Review Management 101 for General Contractors

No matter what business you talk about, reputation management strategies are vital to its success. Whether it’s a single convenience store, a bustling restaurant, or a large corporate office, every kind of business has a face and a public image. With competition, especially between general contractor outfits being so stiff, keeping a polished image is necessary to your success.

The key to keeping a polished reputation, especially in today’s modern age, is with online Review Management. You may think it’s odd that a general contractor outfit would rely on positive reviews to uphold a good reputation, but it’s true.

Online reviews used to be just detrimental for service or product-based businesses like restaurants and hotels. However, opinions about every kind of service are voiced all throughout the internet today. When someone is looking for a trusted general contractor, people’s first-hand experiences are sometimes the most accurate description of a business their looking for.

The research found that 93% of consumers have their purchasing decisions impacted by online reviews. With that being said, your general contracting website relies heavily on managing your online presence for its digital marketing strategy.

Yes, it takes a great amount of work in the physical world to keep your general contracting outfit up and running. However, if you don’t take towards polishing up your virtual reputation, you’re business will begin to suffer.

It’s not as complicated as it seems to get started. In fact, by the end of this article, you will have the general knowledge to get started improving your online reputation. Welcome to review management 101!

What Is Review Management?

To implement online review management as a strategy, you should first get to know the basics of it.

Let’s say you have little to no online presence. Even if your online presence is non-existent, there will still be previous customers who have shared their opinion with the digital world. Customers can utilize third-party platforms like Google My Business, Facebook, or Yelp to leave a review complimenting our criticizing your service.

If you’re not keeping track of and creating the proper response to reviews, your credibility to potential customers will begin to decline.

Here are the three main ways online reviews impact your business’ image:

Awareness: Local search engine results are dominated by websites with quality content. The more reviews you receive, the more content you have on your website will help you immensely in local relevant searches.
Credibility: The overall number of quality reviews with proper responses will add to your general contracting website’s credibility.
Trustworthiness: Whether it’s a bathroom remodel, kitchen remodels, or a new deck. Hiring a general contractor isn’t cheap. Customers need to know they can trust a general contractor before they request their services. Reviews help gain the trust of potential customers by reading first-hand accounts left by previous ones.

Online review management isn’t only an excellent way to polish your internet reputation, but it’s also an effective facet of great search engine optimization (SEO). The first thing you need to know about SEO is that content is key.

As mentioned before, reviews are content. When someone leaves a review about your business, they give you a free source of content that helps your website become favored by Google’s algorithm.

How Does Review Management Work?

Now that you know the importance reviews have for the success of your website, you might wish that every satisfied customer would hop online and leave a glowing review about your service. Unfortunately, it isn’t always that simple.

On the bright side, there are ways to drum up more reviews for your website!

Generating Online Reviews

Drumming up more reviews of your service is the first step in improving your online reputation.

Try implementing the following strategies to increase the number of reviews for your general contracting service:

Create an easy-to-use reviews widget on your website.
Dedicate a whole web page to showing off your reviews.
Send personalized review requests to previous customers by email or social media.
Use a direct line of communication such as email to encourage customers to leave a review on your website or other third-party platforms.
Offer incentives to anyone that leaves reviews such as coupons or discounts on future service.

Once you begin to use these tactics, you will begin to see more and more reviews coming in every day!

Monitoring Online Reviews

Once you have an increase of reviews rolling in, the next step is to keep an eye on them. Consider checking for new reviews once a day, weekly at the very least. You can take advantage of online review monitoring tools like Google Alerts to stay on top of new reviews.

In addition to Google Alerts, you can utilize professional Review Management Software that provides 24/7 monitoring which allows you to respond to reviews immediately.

Responding to Online Reviews

Whether a review is positive or negative, a proper response is needed for success. As you may already know, you should respond to positive reviews with gratitude and thanks, but what about the negative ones? Well, responding to negative reviews requires a bit of a delicate approach.

You can’t go your entire career without one bad review, as some customers may be impossible to please. With the proper response, though, you have a chance to turn those negative reviews into an overall positive experience!

Here’s how to formulate a response to a negative review:

Thank the customer for their feedback.
Apologize for the negative experience.
See if there is a way to achieve their satisfaction.
Inquire about speaking on a more personal line of communication like a phone call or email and hash out their grievances there.
Never make excuses and always try to advocate for a solution.

The proper response to any kind of review will show potential customers your willingness to go the extra mile for every client.

Receive Professional Review Management Services With Triton

If your general contracting business requires assistance with online review management, call on Triton Commerce! We are passionate about assisting small businesses in the realm of web design and other digital marketing strategies.