Review Management Software: Ensuring Online Reputation the Smart Way

Recent marketing research suggests that 95% of consumers today read online reviews before making a purchase. For this figure alone, responding to online reviews should be a staple marketing strategy among businesses, not just a sporadic activity for staff on break. However, it’s easier said than done. The amount of time, effort, and brain power your staff needs to dedicate to respond to each online review can significantly affect your business.

Fortunately, there are review management software that can help you create the best online presence for your business but can do so in the easiest and fastest way possible.

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What is reviews management?

Review management is the process of systematically monitoring customer reviews across multiple business review sites. While most people believe that it only means responding to reviews, a successful review management process includes noting recurring customer reviews, analyzing content, promoting positive reviews, mitigating the effects of negative reviews, and more.

Aside from these tasks, a proper review management process also consists of selecting the online review platform for your business and optimizing your profile based on industry-specific metrics. Failure to do this will not just lead to empty traffic or reach without conversion, but it can also effectively burn out time and resources which you could have dedicated to improving your business.

To learn more about variations among review platforms, click here.

Why is online review management important?

In our recent article about online reputation management, statistics suggest that 84% of consumers prefer reviews over advertisements, making it the core foundation of your online reputation. Thus, your business’s customer review management strategy determines your reputation management. And in this generation, a good online reputation can help you generate hefty revenue, while a bad reputation can cripple your business.

In short, your review management strategy can build a positive and strategic perception among your target audience that may lead to high conversion rates.

How does review management work?

Review management is the process of tracking customer reviews posted on a company’s website, social media profiles, and online review listings. While the overall system varies depending on the industry, the general review management process includes monitoring, analyzing, and responding to each review.

What are the benefits of review management?

Here are some of the benefits enjoyed by businesses that have run an effective review management process:

Improve customer loyalty

Review management can help your business improve customer loyalty by allowing customers to share their experiences and opinions. This can help to build trust and loyalty between your business and its customers, as well as provide valuable feedback that can be used to improve customer service. Additionally, positive reviews can attract new customers and encourage existing customers to return.

Increase visibility

Researches suggest that 61% of marketing strategists believe that SEO ranking is the key to online success. Boosting your online search visibility can increase awareness among your target market, traffic, and revenue growth.

Online reviews are a great way to increase your visibility and boost your SEO rankings. Positive reviews will make your business more visible to potential customers, while bad reviews can alert you to areas of improvement.

Improve online reputation

Good review management helps to enhance your brand reputation. Positive reviews will make customers more likely to recommend your business to others, while negative reviews can be used as an opportunity to improve customer experience and build customer relationships.

Drive sales

Reviews are a powerful tool for driving sales. Positive reviews can increase customer confidence and encourage them to take action. Another research suggests that 97% of consumers factor in reviews when purchasing. This includes buying products, availing of services, or even booking accommodations.

This means that professional review management is truly essential across industries.

Save time

An effective review management can save you time by automating the process of collecting, managing, and responding to reviews. Automated review management tools can help you quickly collect customer feedback, respond to reviews promptly, and track the performance of your business over time. This can help you identify areas for improvement and ensure that customers receive the best possible service. Additionally, automated review management tools can help you to monitor competitor reviews and stay ahead of the competition.

How do you manage online reviews?

Doing review management is tricky, but it’s not impossible. Here are some of the best practices you can apply with your team:

1. Respond to reviews promptly

When it comes to managing customer reviews, speed is key. Customers appreciate a quick response to their reviews, whether they are positive or negative. A prompt response shows that you are listening and care about their feedback.

By responding quickly, businesses can demonstrate that they value customer input and take it seriously. This helps build trust with customers and encourages them to leave more reviews in the future. Additionally, responding quickly to bad reviews can help to mitigate any potential damage to your reputation.

2. Monitor your reviews regularly

Staying on top of reviews is essential for any business. Reviews are a powerful tool that can make or break a company’s reputation, and it’s important to be aware of what customers say about you. A good review management strategy should include customer feedback and review monitoring across multiple online review sites, responding quickly to both positive and negative reviews, and using the insights gained from reviews to improve your products and services. We encourage you to make responding to all new reviews a daily habit.

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3. Reach out to unhappy customers

When customers leave a negative review, it can damage your business. However, instead of ignoring the issue or responding defensively, it is important to reach out to the customer and offer to resolve the issue. This shows that you are willing to take responsibility for any mistakes that may have been made and are committed to providing excellent customer service.

By taking this approach, you can turn a negative review into a positive one and show customers that you are willing to go the extra mile to ensure their satisfaction.

4. Encourage positive reviews

Asking satisfied customers to leave a positive review is an effective way to boost your business’s reputation. Reviews are a powerful tool for businesses, as they provide potential customers with an insight into the quality of your products and services. Positive reviews can help to attract new customers and build trust in your brand.

When asking customers to leave a review, it’s essential to be respectful and not to pressure them into leaving a positive review. Instead, focus on providing excellent customer service and let the reviews speak for themselves. This process can be tricky, so it’s best to have strategic review generation processes so customers won’t feel burdened by the need to review your business.

5. Monitor all relevant review sources

It is important to monitor all relevant review sources to get a comprehensive understanding of how customers perceive your business. This includes major review sites such as Google My Business and Yelp, industry-specific review sites, and other online review sites.

By monitoring all relevant sources, you can ensure that you are aware of any potential issues or opportunities that may arise. Additionally, this will help you to stay ahead of the competition.

6. Monitor your competitors

Monitoring your competitors’ reviews is an important part of any review management strategy. By keeping an eye on what customers are saying about your competitors, you can gain valuable insights into their strengths and weaknesses. This information can then be used to inform your own strategies and ensure that you stay ahead of the competition.

Additionally, monitoring your competitors’ reviews can help you identify potential opportunities for improvement in your products and services.

What are review management software tools?

Excellent task automation software have been vital for today's businesses. According to recent IT surveys, almost 1/3 businesses worldwide have five or more divisions that automate. Aside from expediting various operational processes, software can automatically gather and provide important accurate data to help businesses drive more revenue and potentially scale their market.

One of the most popular online marketing software used by businesses today are review management tools. These tools are designed to help businesses manage customer feedback, ratings, and reviews across multiple platforms. They are designed to help businesses respond to customers quickly, track customer sentiment, and gain insights from customer feedback. Examples of review management software tools include ReviewTrackers, Grade.us, Podium, BirdEye, and Reputation.com.

As mentioned a while ago, an effective review management routine leads to an effective reputation management process. Recent market searches suggest that 50% of a company's value is determined by brand reputation. In short, your review management tool can truly make or break your business.

Essential features of review management software

Finding the best review management tool may vary depending on your industry. However, here are some of the essential features you might want to consider in finding your online review management software so you can reap all the benefits of review management:

Request reviews from customers

TripAdvisor, one of the most important reviewing websites for the travel and tourism industry, considers the quantity and recency of reviews to determine the credibility of a business–the same goes for other review websites. New reviews attest to the current status of the products and services offered, creating a more accurate depiction of what the customers may expect from the business. In short, having a review generation process is essential for your online reputation.

While you may think it’s an easy task, our recent article about guest feedback and customer insights suggests that some businesses find it challenging to collect reviews among previous customers, especially positive ones. For this reason, you should go for a review generation software that has the capacity to help you strategically collect reviews on platforms like Google or Tripadvisor among your customers. This includes giving an easy and straightforward review request process that is as easy as possible to maximize the completion rate.

Monitor customer reviews from multiple sources

As mentioned a while ago, finding the best online review platform is paramount for an effective customer review management strategy. In most cases, having multiple sources is the best strategy. For example, for hotels, it’s best to have an optimized profile on TripAdvisor to allow guests to compare your deals among competitors, Booking.com for a direct booking option, and Google My Business for higher visibility among search engines.

Creating and optimizing profiles may only take a day or two. What comes after is the most challenging part–review monitoring across general and industry-specific review sites. It’s highly recommended to get a review management platform that can be integrated into the major review platforms and set specific metrics based on each one. This way, you could effectively monitor reviews without sacrificing time.

Easily respond to customer reviews from a single tool

Despite the numerous research and surveys that prove how powerful user-generated content can be, our recent study showed an average response time of 6 minutes per review. This means that businesses take approximately 521,853 hours spent each day just responding to reviews.

Responding to reviews can make or break your business. 77% of people are likelier to book and purchase from businesses whose owners respond to reviews. For this reason, it’s best to get an online review management software powered by an AI review reply assistant that can help you respond to reviews in the easiest and fastest way possible. These solutions are also packed with industry-based data that can help you create engaging responses to boost your online reputation.

Track response rates

Your review management tool should deliver relevant data based on your online reputation. This includes your response rate across your multiple review platforms. Your response rate would determine if your management process is effective and could deliver potential conversions.

The recent MARA study stated above also showed that the average response rate of businesses across all industries is only 50%. Fortunately, our data also show that an effective AI review reply generator can easily increase your response rate to 100% without needing extra manpower. With cutting-edge AI-writing technology and a systematic review management platform, your online reputation management would be such a breeze.

Analyze ratings and customer sentiment to gain insights

One of the most crucial elements of review management is extracting and analyzing key performance metrics from customer reviews, such as ratings and recurring customer sentiments.

These consumer insights are the best foundations for your staff’s new service training, new service offers, and other business upgrades. While reputation management can get you new customers, an excellent customer experience still determines customer retention.

Easily share customer reviews on social media

Your positive reviews could be the best marketing campaign for your business. Our recent article about the effects of positive reviews suggests that a single good positive feedback posted online can bring 4x more sales. Moreover, recent online researches also suggest that a business can reach a whopping 2.11 billion individuals through an effective Facebook advertising and marketing. That’s one social media platform alone. Imagine the reach you can get when your review management platform can help you promote across other leading social networking sites.

For this reason, the best review management tool should allow you to share customer reviews on social platforms easily. Each customer feedback can have a wider reach, thus giving you more potential customers. This feature also encourages better customer engagement to attract more authentic reviews to boost your online presence and search engine visibility.

Give your ORM software a boost with MARA

Acquiring a simple and basic AI review reply assistant tool that can easily be used in conjunction with your review management software can effectively enhance your review management process. Integrating software task automation with cutting-edge AI review technology could help you establish a robust online reputation with minimal effort.

MARA AI Review Assistant is an intuitive tool designed to streamline your Online Reputation Management process, making it more efficient, personalized, and time-saving. It offers the best and most personalized AI for responding to and analyzing your guest reviews.

AI-powered Review Inbox

One of the key features of this tool is the Review Inbox. Your review inbox simplifies the process of responding to reviews by allowing you to generate replies with a simple click of "Send". The Review Inbox connects to multiple review sources, including Google, Booking.com, and Tripadvisor, providing you with a comprehensive view of all your reviews. Additionally, you can configure review response automation, allowing MARA to automatically respond to simple reviews, such as 5-star Google reviews with no text, ensuring that no review goes unanswered. Daily notifications about new reviews keep you updated and in control.

Advanced Review Analytics

To assist you in understanding and analyzing the multitude of reviews, the Review Assistant incorporates Review Analytics. This provides actionable, easy-to-understand insights tailored exclusively to your business. With MARA, you can quickly grasp the essence of all your reviews without the need to read each one individually. The analysis is detailed enough to identify specific issues such as "water in the pool is too cold" or "lack of vegan breakfast option", helping to optimize the guest experience without requiring you to be a data expert.

The most personal response AI

MARA's AI prioritizes personalization as well as efficiency. The Brand Voice feature enables the AI to adapt to your tone, ensuring that your responses sound authentically you. Additionally, with Smart Snippets, you can "teach" the AI how to respond to recurring praises or complaints. The AI then incorporates this information into its responses using different words, providing more personalized and relevant replies.

This review response assistant has quickly become a game-changer for over 2000 customers. Its promising capacity to elevate your overall rating, boost response rates, extract insights from customer feedback, and save both time and money, is the reason behind its growing popularity.

Final Thought

Creating an effective review management routine that generates revenue is a long and winding process that involves various tasks. With the appropriate software, not only can you streamline the process, but you can also personalize your responses and derive valuable insights from the reviews. So, why hesitate to give our AI Review Assistant, MARA, a try? It's completely free for testing, doesn't require a credit card, and can be fully operational in less than five minutes.

This article is part of our hero content "Online Reputation Management for Hotels - All You Need to Know".