Online Reviews: The Modern Day Word-of-Mouth
Kyle Stanton has owned a thriving cattle farm in northern Iowa for three decades and considers himself lucky to have a network of friends whose opinions he can rely on. However, over the years, he’s come to trust his online community just as much as his local one.
Kyle chose his new John Deere skid steer based on a series of online reviews, especially a detailed post comparing models, and then headed to the dealer that had a wealth of five-star reviews cheering about great customer service and a reliable repair team. He never even checked in with his friends.
Kyle is not alone. In fact, it turns out that 72% of purchasers say they trust an online review just as much as they would inputs from a family member. And, like Kyle, over 90% of consumers say they check online reviews before completing a purchase—with 4 in 5 buyers reversing a buying decision based on a bad review!
Couple these trends with limitations on face-to-face interaction thanks to COVID, and the impact of online reviews as a top influencer of your brand and reputation comes into sharp focus.
Better Than Ads—and More Important Too
In fact, reviews have even more marketing impact than advertising. Kyle might learn about a new product from an ad but doesn’t trust it beyond that: the reviews drive his choices. And while name recognition is important, the online reputation of the dealer is what ultimately attracted Kyle’s business.
Engaging Customers by Cultivating Reviews
Obviously, online reviews have a lot of promotional impact, but they are important beyond that. The reality is that connecting with your customers to follow up on their experiences just makes good business sense: by being aware of each customer’s experience (as well as overall trends), you can take immediate action to resolve individual issues as well as set direction for continually improving your customers’ experiences.
Plus, today’s customers not only rely on online reviews, but they are also accustomed to participating in them. They expect the relative anonymity (should they choose it) of expressing opinions online.
SATISFYD Can Help
Creating and managing a robust review system can take a lot of internal sales and marketing resources. Expertise in SEO, direct mail, data management, and internal reporting structures is needed, as well as programming and graphic design capabilities.
And that’s where SATISFYD comes in. With over 20 years of experience in curating the communications pipeline between dealers and customers, we can help you establish and manage this process.
In fact, we complete the setup and development work for you to maximize open and response rates; we collect and analyze the responses; and we help establish and drive the internal processes to respond to and promote your reviews. Put simply, we offer a one-stop-shop to get your review system up and running while you keep your focus on running your business.
Online reviews truly are the modern-day word of mouth. Let us help you tap into your customers’ stories to sustain strong connections and grow your online reputation.
Originally published on July 26, 2021. Updated on September 23, 2022.
