5 Smart Ways to Generate More Positive Reviews
Who doesn’t love a positive review from a satisfied customer? Every business owner knows the value of positive reviews – and they’ve never been important than they are right now.
Did you know that more than 80% of all consumers say that they trust a product review from a stranger as much as they would a personal recommendation from a friend. Not only that, people trust user reviews more than the official descriptions of products.
If you’re thinking of customer reviews as something that you can’t control, think again. Business owners can do a lot to encourage reviews – and of course, you can increase the chance that most of your reviews will be positive by providing excellent quality and service.
Still, those things aren’t enough. You can’t afford to sit back and hope that customers leave reviews of your business.
Fortunately, you don’t have to take a backseat to your customer’s whims. Here are six smart ways you can get more positive reviews online.
#1: Email Customers After a Purchase
Do you send customers an email after they make a purchase?
I’m not talking about the confirmation email where you send them an order number if they order online. I mean an email where you specifically ask them how they like your product and request that they write a review.
This is a practice that’s become increasingly common – and for a good reason. Some people automatically leave reviews for everything. They’re the well-known Yelpers who have thousands of reviews.
Many people need a reminder. They’re not going to leave a review of their own accord – but they just might if you ask them nicely. This is the review version of the call to action on your website. It’s a specific request to take a specific action.
Try sending your review request email a week to ten days after the purchase. That way, the customer will have had a chance to use your product and may be ready to offer an opinion.
#2: Empower Your Employees to Ask for Reviews
Sometimes, making the right request at the right time is all it takes to get the reviews you want. That’s why it makes sense to have your employees ask for reviews.
Some Uber drivers do this. Just before they arrive at their passenger’s destination, they ask about the review. The simple request puts the idea of leaving a review in the customer’s mind and greatly increases the chances that they’ll comply and leave a review.
Why ask at the point of service? When a customer has just made a purchase or used your service, the experience is fresh. A cashier who provides a friendly checkout and some banter is ideally placed to ask for a review because they have an opportunity to build rapport with the customer.
If you decide to use this method of getting reviews, consider printing cards asking for reviews and putting links to your review pages on your website. You don’t want customers to be confused about what to do – so eliminate the guesswork and you’ll reap the rewards.
#3: Try to Get a Google Local Guide to Review Your Company
Google Local Guide is a program owned by Google that designates certain reviewers as local experts.
The process of getting a local guide can be a complex one, but here are some tips to help you do it:
- Make sure your Google My Business listing is up-to-date and active
- Join Google Local Guides on your own – you can write reviews of local businesses and raise your visibility provided you don’t use the platform to promote or favor your business
- Attend local events with other guides
- Invite other guides to come to your business
This isn’t a quick fix, but the nice thing about Google Local Guides is that when a local guide reviews your business, their designation shows up in the review and that gives it more weight than it would have otherwise. Another benefit is that Google requires guides to use their real names, so there’s less of the anonymous ranting that shows up on Yelp.
#4: Automate the Asking Process
If there’s a way for you to automate the process of asking for reviews, why wouldn’t you do it?
Automation means that there’s no worry that a stressed-out employee will forget to ask. It turns the process into part of your customer service – a hands-off way of encouraging customer feedback and garnering the kinds of reviews you want.
Here are a few suggestions to help you automate your system:
- Set up an autoresponder to send an email requesting a review. Instead of manually sending those emails, link the date of a customer’s purchase to their email and have it go out on schedule. If you link customer purchases to your email marketing provider, you can rest easy knowing that every customer will get a request for a review.
- Print up review request cards and put them in the customer’s bag at checkout. This method eliminates the need for your cashier to ask for a review, and makes it simple to do even at times when you’re busy and have a line at the register.
- Put review links on your product pages. That way, when a customer makes a purchase they can easily read reviews of it – and it may help to remind them to leave a review after their purchase.
Automating your review request system makes good business sense because it eliminates the guesswork.
#5: Set Up a Review System in Your Company
Even if your business is small, you shouldn’t fly by the seat of your pants when you’re requesting reviews. The method you use to ask for reviews should be part of your company’s standard operating procedures.
Your review system should:
- Specify whose job it is to ask for reviews
- Specify the language to be used when requesting a review
- Specify methods to be used (email, conversation, links and printed cards, to name a few)
- Specify the timeframe for requesting reviews
- Lay out procedures for responding to both positive and negative reviews
If you codify your system for requesting and managing reviews, you can be sure that there isn’t any confusion and that customers always get the request you want them to get.
Don’t Sweat the Negative Reviews…
We’ve focused here on garnering positive reviews for your business, but don’t get too stressed about negative reviews. If you handle them properly, they can help your business too!
Respond quickly and graciously and offer solutions. Don’t get defensive. Many businesses use negative feedback to demonstrate that they care about their customers.
If you’re getting so many reviews that you’re having trouble keeping up, you may want to consider using an online review management system to help you – and having too many reviews is the problem you want to have! That’s how businesses grow.
Services Offered by Online Marketing Company
Do you think of your website as a key component in your current business strategy? Do you think of it as the majority of your strategy? We agree with the latter notion and encourage you to look into the top services offered by our online marketing company in Denver, CO to discover just how and why your site is also the backbone of your entire business strategy.
What Is Your Business Strategy?
If you use standard business logic, you know that you must always (and that has to be read as ALWAYS) market and look for new customers. Even if your database of leads and converted clients is huge, it must always be growing. This is the only way to sustain a company and ensure longevity. That is far more challenging than it sounds, but if you work with a fully faceted, online marketing company, you can ensure that your site is a lead generation machine and so much more.
The Elements of Lead Generation
How do you generate leads with your website design? You turn to experts who will:
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Analyze your site’s statistics to determine where visitors come from, what they do upon arrival, when they leave, and more
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Assess the goal of the site (is it to sell, build a client list, something else?)
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Ensure your site is SEO or search engine optimized. Without this key step, you don’t appear on those first two pages of SERPs (search engine results pages) and might as well be invisible. This means identifying keywords, looking for links pointing the site and building a marketing strategy from this data.
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Design a content strategy that can include everything from blogs and social media to PPC ads
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Build a social media strategy using the right site
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Consider other options such as email marketing, mobile marketing and even offline options
Developing a Competitive and Effective Website in Denver
As you can probably see, all of these steps might be far outside of your capabilities in terms of skill, understanding or schedule. Yet, they are steps that must be done if you are to see your site gain the audience and success it deserves. That is why working with Online Marketing Media is a savvy choice. To request a free quote or speak with an expert designer, simply phone us at (720) 432-1736 or send a quick message to info@onlinemarketingmedia.net.
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SSL Certificate & why Google needs your website to have one
What is an SSL certificate? Does my website really need one? How come I’ve never heard about this and why is it important now?
If any of these questions run through your mind, you’re on the right track to protecting your website and online presence. A website needs to be secure at all times, and an SSL certificate is what makes your website safe to begin with.
When you run a small business or a well-established brand, the safety of your customer’s data becomes a priority.
Selling your products or services online or even collective sensitive info, such as phone numbers or names, puts your customers’ privacy at risk. Unless you have valid SSL certificate installed on your website, it’s likely that Google will point out that your website is unsafe.
If you were wondering why Google has decided to play the ‘unsafe’ card, and what and SSl Certificate even is, here are some facts every business owner ought to know.
What are the dangers of not having an SSL certificate installed?
Although not all websites need to install a Secure Socket Layer certificate, small business owners who collect data from their clients could benefit a great deal from adding an extra layer of protection.
Here are the main dangers of avoiding doing so, though:
Google will mark your website as unsafe. Although your website will still be accessible, visitors being warned about an unsecure connection will most likely leave.
Clients will trust your brand less. Speaking of trust, the lack of a secure encrypted connection could influence your clients in a negative way. People like to feel safe when they browse the online. And if your websites doesn’t offer a sense of security, your visitors will most likely think your brand is not to be trusted.
You’ll lose customers to your competition. Turning visitors away and having them think you’re not a trustworthy business results in you losing your clients to your competition. Every visitor on your website is there for a reason. But if they can’t trust you, they’re going to find what they need somewhere else.
Google will favor indexing safe websites. Although you shouldn’t expect a serious boost in rankings, Google has expressed the intention of favoring the indexation of websites that help the online become a safer place.
You could lose your credibility as a business. Your website and your brand act as your business card online. As a small company owner, turning customers away is the last thing you want to do! If you’re storing credit card information of other sensitive data, it’s best to let your customers know your website is safe and can be trusted.
What is an SSL certificate?
You do not need to be an internet guru to see that all website addresses begin with a specific syntax. Some websites begin with “http://”, while others begin with “https://”.
An extra letter might not seem important. After all, your website works just fine! But in reality, the “S” stands for Secure!
Each time a user enters their credit card information or any other kind of personal data, like their name and email, they need to make sure the website is safe first. This is where an SSL certificate comes into play.
The term SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It’s a technology developed back in the 1990s, that helps to safely encrypt your data.
Whenever you see the syntax HTTPS, you now know it stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. The “S” is an extra precaution, known as the internet standard for secure communication online.
The SSL security layer makes sure only your browser and the server accessing your data are able to decrypt the information. Although you can’t literally see this, what goes on behind the scenes is what protects your visitor’s sensitive data.
SSL certificates are no longer just a trend. If you care about your data and your clients’, you should definitely aim to make your connection secure.
Once your SSL certificate is installed on your server, you and your customers can be sure your website is safe. This not only will protect your visitor’s data, but it will help them trust your brand even more.
Why is a SSL certificate important for a website
Today, the internet plays an important part in all our lives. It’s crucial that all our data is safe!
From virtual attackers to intrusive internet service providers, anyone can sneak a peek at our sensitive data we share on the World Wide Web!
Since many small businesses communicate with clients online, having a safe environment to do so is important for both parties.
A professionally designed website allows visitors to become familiar with your business. But when it comes to encouraging your visitors to take action, you need to let them know they can do so, in a safe way.
If you run a small business and would like to build your brand, you need to find a way to communicate and interact with your clients.
Some businesses sell their products and services directly on their website. Small online stores are well known for allowing their clients to safely purchase the products they need.
But when it comes to entering your credit card information, can you guarantee your client their data is safe?
SSL certificates don’t just affect e-commerce websites. Any information you may collect from your clients is subject to risk if your website isn’t safe.
From phone numbers and your customers’ address to simple email databases, all information is subject to risk. Securing your web forms is always important, even if think your website’s too small to be hacked.
But privacy, data integrity and security is not all.
An SSL certificate can, potentially, determine your website’s search engine ranking within Google search.
Any small changes in your website’s structure can have an impact on your SEO factor. While there’s only a small percentage of websites that haven’t made the switch, others are already ‘milking’ some SEO benefits!
Although not all websites are required to install SSL certificates, those that do should expect a small boost in rankings. With Google adding HTTPS as a possible ranking factor, it may be safe to say installing that extra layer of protection should definitely be made a priority.
How to Use PPC for Voice Search Testing
Google reports that 20 percent of mobile searches on Android phones are voice searches. The usage spans all generations, making this an untapped well of marketing opportunities. To test this new tool for your products and services, consider a small market test for pay per click in Denver, CO.
Why You Should Embrace a PPC Test
PPC as a tool for testing voice search yields more detailed reporting with additional layers. Even a micro-budget of $50 to $100 can lead to increased insights into your market demographics. So, it’s well worth exploring
Voice Search versus Text Search
Voice search typically includes longer query strings. People also tend to use natural language more when speaking and phrase searches as questions. Also, natural language provides clearer user intent, increasing the marketing value of this information. Voice search has a big impact on listings by third parties and is a gold mine for local businesses that can pop up in search results.
Using Voice Search in Your Denver, CO Pay Per Click Campaign
Start by understanding the longer tail at the end of most voice searches. By finding inquiries framed as natural language, you gain a better understanding of your target audience’s intentions in the search. Research how your audience uses natural language in written or spoken form in their interaction to figure out how they reveal their intent, a vital component to successful online marketing.
Drawing Valuable Conclusions
The goal is to identify keywords missing in your current online marketing and content. Organizing the expanded keyword list by intent helps you provide meaningful content that drives your audience to your product page.
Excel is an excellent tool to use with a keyword tool you are comfortable with. This step yields a list of things your audience is searching for and reveals keywords on your old list that aren’t meaningful to your prospective clientele.
Time to Start Your Optimization Campaigns
To take advantage of your new insights, you have to plan optimizations using a Denver, CO pay per click account in conjunction with NAP listings and a Schema markup. See what shows up for this keyword strings in voice platforms that use visual interfaces, such as Digital Personal Assistants and Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Narrow your PPC campaigns using the results of your research as a guide. Adjustments should include relevant insights based on gender, age and device used for the voice search.
Improving Your Ads
The goal is to have the best answers for what your audience is searching for. Make sure those answers show up at the right place and time. To do so, you have to rearrange your ad content to make it relevant to the types of voice queries your audience is using.
To create compelling digital content that drives more clients to your page, trust Online Marketing Media to provide the insights you need to stay on top of the latest technology and SEO trends.
Getting Local SEO For Your Website
Web designers focus primarily on creating attractive, beautifully laid out websites. They are thinking about the audience, making sure the website is responsive and compatible with all browsers, but the creators may fail to consider what it takes to get those visitors on the page in the first place. It falls upon SEO specialists to help clients understand that local SEO for Denver, Colorado should form part of the web design and development process. It shouldn’t be an afterthought.
Most website owners assume that it will get ranked on search engines because of the keywords or content they have included alone. While this is certainly important, the arduous task only begins there. There are specific steps to take before and during the design process to ensure the site meets required search engine requirements.
The Categories Of SEO
There are two main categories when it comes to SEO: On-page and Off-page.
1) On-page SEO should make up 30% of your SEO strategy. On-page SEO is about semantics, web architecture, content and how a website is coded. As a web designer, on-page SEO is what you should be focused on.
2) Off-page SEO should account for 70% of optimization. It is concerned with content marketing and link building.
Determining Your SEO Needs
Your goals for your website will determine the best approach to designing your website with local SEO for Denver, Colorado in mind.
a) If you’re a service provider such as a wedding planner, electrician, plumber, locksmith, or property agent, aim for your website to be ranked on search engines for non-branded keywords. This also applies if you are selling niche products that have relatively generic brand names.
b) If you’re looking for a creative site, aim to be ranked on search engines for your brand name. This would apply if your brand is already very well established.
c) The goal may be to get most of your business through referral and offline marketing. This would apply to doctors, lawyers, and local businesses that are well known in their areas of operation.
Fundamentals Of A Well-Optimized Website
A website that is well optimized for search engines will have:
Domains
The primary domain may be yourbusinessname.com, but there can be others. It is important to ensure that the domain and the nature of business are related and make sense. Also, variations and subdomains should lead readers to the main website and redirect to a single canonical version of the website.
Hosting
Reliable hosting is important because slow websites are often abandoned. It can be advantageous to be platform-specific. A good example is WP Engine which provides a platform made for WordPress.
CMS
Another fundamental is the content management system (CSM). WordPress again is common and for good reason; it is highly optimized for search engine performance, particularly for the king – Google.
80% of website traffic comes from search engines. If a website is not optimized for search engines in mind, it will get very little traffic. Incorporating SEO into website design makes all the difference. Online Media Marketing will make that difference for you. Contact us at info@onlinemarketingmedia.net or call us at (720) 432-1736 for a free quote.
What An Online Marketing Company Can Do For You
If you’re looking for an online marketing company in Denver, you may be at the very start of your new business project, or you could just be looking for someone to manage the campaign that you already have in place. Wherever you’re at along this path, many of the components of a marketing company’s plan for you will about the same, for instance:
Search Engine Optimization
Google’s algorithms tend to change with the weather. Ultimately, it’s all about getting the user the best possible experience, pushing high-quality content to the top. But this can be a bit of a pain to manage on your own. Trying to keep track of all the latest changes to Google’s search engine is just about a full-time job. Your Denver online marketing company does that for you, helping you to produce and optimize great content that gets seen in searches.
Social Media Management
What’s the best time of day to post new content on Facebook and Twitter? What’s the best day of the week to post new content? Are Facebook users using tags to search? Social media is a requisite for marketing anything these days, but it’s a bit of a labyrinth to try and figure out. The truth is it takes some experimentation. What might work for, say, an auto repair shop might not be ideal for a bookseller. Whether you’re selling to a local market or nationwide, your online marketing company in Denver will help you to figure out when and how your demographic is using social media, and optimize your content accordingly.
Email Marketing
Every now and then, some thinkpiece writer on a deadline will make the announcement that email is dead, nobody uses it anymore. And every time, they’re proven wrong. Email is still as relevant as it’s ever been. It’s no longer the be-all, end-all of online communication, but it’s still a cornerstone. Email is how your returning customers find out about new deals and products and promotions, it’s how you share newsletters and it’s how you keep people involved long after the first point of sale. It may not be the same as a friendly phone call, but it feels somehow a little more personal when so much of what we see is passive Facebook posts.
Whether you’re still figuring it out or you already have a campaign in place that could use a boost, at Online Marketing Media, we can help you to get the results you want from Google, social media, your website, and email campaigns. Make an appointment and ask what we can do for you.
Google Posts Now Live For Google My Business Users
ATTN: Newest update to Google – From your Denver businesses Google My Business page, you can now create and a Google post. A Google post is a social media style updates about activities that posts directly to Google’s search result pages. Before now, the only people who were allowed to do this were some select celebrities, film studios, and sports teams. Now local business owners are added to that list and will be able to update their activities. Google Posts has fully launched to most small business and allows business owners to post directly to their audience within the business listing & local knowledge panel on Google My Business.
This new update is going to be very helpful in bringing in more traffic to your site. Google experimented with their new posts during the US elections and it turned out to quite successful. After all who does not want the most up to date info, right in the search results?
If you are a small business owner, test out this new feature, give it a whirl! First of all, it’s FREE. Second of all, it has already proven to be very successful. Here are some ideas on what to post from Google:
- Share current promotions and daily specials – encouraging anyone to take advantage of your offers.
- Share to customers about upcoming happenings and events at your location.
- Show off your top products and highlight new arrivals.
- Choose from the available options to reach out to your customers from your Google listing: sign up for a newsletter, give them a one-click path to make a reservation, learn more about latest offers, or even buy a specific product from your website.
Are you ready to get started? Follow these steps on a desktop computer:
- Go to Google My Business and sign in. If you two or more than one location, click Manage location for the location you’d like to manage, which is the little building icon.
- Click the blue ‘CREATE POST’ button or click ‘Posts’ from the menu.
- From here you will see different options to add photos, text, events and even a button to your post.
- Make sure to preview your post before you post. Once it looks good, click ‘Publish’ in the top right corner of the screen.
Here’s an example of a post:
So how popular is this going to be? That’s hard to say but, Mike Blumenthal has been tracking the sites being created and there are already well over 100,000 in Google’s index since launch!
Top 3 Latest Facebook Updates That Are Not Only Useful But, Also Interesting
Facebook is continually trying to create new updates so that its users have a better experience and advertisers can get more benefits from their platform. Recently, Facebook rolled out some cool and useful new Facebook updates for any Denver business. You can check them out here:
1. Video Cover Images
To really help businesses catch the eye of their followers Facebook has brought on video-format cover images. This awesome update is still in the process of rolling out worldwide.
To Create your own Cover Video here are the requirements:
• The length of the cover video has to be between 20-90 seconds.
• The size of the video has to be 820 pixels by 462 pixels.
• It needs to be on auto-play and auto-loop.
• Any page admin can upload the video just like they would a cover image.
2. Audience Optimization to Control Who Can See Posts
Through the audience, optimization took businesses are now about to optimize your viewer’s list. Through this, you can select your preferred audience to see your post as well as setting and audience restriction if there are certain viewers you don’t want to see your post.
This is one way to reach out to your target audience. Just select the interests, business, and industry that pertain to your post. The audience optimization tool is automatically activated when your business page passes more than 5,000 likes. When your page has fewer likes than that, you need to manually activate the tool.
Follow This Steps To Activate The Audience Optimization Tool
• Go to “Settings” (top at the right corner) and click on “General”.
• In “General” you will see the option for “Audience Optimization for Post”
• Click on “Edit” and check the box to activate the tool.
• Now, save the changes by clicking on Save button.
3. Ask Questions To The New Entry In Your Facebook Group
Facebook now has the option for the admin of a Facebook group to where they can create up to three questions for users to answer who are seeking to join the group. This new feature will help the admin to identify potential members of the group and ensure they are not spammers and that they are genuine and correct fit for the group.
Only, the admin and the moderator of the page can see the questions and answers and no answers will be public to the group.
This new feature is a real help to the people who are managing a popular and reputed business group. With this you will get to know the member’s interest and expectations, so you can discuss on matters which they are interested in.
Positive Client Reviews for your Business
Do you need Positive Client Reviews for your business? Our team at Positive Client Reviews can help manage and improve your businesses reputation through online reviews. When looking to increase the number of positive online reviews left for your business, our review-generation program, Positive Client Reviews, enables you to connect with your customers through email or SMS to allow them to provide you feedback – positive or negative – about their experience. The good reviews are published. The bad gives you an opportunity for growth.
Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits your business will see when you increase the number of positive online reviews your business has.
- Convert your customers into your own personal marketing machine. New reviews will dramatically increase your businesses ratings, drive higher customer acquisition, and boost revenue.
- Positive Client Reviews can help improve your business reputation and customer experience.
- Rank higher on Google- With Positive Client Reviews you get a custom SEO-optimized review microsite that displays all your reviews in one place, along with your up to date business information.
- The constant stream of fresh, organic content boosts your search ranking even further too, so customers easily find your microsite when searching for reviews of your business or industry.
- When people do a local search their company choice is driven by online reviews, and therefore so is your revenue. On average, just having customer ratings is proven to increase sales by 18%, and 90% of people claim that positive reviews influence their purchasing decisions.
Features
If the benefits are not enough for you, check out the features of our program Positive Client Reviews:
- Request reviews via email or SMS and contact recent customers one at a time or in bulk.
- Collect and display all reviews via an iframe widget or customizable, mobile-friendly landing page
- Request reviews on major sites like Google and Yelp
- New reviews get put on your landing pages and display widgets automatically
- Get email notifications instantly the moment a customer submits a review on your landing page or widget
- Respond to new reviews directly from the dashboard – positive or negative
- Identify common and trending keywords that are in your customer reviews
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What Our Client’s Say
No need to hire 3 different companies, Online Marketing Media can do it all!! I'm seeing incredible results. You will too!
Denver Businesses, Websites, and Google’s New Algorithm Update
How are we protecting our clients, you ask?
1. First, we focus on the basics i.e. On-Site optimization, which includes fixing duplicate copy on the website and correcting all possible 404 errors 2. In the beginning, we do a thorough backlink analysis to get rid of any bad backlinks that can prove harmful. Then we diversify the backlink profile and add new backlinks, including local directories, coupons, infographics, informational content, videos, guest blogs, etc.Below are some other backlink sources we’ve included in our new SEO deliverables to help further diversify the backlink profile.• Startup Business Listings• Magazine / News Placement• Q&A Posting
3. We focus on getting the right keywords for your website and then making sure they are in the right places. We then sprinkle the keywords in blog posts and social posts.So, if your website was hit by the new “Fred” update OR you want to avoid falling victim, we can help. Connect with us today and let our SEOs experts do all of the work.Testimonials
What Our Client’s Say
No need to hire 3 different companies, Online Marketing Media can do it all!! I'm seeing incredible results. You will too!
