A re you Customer

Rev iew s Ready?The power of Word of MouthHave you ever chosen your outf it based on your mum?s advice? Have you ever purchased a product because your friends told you they loved it? Or have you ever bought a product even though your friends told you how terrible it was?

Even though you must advertise the new collection of your company and spread appealing promotional offers, there is nothing more convincing to buy a product than a good old recommendation from someone we know. Word of mouth has always existed. However, the advent of new the Internet and especially of the social media has made it a double-edged sword, giving you the opportunity of reaching a

much larger audience through testimonials. On the other hand, negative comments concerning your brand can and often go viral online and deeply harm their reputation.

How can online word of mouth affect your brand? How can you leverage the best out of online word of mouth?

Effect on the brand 3 out of 5: this is the number of shoppers that check online reviews before purchasing a product. ?They can eliminate any doubts potential customers may have about a product, or can help product selection? (Charlton, 2012). Positive content generated by the customer leads to more conversion as people that check these reviews are 105% more likely to buy from you (Bazaarvoice, Conversation Index, Q2 2011). To some extent, negative comments can also increase the conversion rate of your business as long as they are well balanced with positive comments. If you read only positive comments, you don?t have any idea of how the product can disappoint you and you start doubting its reliability. But if you read

both positive and negative testimonials, you realize how amazing the product is. If people have experienced the negative aspects of a product but stil l comment on it positively, doesn?t it mean that it?s actually a truly nice product that is worth the spending?

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However, too many negative comments and your potential buyers will not think how amazing your product really is but rather how terrible it can be. In a word, this is all about your reputation. Sometimes, even though your product might work, a bad reputation might dramatically hit your sales. For example, in its latest advert for its weight loss collection, Protein World has drawn the ire from feminists who considered their posters as sexist. Everywhere in London, the posters were tagged with protest from outraged people, while a petit ion demanding their removal has already been signed by more than 50,000 people and that public demonstrations are to take place in Hyde Park (Timpf, 2015).

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If the extent to which this is going to hit Protein World?s sales isn?t known yet, Domino?s Pizza can?t say the same thing. Remember, in 2009, two employees publish a video of them preparing pizza, putting cheese in their nose before spreading it on the dough. In 3 days, the Youtube video reached 1 mill ion views and forced the Domino?s Pizza?s President to post a video to apologize for the harm caused. Sales suddenly dropped by 39% and it took the fast food 3 quarters to recover (Dumond, 2011).

How can you leverage it?The danger of customer reviews is that they can harm your reputation. So how should you handle negative customer reviews? And what do you have to do to take advantage of positive ones?

Well, for positive reviews it is pretty simple. Make sure there are visible in the most suitable places. Display some on your welcome page to

help you increase the trust in your products. Moreover, in a purchasing decision, there is always a moment of hesitation. Your potential buyer is thinking: should I buy this or not? Can I f ind the same for a better price from another company? Does that really fulf il my needs? And this is exactly at this point that positive reviews have the strongest impact. They help you erase the last doubts in your customer?s mind. On the other hand, dealing with negative reviews is all about response, t ime and the team. Harris Interactive found that if you respond to a bad review, there is 33% chance that the disappointed customer posted positive reviews following your response and 34% delete their negative comment(s) (Forbes, 2013).

Respond promptly! Remember what I have just said about Domino?s Pizza. It took the video only 3 short days to reach 1 mill ion views on Youtube. How could that happen? Domino?s simply feared to raise the attention on the video by commenting on it and so tried to let it go in the f irst place. The best advice I can give you is to deal with bad reviews as soon as you can. First because you give yourself the chance to get feedback from your customers and your customers are or at least should be your f irst focus. Second because you can avoid a bad reputation to spread throughout the social web. If you deal with the issue fast enough, people will have less to complain about and you save yourself from a very dangerous situation.

Finally, to handle a reputation crisis, you must set up a team that will understand the intricacies of your business. Obviously people from the PR and marketing departments are essential for that. But you should also consider the help of your lawyers and executives can do. As reputation can harm your business as a whole, this is the whole business that must be integrated in the crisis resolution (Flandez, 2009).

All about ControlIn the end, both good and bad reviews are important to your business. Both can inf luence your reputation and this is the reason why you must keep an eye on them. As Warren Buffet said, ?It takes 20 years to build a reputation and f ive minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things dif ferently.? Your reputation is as important as the quality of your products. Stay aware of what people say about you helps you to keep the control over your image. Do it well and you will see a positive effect on your sales, positive reviews helping you enhance your conversion rate.

At Pictawall, engaging your customers is our expertise. Have you ever had to face negative customer reviews? Tell us how you dealt with it.