Why are reviews important?

Paddington Bear in Reading town centre reading How to Leave a Group chat infront of Waterstones Broad Street. Credit: Louisa Guise

There is one thing that can really help your brand, business, or book, and that’s customer reviews. In this day and age, people likely find your business online, and they might well have come across your advert or site without much idea of who you are. So how can they know that you are a valid, authentic, credible organisation or individual who can meet their needs without any hassle?

That’s where reviews come in.

Reasons why reviews are importantReviews verify you as a good brand

Most customers (some sources suggest as many as 59%) want proof before parting with their hand-earned cash, and reviews confirm that your business or product is worth engaging with to meet their need.

Reviews help optimise your online presence

The more relevant content you have online, the more likely the crawlers are to recognise you and display information about you when a customer does an online search.

Reviews can increase sales

As well as verifying you as a worthy business, or your product as a worthy product, a collection of good reviews could tip the balance between you acquiring someone’s custom or not. Even one little tiny detail could tip the scales in your favour.

Reviews are another way to engage with customers

Most review platforms allow you to respond to your customers, and a business that is actively engaging with customers comes across as more credible than one that doesn’t. Even this small action could tip the scales, and the sales, in your favour.

They are good feedback for you

As hard as you try, there could be blind spots or failings with your business or product. There might be something about your product or service that customers don’t like, and reviews can quickly highlight these. You can quickly turn negatives into positives by fixing anything that isn’t working, or even improving anything that is.

So if reviews are so important, how do I encourage people to review my business or product (or book)?Ask them

You can add a pop-up to your site, or email your customer after you have made a transaction to encourage them to leave a review.

Use a little help

There are programmes which can automate your review process, or you can sign up to a site such as Trustpilot where customers can leave reviews at any time of day or night.

Sweeten the deal

A discount off their next purchase (bonus – repeat business!), a charity donation per review or a competition can encourage customers to leave a review. Also, if you’re using a site like Ebay or Airbnb, the incentive is that customer and business each leave a review for each other, increasing the credibility of both parties.

Of course not everyone will leave a review, but each review is one more than you had before.

Finally, I said that you could win an Amazon voucher

Speaking of reviews, it’s competition time! I need reviews for my book How to Leave a Group Chat, so leave a review for my book on Good Reads and you could be in with a chance of winning a £15 Amazon Voucher.

It’s that simple! If you would also like to paste your review onto another site – Amazon, or the site of the bookshop where you bought my book you can obtain extra entries, but I must be able to identify from the review who wrote it (and be able to locate it).

As a book can take some time to read, this competition is open from now until Sunday 19th January 2025.

Good luck and happy reviewing!

Thanks for reading All about Digital Marketing! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share

Leave a comment

Competition Terms and conditions apply. Competition ends 23:59 GTM Sunday 19th January 2025. The prize is 1x Amazon voucher to the value of £15 – that’s in pounds sterling. No alternative prize will be offered. The winner must have read my book How to Leave a Group Chat in either a print or e-book format to be eligible and have reviewed it on Goodreads. Additional entries can be obtained if the reviewer leaves reviews on other websites, such as Amazon.com, but these additional reviews must be flagged to the author. The winner will be drawn at random and in order to receive their prize I must be able to identify who they are. If the winner doesn’t respond for 2 weeks, I reserve the right to draw another winner in their place.