Score with stars: manage customer ratings

When buying a new product, reviews help us to assess whether it really keeps what is promised, are the dimensions as stated, is the quality good and how was the advice. Are you looking for a new hairdresser, doctor or insurance office? Even there, the search for a service provider or a business usually no longer leads to search engines such as Google and Co. And there you jump towards you, in big golden stars: the customer reviews. Service providers and products under 3/5 stars are usually not even considered. This evaluation strategy is no longer just important in online shopping; digital evaluations are also becoming increasingly important for retailers and local businesses.

It is therefore important to know what is being written on the internet about yourself and your own products and services. Are the customers satisfied? Would you recommend one? Congratulations, your customers have already done an important piece of marketing work for you. However, if the ratings are not so good, you should deal with them quickly. It is especially difficult for small branches and companies with many partners to keep track of all reviews. The Local Listings function of the Local Marketing Platform enables you and your partners to manage all ratings in one system.

Reviews as digital recommendation marketing

In the past, recommendation marketing and word of mouth were especially important for local businesses. You knew the local providers and told your friends and acquaintances about them and recommended them to others. With increasing digitization and the turn to online retail, many local providers are finding it difficult to assert themselves against online competition. Now it is particularly important to pick up customers online and bring them back to the local store. This can work mainly through a skilful online presence and the right search engine optimization. Entries on directory portals, so-called local listings, play a role here. The entries for opening times, contact persons and contact details are usually accompanied by evaluation options. You can use this digital recommendation marketing just like the analog recommendations of your customers.

Keep track of things

In order to use these evaluations ideally and to integrate them into the marketing strategy, the most important thing for the time being is to keep an overview and to react if necessary. Thus, positive reviews can be integrated, for example, on your own website or landing pages and also used for your own marketing. However, even with negative reviews, it is necessary to know them and respond to them. Here it is important to be particularly solution-oriented and to take customers' problems seriously and try to solve them. In addition, negative as well as positive reviews offer a good opportunity to get direct feedback from customers and to further optimize your own products, services and service.

Support the partners

With the multitude of directories and review portals, however, you can quickly lose track of things. If your company also has various local partners and is located in locations all over Germany or even worldwide, it is almost impossible to maintain all these directories and stay up-to-date with the reviews. With the Local Marketing Platform you put the management in the hands of your partners. The partners can fill in and update all directories in the system and react directly to the reviews received. No rating is overlooked and the partners no longer have to log into the individual pages and directories to answer. The local listing function uploads the stored data directly to approx. 60 directory portals and provides ideal online support for your partners' local marketing.
Does that sound interesting to you too? Contact us, we will be happy to advise you.