3 ways online reputation management can help you with Google reviews

Your online reputation is the make-or-break factor for the success of your business. With customers increasingly turning to Google reviews to inform their purchasing decisions, the need for a robust online reputation management strategy has never been more crucial. But just how significant is the role of Google reviews in the grand scheme?

As it turns out, a recent Birdeye survey on the state of online reviews in 2024 revealed some fascinating statistics: 

• Online reviews grew by a remarkable 5% over the previous year
• Google reviews now account for a jaw-dropping 79% of all online reviews
• The average business received an impressive 66 new Google reviews last year
• Google captured 97% of retail, 94% of healthcare, 92% of legal, and 90% of home services reviews

These statistics make it clear – your Google reviews are more crucial than ever. In the following sections, we’ll dive into the top three ways you can harness the power of online reputation management to win more Google reviews.

What are the 3 ways to take charge of Google reviews with online reputation management? 

Here are three integral ways to take charge of Google reviews with online reputation management: 

Way 1: Helps you gain new customer reviews
Way 2: Stay engaged with your customers
Way 3: Turn your customers into promoters

Let’s explore these in detail in the following sections.

Role of Google reviews in online reputation management

Google reviews play a significant role in shaping your online reputation. Here are a few reasons why Google reviews are crucial for your business’s success: 

• Positive Google reviews build trust and credibility, driving more sales and leads.
• Google review signals heavily influence local SEO rankings, impacting your visibility in search.
• They help you understand valuable customer insights to enhance your products/services.

3 ways online reputation management can help you with Google reviews

Here are the three ways: 

Way 1: Helps you gain new customer reviews

The more reviews you have, the more customers walk through your door. After all, a restaurant with 500 reviews looks a lot more popular than a restaurant with 5. Review quantity is clear social proof that you have a great business.

Luckily, there’s an easy way of review generation: just ask. By sending review request emails to your customers, you can make leaving reviews quick and easy for customers.

Sending review requests is encouraged by Google as its a way to create lots of quality feedback from your customers. By sending review requests, you can get more reviews while customers can see the genuine opinions of other customers. In the end, everybody wins.

Top 5 review generation tactics you can implement in your business

Here are the review generation tactics you can apply: 
1. Implement automated review requests via email, SMS, or QR codes. 
2. Train staff to ask satisfied customers to leave reviews politely. 
3. Send personalized follow-up emails reminding customers to review their experience.
4. Run targeted social media, email, or advertising campaigns encouraging customers to submit reviews. 
5. Offer small discounts, loyalty points, or prizes to incentivize customers.

It’s important to keep timing in mind. We’ve found that customers are most likely to leave a review when they’re sent a review request on the same day as the sale.

With an online reputation management system, you don’t have to send reviews at the end of every business day manually. By integrating it into your Customer Relationship Management system, you can automatically send review requests to customers. 

An AI-powered 360° review software like Birdeye can help you collect customer feedback while staying focused on running your business. With it, you can: 

• Reply with AI
• Monitor reviews on 200+ sites
• Auto-reply to customer reviews
• Translate reviews and responses  
• Use reviews to improve Google ad performance

Unlock the power of review generation with Birdeye's flexible pricing plans tailored to your business needs. 

Way 2: Stay engaged with your customers

Customer reviews aren’t the only thing potential customers will be looking at. Remember, potential customers are trying to see the kind of service that your business provides.

Customers look at your review responses to understand how much you value each customer. A business that responds to all reviews, both positive and negative, demonstrates a genuine commitment to the experiences of every customer who interacts with it. 

Staying on top of customer reviews also helps with your online visibility. The better you respond to reviews, the higher your rank on Google. Remember, Google evaluates your business on the same factors as your customers.

Of course, if you’re sending lots of review requests, staying on top of customer reviews can be tough. After all, most customers are expecting a response within 24 hours. If you respond to a negative review too late, it might be too late to change the customer’s perception of your business.

Keeping up with your customers is easier with Birdeye. Birdeye’s review management allows businesses to set rules for automatic responses. 

For example, let’s say that you don’t want to manually respond to every single 5-star review that comes your way and that you’d rather focus your time on manually responding to negative reviews. On Birdeye, you can set automatic responses to those 5-star reviews to save time.

Way 3: Turn your customers into promoters

Your Google reviews don’t have to stay on Google. A 5-star customer review can be a convincing testimonial that can get interested prospects to want to come to your business. By sharing reviews on social media and displaying a live review feed on your website, you can show the world proof of your business’s quality services. 

With an online reputation management system, sharing glowing customer reviews is easier than ever. With Birdeye’s review marketing, you can:

• Automatically share your 5-star reviews on social media
• Convert reviews into social posts
• Showcase reviews on a custom site

Birdeye helps you ensure that the whole world sees your happy customers.

Online reputation management: The authentic way to grow

There’s a reason why customers trust reviews so much. Reviews represent the authentic experiences of real customers.

We’re living in the age of the trust economy. Whether you buy something off of Amazon or find a vacation house at Airbnb, the first thing that you do is check the reviews.

The trust economy has always existed. In earlier times, customers would gain the trust of businesses through word-of-mouth. If a friend or family member told you that a new restaurant was worth checking out, you would likely give it a try.

Online reviews are the new word-of-mouth, except with a much wider reach. Before, a happy customer could only spread the word about your business to a small group of people they knew personally. With platforms like Google, they can show their positive feelings to the entire world.

With online reputation management, you can help broadcast the voice of the customers far and wide. Let everyone in your area know how your customers feel about your products and services.

FAQs on 3 ways online reputation management helps in getting Google reviews

Transform your online reputation management with Birdeye

With Birdeye, businesses can stay on top of every aspect of customer feedback. The Birdeye dashboard empowers businesses to:

• Auto-reply to customer reviews
• Translate reviews and responses with AI
• Monitor and respond to reviews from over 200+review sites 
• Share 5-star reviews on social media
• Identify and reward your MVPs
• Track your reviews across locations

And these are just a few of the amazing benefits it offers. Read how Birdeye helped one of our customers to make their workflow easier: 

Our customers, their stories: 

Birdeye has been a great help to us in terms of social media reputation management and a lot more. Having the function to send surveys, reviews & even announcements in 1 platform is already good. We all know it's hard to manage each social media 1 at a time, so having Birdeye do that for us makes them worth getting.

– James Sy, Senior IT, Poundex

This blog post is part of our Online Reputation Management Guide:




        
Online Reputation Management

          
Search engine reputation management
Online reputation management tools      
Positive online reputation 
Reputation marketing  
Reputation management companies

Business reputation management strategy
Brand reputation management
Online reputation management services
Reputation management strategy
Online reputation manager
Online reputation management consultants
Reputation score      
Company reputation