Reputation and
While it may be tempting for small-business owners to shrug off a few lousy reviews, industry research shows benign neglect of a company's online reputation could quickly hurt sales — especially given the new normal behavior of customers consulting their smartphones for even the smallest of purchases.
A Harvard business school research says that a one-star increase on Yelp can lead to a 9% increase in sales. Four out of five consumers, or 80%, reverse their purchase decisions based on negative online reviews, up from 67% in 2010, according to the 2011 Online Influence Trend Tracker survey by Cone. "It has a really major impact on the bottom line," says Brent Franson, vice president of sales for Reputation.com.
Review sites have exploded in recent years in number and types. Yelp is widely regarded as the most influential general review site, while Google Plus Local and Foursquare are often mentioned as rivals. TripAdvisor is the go-to spot for hotel owners but also lists a ton of reviews for restaurants and tour operators. Angie's List specializes in services.
People are also increasingly airing their complaints on social-media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube.
There are industry-specific review sites, such as Wellness.com and Doctoroogle.com for doctors and dentists. DealerRater and Edmunds.com are popular for customers scouring for car dealers. There are even sites such as Houzz where consumers gather to talk about remodeling and other hobbies but liberally sprinkle vendor recommendations.
Attensity, a reputation management company for large corporate clients, tracks more than 150 million online sites where consumers are writing about products and services, says Michelle de Haaff of Attensity. "The emergence of review sites and social-media channels has given birth to a treasure trove of data of customer preference, desire and even intent to purchase," she says. "It is data that companies used to pay a lot of money for."
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS TO DIGITAL AGE
Review trackers trace their history to press-clipping services. And large companies migrated to digital solutions early on, spending a good chunk of their marketing budgets to gauge not only reviews but to learn more about influential writers, bloggers, product issues, complaints and compliments.
Only in recent years have the options for small-business owners become cheap enough to be widely available. There are even free options, such as Google Alerts, that ping account holders when key search terms turn up on various sites.
Netvibes and Trackur offer free tools for basic services — finding reviews and sending immediate alerts. Netvibes' free online "Dashboard" for monitoring articles and Twitter feeds are used by 4 million users, says spokesman Vincent Chang.
Most review trackers also provide subscription options, typically priced from $20 to $500 a month, that include a range of premium services, such as computing a total score of a client's online reputation "sentiment analysis" that indicates proportion of positive-to-negative reviews, and pointing out influential Twitterers, bloggers and journalists. Reputation.com offers a "reputation adviser," who may call clients and offer advice on responding to individual cases.
Using a professional tracking service paid off for a hotel client of Gary Henderson, whose digital marketing agency, Interactivity Marketing, uses Trackur.com to monitor reviews on behalf of its clients.
A hotel customer went to website Bedbugregistry.com and reported the hotel had bedbugs during his stay — and that his calls to managers were ignored.
Henderson's staff alerted the hotel owner of the registry. "If it was on TripAdvisor, they'd have seen it. Hotels are wired to track TripAdvisor. But they're not wired to track every other website," Henderson says. "If you weren't using an application similar to Trackur, you wouldn't have found it."
The hotel retrained its staff to respond to complaints with more urgency and issued the offended guest a free stay, Henderson says.
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