsolutions from its competitors. Having two highly dedicated and bright teams (our own and Sales Renewal’s) responsible for this transformation has allowed us to deliver something far superior to what either team alone could have created. This award is a great acknowledgement of the advances we have made.”

“Having two highly dedicated and bright teams responsible for [rebranding the company, launching a new e-commerce site and many new marketing programs] has allowed us to deliver something far superior than either team alone could have.”

– Steve Wedler, VP Sales and Marketing, MATsolutions

Growing Range of Capabilities and Offerings

In December 2013, MATsolutions changed its name and brand identity to better reflect a growing range of test and measurement equipment capabilities and offerings, including a stronger emphasis on calibration and repair. In addition to the name change, key features of the rebranding included:

• A new website that can process orders, RFQs and payments and manage communications with customers wishing to buy online;
• The MATrewards loyalty program, designed to reward MATsolutions customers for their loyalty by providing them tangible and financial value;
• Unique guarantees, including the No Surprises and the Price Match guarantees, to help provide clients the peace of mind they need in today’s challenging test and measurement marketplace;
• A consistent, online marketing effort that includes a monthly newsletter and specials; a weekly blog series, and an active social media presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.

We at Sales Renewal get a lot of satisfaction from doing our jobs, and doing them well. We feel even more satisfied when our clients benefit in the form of increased sales and revenues. But helping a client win an important award like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Blue Ribbon Small Business of the Year award: to us, that’s priceless.

Read the full press release.

How to Grow, and NOT, Grow Sales: SalesMemes 32