As business owners, we all know the reputation of our business is very valuable.

Research shows that negative reviews stop 40% of consumers from wanting to use a business. In the unfortunate case that these negative reviews pop up on Google searches, the business can potentially lose around 70% of its future customers.

Reviews help people decide which products or services they should buy, where they should travel and even where they should eat. Over time reviews have slowly become an integral part of the business on the internet.

The positive impact of reviews on your business

• The increased likelihood of consumers spending more money
• Having numerous positive reviews increases the chances of convincing customers to pay more money for products or services. Studies have shown that consumers are likely to spend around 31% more on products and services from businesses that have excellent reviews backing them up.
• Increase in business revenue
• Having negative reviews will inevitably affect your business, yet for every star that a company gets, the chances are that a business’ revenue will increase by anywhere between 5%-9%.
• The customers’ trust is increased

The negative impact of reviews on your business

• Can be damaging to the prestige, profitability and trustworthiness of your business
• A single negative review can drive away around 22% of customers, whereas about three negative reviews can drive away 59% of the customers.
• A single negative review could cost a business around 30 customers.
• People hesitate to purchase from businesses with no reviews or with too many negative reviews

Do you want bad reviews for your business?

I think I know the answer so let’s have a look at your business and what people are saying and thinking. It is tools out there that do the job for you, looking after your business reviews.

With great reviews comes a better Google rating for your business.

Google is awarding stars for as little as one review. The rating shows up next to the business listing on Google’s search result page.

This is important because the stars reviews help your business stand out amongst the other companies that may not have any star ratings.

However, a bad review is not always a bad review on Google My Business rating. Okay, You must be thinking, I was just told how important it is not to get a bad review.

I think I need to explain myself.

An example: A business with all 5-star reviews, it all sounds great and this business must be the real deal. But Google doesn’t look at it that way.

It is actually against Google’s policy for your Google My Business listing only to ask people who you think you will get a 5-star review from or use review software that lets people who want to write a useful review go to Google My Business and write their review or fill in a form for example if they’re going to complain or write a bad review which gets emailed to you instead of them being able just to write a review. It’s called review gating. You can purchase your five stars reviews for your business and never have a bad review ever again, awesome right?

No, you cannot ask only happy customers to submit a Google review. Google updated their review policies in 2018 to forbid the practice of “review gating.” The policy itself states:

“Don’t discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.”

We all know that’s not possible to have only 5-star reviews, that is only a dream that will not come true. And Google also knows that too.

If Google suspects or finds out you are gating reviews, Google will delete all your reviews, yep all the money spent on building good reviews is gone. That includes all the reviews before you start gating reviews, back to 0 you go.

So it’s okay to have that odd bad review and you can’t make everyone happy. Potential customers are more interested in how you and your business respond to a bad review than you getting a bad review. This is an opportunity for your business to shine and show just how good your customer service is.

The easiest way to ensure you’re aware of new reviews when they go live is to employ an online review management platform.

For example, Podium aggregates reviews in real-time from sites across the internet, making you aware the second a new review goes live.

This is, undisputedly, the first step in combating and responding to negative reviews. After all, if you don’t know the negative review exists, how can you respond?

Talk to us about how we can help you and your business combat those bad reviews the right way.