It seems as though every company on earth is pushing hard for customers to write online reviews. This marketing strategy has some obvious upsides, but unless the campaign — and soliciting online reviews must be conducted as a campaign — you could end up doing your company much more harm than good.
We thought we’d share a few observations and recommendations about all this based on the experience our company has acquired over the past 10 years or so.
1. Make Sure You Know the Rules
Google, Yelp, and most all other online review platforms have strict rules about what constitutes a legitimate review and the incentives you can and cannot offer in exchange for a review. Make sure you know these rules, because violations may be dealt with severely. A few helpful links:
- Google prohibited and restricted content
- Yelp policies about soliciting reviews
- New FTC rule covering fake reviews and testimonials
Nevertheless, there are legitimate, accepted, and widely used techniques for encouraging reviews that do not violate anybody’s policies. You may find this online review article from the FTC a useful guide.
2. Don’t Try to Stack the Deck
Suppressing negative reviews is tempting. Avoid the temptation. First, seeing nothing but glowing reviews makes prospective customers suspicious. Second, suppressing negative reviews could be (and probably is) a violation of a review platform’s policies. Third, on platforms where you can respond, a professional public response to criticism can actually win prospective customers over. Most buyers understand things go wrong; what they really want to know is how you handle mistakes and disagreements.
3. Monitor Your Online Reviews
Responding to negative reviews requires someone in your company to monitor review platforms regularly, perhaps even daily. Ignoring negative comments will infuriate the complainer and make a very bad impression on prospective customers. If the platform does not allow interaction, you can still reach out to the customer some other way if you are aware the review has been posted.
Don’t forget: Customers are far more likely to share negative buying experiences online and offline. Ignored reviews or fumbled responses can rapidly snowball into much bigger problems for your credibility and brand image.
P.S. It’s very much worthwhile to respond to positive reviews as well!
4. Be Aware: Online Reviews Affect SEO
Big, influential review sites like Google My Business, BBB, Angi, and Yelp have very high organic search rankings. Companies are sometimes shocked to go on Google and see reviews about their company on these sites ranking close to or even higher than their own company website. This can be a catastrophic problem if those high-ranking links contain a lot of negative reviews about your company — people vetting your company will easily find those reviews and undoubtedly read them. So, ask yourself this:
Will someone vetting my company believe the sales pitch on our website, or real-life reviews from our customers?
5. Make Your Business Review-Ready
Does what I just said contradict what I said earlier about embracing negative reviews by turning them into opportunities?
No, and here is why. If your business is likely to attract negative reviews, that is something you must be aware of and fix before you start encouraging reviews. Hopefully your business is ready to go now, but if not, make product, service, and quality excellence the first step in you online review campaign.
If you’d like to know more about our experience with online reviews, or if you’d like to change the subject and discuss packaging, please call us at 630-551-1700 or contact us through the website.
We welcome the chance to be of service.
Related Posts:
https://www.salazarpackaging.com/how-to-integrate-your-marketing-with-your-custom-boxes/
https://www.salazarpackaging.com/how-to-allocate-limited-social-media-marketing-budget/
https://www.salazarpackaging.com/the-unboxing-experience-still-matters-in-2025/
