Corporate communication: use Google reviews throughout your company

Are you taking full advantage of your online reviews? We've previously looked at the importance of online reviews for SEO and social trust, as well as ideas for using reviews in-store, but there's another way to think about it: as business intelligence. Online reviews are unfiltered feedback from your customers, a wealth of information that can help you improve your service and grow your business. Here, we look at how different departments could use reviews more effectively, explaining why they should be part of your corporate communications strategy.

The brand team

Penser à la marque comme à une diffusion unidirectionnelle vers votre public n’a peut-être jamais été précis, mais ce ne l’est certainement pas maintenant. Mark Lange de Reputation.com, une société de gestion de la réputation en ligne, dit : « vous co-créez votre marque avec les clients à travers les sites d'avis et les réseaux sociaux. » Les avis en ligne et les réseaux sociaux offrent aux clients une plateforme pour parler de vous et leurs mots ont une valeur plus élevée – en 2015, une enquête d'Influence Central a révélé que 91 % des acheteurs considèrent un avis en ligne plus important que l'avis d'un vendeur en magasin.

Cela signifie plusieurs choses pour le branding : le service client est une extension de la marque (nous y reviendrons ci-dessous), et un bon branding utilise l'avis des clients. eConsultancy a d'excellents exemples de marques utilisant des avis clients dans leur publicité, 11 façons inventives d'utiliser les avis au-delà de la page produit, y compris Sonos, qui a demandé aux spectateurs de ses panneaux d'affichage de rechercher « avis Sonos ». C'est un geste audacieux, mais ils savaient que la recherche renverrait des avis positifs et que les clients parlant aux clients sont une publicité puissante.

The team marketing

A simple rule for the marketing team is to use positive online reviews everywhere. Both online, for example - on your website, homepage and other high-traffic pages, in e-mails and your own social media posts, and offline - in-store and in DOOH advertising. A great example of using in-store reviews is Italian electrical retailer Marcopolo. Customers could scan QR codes next to products to see more information and reviews. Searching for a product in-store is something we all do anyway, so this was a way for the retailer to take control and show the reviews they wanted the customer to see.

Nous avons parlé dans un post précédent de l'importance des avis en ligne pour la visibilité SEO, y compris la recherche locale, mais il y a d'autres façons dont l'équipe marketing peut également utiliser l'intelligence des avis en ligne. Dans un post invité pour Mention, Joei Chan parle d'utiliser les avis clients pour améliorer vos annonces PPC et la création de contenu – pour trouver des mots-clés pour vos produits : « affinez votre ciblage de mots-clés en analysant comment les clients décrivent vos produits dans leurs avis. Cela vous donne une image plus claire de la façon dont les clients perçoivent et recherchent vos produits. » Vous pourriez être surpris par la différence entre la façon dont vous pensez à votre entreprise et la façon dont les autres la catégorisent. 

The product development team

This is an area where negative reviews are just as, if not more, valuable than positive ones. Online reviews are given freely - in fact, it's against Google's rules for brands to encourage people to give reviews - so they're honest experiences of your business. If you're careful, you'll quickly discover problems and be able to resolve them quickly. Where can you find this, without conducting expensive focus groups? By analyzing your own online reviews, you can find areas for improvement, and by analyzing your competitors' online reviews, you can come up with new product and service ideas to give you an edge, which you can then feed back into marketing. Online reputation management software helps automate this process - most platforms include keyword analysis and can show you the words and trends that appear most often.

The sales team

Bad reviews can ruin all advertising efforts and marketing. Mark Lange continues, "You can spend millions on the perfect advertising strategy, only to be completely sidetracked by poor ratings on Google or an industry-specific review site." Investment and training in service customer must go hand in hand with investment in marketing.

Online reviews and social networks are "unofficial" service customer channels that need to be monitored and managed; Reputation.com recommends responding to at least 20% of positive reviews and 100% of negative reviews. Some negative reviews are not disastrous for a company, and if managed correctly, can even strengthen your brand image. But customers expect you to respond, so make your sales team comfortable with this.

The service team

It's an extension of the sales team. A good service customer review is powerful advertising. Responding to negative reviews appropriately can help turn a negative experience into a positive one, both for the customer who left the review and for other customers who read the review feed. Even if you can't solve a problem, acknowledging that there is a problem and that you are addressing it can give you a point of contact with the customer and an opportunity for dialogue.

What's more, customers don't expect everything to be perfect. One study showed that 45% of online shoppers think it's okay for products to have a few negative reviews, as long as the majority are positive. If your customers see that you handle reviews effectively, they'll trust you more.