When a business first encounters HelpHound - through our website or this blog, or as a result of a recommendation from another of our clients, there can be an understandable preconception: that it is 'HelpHound's way or the highway'. Nothing could be further from the truth, and in this article we will set out the options for your business as well as dispelling any notion that HelpHound is a one-size-fits-all solution.
Your objectives are our objectives
What does your business aim to achieve with reviews, besides the universal objective of 'more enquiries/more conversions'? There is a very good reason that HelpHound does not offer an online signup: we need to know precisely what kind of review management will benefit your business best...
- Google reviews
- Moderated Google reviews
- Reviews on an external website - Trustpilot, Feefo etc.
- A combination of two or more of the above
- Reviews showing on your website
- Reviews feeding through to your socials
- Reviews supporting PR, advertising and other marketing
- Ownership of your own reviews
We will also ensure, whatever solutions we recommend, that your business is in compliance with the law (enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK) and Google's own Terms of Service (applicable worldwide), the core rules of which are...
- no cherry-picking (if a business invites any reviews, it must allow all of its customers to write one)
- no gating (gating includes such tactics as sending out a questionnaire and then only asking those who respond positively to write a review)
An online reputation built on either of these is built on sand; and, furthermore, unnecessary. With moderation - reviews being checked for factual accuracy pre-publication - businesses can build rock-solid online reputations without flouting the law (our clients also tell us that it helps them sleep at night!).
Our No. 1 objective on behalf of all our clients is to ensure that the review management strategy we recommend is fully compliant with both UK law and Google's Terms of Service.
In the case of products, a review site's star rating can be a helpful marketing tool, but we might argue that 5 glowing gold stars from Google is an even more powerful - and credible - way to drive customers through your door
Next: where are your potential customers looking? If the answer is 'billboards' or 'on the London Underground', then a reviews site may be the right avenue (or at least part of the solution); if the answer is 'through a web search [of any kind]', then the answer will almost certainly be Google.
You can spot the HelpHound client easily, not just because they head up local search (having your own reviews provides a great SEO kicker) but because we ensure their own reviews are pulled through by Google - see the red arrow (no, they're the business's own reviews, not, as many are convinced, Google reviews or Google stars; just look at them on the business's website). Many clients say those stars pay for their HelpHound membership on their own!
Professional services need to look increasingly as near-perfect on Google as they can. Five years ago, scoring 4.5 out of 5 meant leading either their category and/or local search; today, that score needs to be at least 4.8 or 4.9, and maintained at that level. The only way of being sure of achieving that is...
- to be really good at what you do
- to have great CRM
- to employ a moderated review management system
The last of these - a moderated review management system - will help enormously where the first two are concerned: it will provide an ongoing stream of feedback to the business so improvements can be made and those, in turn, will result in improvements to customer relationship management.
Every client that has posted a review on the business's website is automatically asked to copy it to Google. Out of the 743 posted here over 500 have done so
So: speak to us - or contact us at info@helphound.com - and we will answer all your questions.
Further reading
- Moderation - the key to successful review management
- Compliance - to be credible, reviews must be acquired in compliance with the law and Google's Terms of Service
No comments:
Post a Comment
HelpHound is all about feedback, so please feel free to comment here...