The Importance Of Facebook Reviews For Local Business in 2022

Facebook reviews

Facebook reviews are essential for any local business since the majority of potential customers visit business pages to read reviews and check if other customers recommend them. Depending on the character of published reviews, potential customers decide whether to choose your business or go with your competitor. 

It means that local business owners should pay more attention to their Facebook reviews and recommendations. Just imagine how powerful the positive reviews can be. It is a great opportunity to start selling to new customers with the help of existing, satisfied customers. 

In this article, we will discuss how you can start collecting Facebook reviews and grow your business. 

All you need to know about Facebook reviews

With roughly 2.93 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2022, Facebook is the most used online social network worldwide. It is the second-largest review site on the Internet after Google which makes it a great platform to engage with potential customers. They can like, comment, and share genuine reviews. 

Facebook had used the star rating for many years but in 2018 they switched to the binary system. Now customers have 2 options to rate a business: Recommend or Not Recommend.

Where to find the Facebook review link?

When sending review requests to your customers it is important to send them directly to the review page. Where to find your Facebook review link?

  • Go to your Facebook page
  • Go to the reviews tab
  • Copy the page URL from the address bar

How to gain more Facebook reviews?

  • Send review requests on the regular basis. The best practice is to send a review request on the same day or the next day after a customer’s purchase. If a customer receives a review request a month after their purchase the chance they will leave a review is reduced. 

  • Ask all of your customers for reviews. The more reviews you get published the better it is for your business’s growth. Customers can share their valuable feedback about your business on Facebook or Google and you will get more visibility online. 

  • Send review reminders. Sometimes customers can miss your review request or simply forget to leave a review. In this case, we recommend you send a review reminder to customers. It ensures a greater conversion rate and a higher chance to receive a Facebook review.

  • Respond to Facebook Reviews. Customers expect answers to their reviews. Show that you are ready to listen to them. If there is a positive review – thank a customer for sharing their experience. If there is a negative review – apologize for the unpleasant experience and try to resolve complaints.

  •  Use a reputation management platform. With a reputation management platform, you can easily automate all the processes of generating reviews. 

Try the Amazeful reputation management platform.

Amazeful makes all the processes of collecting reviews on any review website much easier and faster. With Amazeful you can automatically send review requests, set up automatic review replies, send review reminders and get insightful analytics on your reviews. 

Grow your Facebook reviews effortlessly with Amazeful. Learn more how Amazeful can help you collect more reviews and grow your revenue faster https://amazeful.com/reviews/

Start 7-day free trial.

The Power of Customer Reviews for Your Dental Clinic

Today, 77% of patients go online to search out and read online reviews of dental clinics. Potential clients want to learn about the dental practice and read other patients’ experiences before deciding which dentist to visit. Therefore getting customer reviews online has become crucial if you want to be chosen among competitors. 

The more reviews you have, the more recognizable your dental practice will seem online. After all, a potential client searching for a dentist in his area is more likely to choose a business with over 50 five-star reviews than a business with just two reviews. 

The good news is, from the recent survey, 74% of customers who were asked to provide feedback, 68% were willing to do it. So don’t hesitate when asking patients to leave a review because most of them will be happy to help you out. 

What are the main benefits of online reviews for a dental clinic?

  1. You will rank higher on Google Maps and Google Searches
  2. High star ratings increase conversions
  3. Reviews build customer trust
  4. The feedback received helps you improve your practice 
  5. It’s a cost-effective way to get more clients

How to get more online reviews from the patients? 

1. Google reviews are the backbone of any local marketing strategy. If you want your clients to leave reviews on Google, the first thing that needs to be done is to optimize your Google My Business listing. Google My Business helps businesses manage their online presence across search engines.  

Basically, it’s a source of verified information about your dental clinic, including location, opening hours, prices, and reviews from patients. 

Follow these steps to set up your Google My Business listing:

  • The first thing you need to do is visit https://www.google.com/business/  
  • Create/Claim Your Google My Business Page
  • Verify your business by phone call or email
  • Add the finishing touches (website, phone number, opening hours, photos, appointment URL, etc.

2. The most engaging way to get reviews from your patients is by asking them face-to-face after the dental procedure. Ask your сlient how their experience was and if they don’t mind leaving a review.

3. If you find it hard to get your patients to leave you a review after you ask them, there are alternative ways to simplify this task. Inexpensive reputation management platforms like Amazeful can help your business generate more reviews and save time.

What are the main advantages of using a reputation management platform?

  1. It’s a fully automated process, so you don’t have to spend time asking each client for a review. In addition, the platform can integrate with your patients’ management system and automatically send email or SMS survey requests. 
  2. You can redirect your patients to leave reviews on other sites besides Google like Facebook, Yelp, or any review site that matters for your business.
  3. You can manage your negative feedback offline and deal with the issues before they escalate.
  4. You get in-depth reporting of your online reputation to analyze and find ways to improve patients’ experience. 

Positive reviews can help you build strong relationships with existing patients and attract new ones.

Considering that clients tend to trust online reviews as much as they would a personal recommendation from a friend, it’s a time to use reviews to your advantage.

Worried about finding time to get more online reviews? Start 7 days free trial with Amazeful!

How to Turn Negative Customer Reviews Into Advantage?

Negative reviews are a nightmare for many business owners. But the truth is no matter how devoted you are in promoting a good customer experience, you’ll come across negative reviews in the end. It’s a fact for all businesses dealing with customers, you can’t please all the customers all the time. What is more important is how you handle bad reviews and the way you respond to them. Moreover, negative feedback is something that can help your business to grow and improve. Instead of being afraid of bad reviews, let’s see how to use them as a positive side for your business.

Always respond to negative feedback

When you receive a bad review, first of all, understand what the customer complains about and apologize for the negative experience. If it’s appropriate – offer a refund or exchange. Show that you care about each customer’s problem and resolve it with a public response. However, if the issue requires additional actions (for example, related to services), it’s best to resolve such complaints privately. Leave a phone number or an email so customers can contact you to resolve the problem offline.

Sometimes reviews can be unfair, but try to be polite and friendly to show potential customers you’re dedicated to providing excellent service.

Build trust using negative reviews

When a potential customer sees a bad review, he also checks the response from the business side. By interacting with the clients who left a negative review, it shows you’re being proactive about addressing problems, and it helps build trust.

Besides, this way, you demonstrate to potential clients you have nothing to hide and are ready to resolve issues if they exist. Plus, customers are inclined to trust businesses with positive and negative feedback, while only 5-star reviews look more fake and not credible. 

Use a reputation management platform

Indeed, you can’t control what reviewers write, but you can manage and control negative feedback using a reputation management platform. The system captures negative reviews and sends them to you privately to deal with them offline. Dealing with unhappy customers’ issues in-house before they get the chance to go public will help minimize the number of published negative reviews on Google, TripAdvisor, and other sites. Respond to bad reviews to make customers feel heard, and there is a big chance they will change their minds and leave you a positive review instead.

Improve your business 

Negative feedback can be unsettling at first, but how else would you understand the issues you have in the business processes? All successful businesses continuously improve, and bad reviews are a great way to identify what’s working and what’s not. If too many clients complain about the same thing, it’s worth looking into it and making improvements. So even if you don’t like receiving negative reviews, they’re still necessary and helpful. The more you listen to clients’ concerns, the more you will meet their expectations, and you will provide a much better experience.

So what to do about negative reviews? 

  1. The most important – do not ignore them. It’s okay to have some unhappy customers because you can’t always please every client. 
  2. Always respond to negative reviews. Show that you care about the issue and are ready to deal with it publicly. This way, you can even turn unhappy customers into loyal advocates.
  3. Use a reputation management platform to manage and keep track of your negative reviews. It helps to minimize the number of negative reviews on Google, TripAdvisor, and other sites. 
  4. Learn from your mistakes using bad reviews. Identify what’s not working for your clients and improve it.

5. Get more positive reviews. Usually, only unsatisfied clients are willing to leave a review. To keep the balance between negative and positive feedback, always ask your clients for reviews.

The Importance Of Reputation Marketing For Your Local Business

Customer Feedback

What is reputation marketing?

Digital technologies have completely changed the way we’ve lived our lives. With many customers using the Internet to find a local business, your company’s online presence and reputation become crucial. 

Reputation marketing is critical for any local business: dental clinics, restaurants, or puppy shops – all benefit from customer feedback and reviews. In turn, customer feedback is the construction material that establishes your online reputation. 

So, what is reputation marketing?

Reputation marketing highlights and intensifies positive business content like customer reviews using digital marketing channels. This marketing tool lets you generate more leads and grow your business faster. In a nutshell, it’s a strategy to promote your company’s good reputation or repairing a flawed one. 

Customers are constantly reading online reviews to identify if they should buy a particular product, eat in a restaurant or visit a dental office. Every year the popularity of online reviews has been increasing, and new statistics prove its importance. For example, in 2021, 93% of customers read online reviews before buying a product, and 94% of all purchases and appointments are made for businesses and goods with an average rating of 4 stars and above. 

As you can see, online reviews are a vital component of your business’s reputation in the public eye. 

Local reputation marketing

More than ever, potential customers are searching for local businesses online. As a business owner, if your business is a local business where you need to meet your customers face to face, you need local reputation marketing.

The main difference is that your marketing should focus on the geographical area where you provide services, so you should always mention the suburbs, postcodes, or cities where you want business from.

Google is the largest search engine, and its main focus is to provide the best results for customers searching for services in their geographical area.

However, not all customers use specific keywords like the suburb or city. Instead, they use more general terms such as: “Electrician near me,” so it is Google’s job to translate “near me” as the search area around the shopper location.

That’s why to increase your local reputation marketing, you need to help Google by clearly specifying your business location or the local area where you provide services.

what-is-reputation-marketing

An influence on purchasing decisions

As we mentioned above, people are likely to trust recommendations from previous customers. So, the more quality comments and reviews you get across different digital channels, the higher potential customers’ credibility you get. Therefore, positive customer reviews have a significant impact on purchasing decisions. It is evident that customers choose more reputable businesses among their competitors.

Your goal as a business owner is to set up your dominance over competitors using reputation marketing tools like generating positive reviews, monitoring reviews, and rapid response to them. 

How exactly do positive customer reviews increase sales? First, let’s dive into the marketing funnel:

Awareness: Potential customers learn about your business through previous clients’ reviews.

Interest: People began to search for more information about your company – explore your site, social media pages, and review websites.

Consideration: Clients compare your business with rivals to understand your weaknesses and strengths. 

Solid reputation marketing depends on what people say about your business. Usually, business owners understand the importance of positive customer feedback but rarely ask clients to leave a review. 

Eventually, it leads to an imbalance of negative and positive reviews because people are more likely to leave feedback themselves only when they are dissatisfied. As a result, it won’t help your business to grow. So, asking your clients to leave reviews about their experience should be one of the essential points in your marketing strategy. 

There are many ways to collect positive reviews website feedback, social media reviews, and of course, reviews on review websites such as:

  • Google reviews
  • TripAdvisor
  • Yelp
  • Foursquare 
  • Facebook

local-reputation-marketing

Asking each client for feedback is possible but can be time-consuming. Besides, there is a way to automate the review gaining process with a reputation management platform like Amazeful

Very easy to use:

  1. After each purchase, your customers will receive a message to review your business
  2. You can direct your customers to leave reviews on a wide variety of platforms like Google, Facebook, or any other review site that matters to you
  3. You can monitor all reviews in one dashboard and easily embed them on your website

Using an automated reputation management platform like Amazeful is the most convenient way to gather positive reviews because it saves time and money. However, remember that reputation marketing is not only about sending review requests to get as many good reviews as possible. It is also about honest feedback, which can include negative reviews too.

Negative feedback is an excellent way to improve your business because, throughout it, you can understand if a client complains about the quality of the product, the price, or the professionalism of the staff. You can use the Amazeful platform to filter and manage negative reviews too. The system captures and sends negative reviews to you privately, allowing you to deal with them offline.

Reputation Marketing Conclusion

I hope by now you have a better understanding of what reputation marketing is and how to implement it for your business.

It would be best not to underestimate the importance of local reputation marketing for any business. It will help a business grow faster, generate more leads, and stands out from competitors. Every year the popularity of online reviews has been increasing.

 In 2021, 93% of customers read online reviews before buying a product, and 94% of all purchases and appointments are made for businesses and goods with an average rating of 4 stars and above. As a business owner, you should generate more positive reviews about your business and display them on review websites like Google reviews, Yelp, and others local review sites.

User a reputation management platform like Amazeful to save time and money. Remember that reputation marketing won’t work without lots of positive reviews. So, next time you plan the marketing budget – set aside some funds for your online reputation.