Customer Review Management for Landscapers.

Every single service business has some sort of reputation. To ensure the integrity of your landscaping service’s brand, managing your reputation online is a vital step in the process.

You have the best landscaping service in your area, but you know all too well how stiff the competition is. When you fail to properly manage your online reputation, you could be missing out on a ton of sales to competitors.

When it comes to keeping your reputation intact and polished, online Review Management is the name of the game. You may think reviews are only exclusive to certain product or service-based industries such as restaurants, hotels, and so on. However, the exact opposite is true. If you have commerce online or not, there will be reviews about your landscaping business on the internet regardless.

Reviews online carry a massive amount of weight. Research suggests that 93% of consumers have their purchase (or non-purchase) impacted by online reviews. So, actively managing your online presence by monitoring and responding to both positive and negative reviews is a crucial part of implementing an effective digital marketing strategy.

Yes, your job is physical. You’re an expert at making yards, gardens, and properties stunningly beautiful. You put blood, sweat, and tears into this business to do the work you love. Unfortunately, without maintaining your online reputation, your landscaping business may see failure over the horizon.

Do not fret: Getting started with online review management is as easy as reading through this article. Welcome to review management 101!

What Is Review Management?

If your online presence is small or non-existent, your landscaping business is still receiving reviews on the internet from third-party platforms like Google My Business, Facebook, Yelp, etc. Your business doesn’t have to exist as a website to garner attention online.

In fact, there may already be a Google My Business account already set up for your landscaping company! All you must do is verify it.

In short, if you own a business, you will have some sort of online presence and reputation. It wouldn’t be wise to ignore this presence, as it factors into whether or not you monitor, respond, and generate more reviews. Neglecting this task will make your business look less credible in the eyes of a potential customer.

Here are the three main impacts of online reviews:

• Credibility: When your landscaping website has more overall reviews and high ratings, this will positively impact credibility towards your customers in a huge way.
• Trustworthiness: Landscaping isn’t the cheapest property improvement service you can get. When it comes to customers picking a landscaping company, they need to know they can trust them before they begin work. With more reviews generated online, an uptick of customers may feel more comfortable about your service after reading some positive experiences.
• Awareness: Google’s algorithm loves to skim through all the reviews it can about your business. The more overall positive online reviews will positively impact your search engine relevance.

As may already know, search engine optimization (SEO) is the number one tactic used by businesses to help generate more sales. Reviews are a big part of the SEO formula, so managing them is a great start to dominate relevant and local searches!

How Does Review Management Work?

It would be wonderful if every satisfied customer would go straight online and leave a glowing review of your landscaping service. Unfortunately, that’s never the case. However, there is a way to get more customers to post, share, and talk about your wonderful service on all sorts of social media platforms!

Generating Reviews

The three steps of online review management are to:

1. Generate
2. Monitor
3. Respond

The first order of business is to generate more online reviews, so here are some ways to do that:

• Make the review widget on your website easily accessible.
• Show of previous reviews that are glowing and left honestly.
• When your business services a customer and you have their contact information like email or social media profile, send them a message encouraging a review on your website!
• Encourage the customers you contact to leave reviews on third-party websites like Facebook, Google, and Yelp.
• A little incentive goes a long way. Offer discounts and other deals when you encourage customers to leave a review.

When you utilize these tactics, you will start to see an increase in reviews online for your landscaping service!

Monitoring Online Reviews

Now that you’re seeing an increase in online reviews for your landscaping business, it’s time to keep track of them! Set a reminder to check your reviews either daily or weekly. Take advantage of tools like Google Alerts and other third-party apps to help you keep track more efficiently.

If you want to see reviews the second they are posted, take advantage of professional review software to provide feedback for your reviews instantly.

Responding to Reviews

Now that you’ve started to see more reviews online about your landscaping service and you have the means to look over them efficiently, it’s time to talk about responding to reviews--both good or bad. Honestly, no business can satisfy every customer. No matter how great of a service you provide, there will be someone who finds something wrong with it.

Negative reviews are sometimes seen as only a bad thing. On the other hand, negative reviews are an opportunity to respond appropriately. This is said for positive reviews too, as gratitude for kind words can go a long way.

When you’re responding to negative reviews, though, be sure to use the following elements:

• Apologize for the negative experience they have received.
• Thank them for their feedback.
• Find a solution with the customer.
• Speak with the customer personally (phone call, direct message, etc.) to see if there is anything you can do to resolve the issue.
• Push towards finding a solution, not excuses.

When it comes down to reviews, sometimes you must defend your brand. Finding a solution and satisfying a customer even after a bad experience will keep confidence in your brand.

Contact Triton Commerce for Professional Review Management

Need assistance to keep up with your online reviews and other website-related upkeep? Call on Triton Commerce! Our team of marketing experts is highly trained in the craft of web design and other digital marketing strategies, including online Review Management Software.