How-to review and respond to online reviews

Learn how to review and respond to online reviews to improve your reputation, conversion, and local SEO.

We suggest creating a marketing plan before starting any marketing tactic. This ensures consistency across your marketing effort.

Take 15 minutes and complete our questionnaire, and we will send you a custom marketing plan, a custom content calendar, and our complete creative brief template guide.

BUILD A MARKETING PLAN

In general, the execution of marketing tactics are the same. You pick a platform, setup the foundation, create a schedule, execute the tactic, assess the results, adjust and repeat.

Step 1: Open your review sites.

We like to open each of the review sites in one browser session so we know what to review. We find it easy to just close each tab after we check each site. Note, you should have turned on notifications when setting up each profile; however, we still highly recommend double checking each site daily.

Want us to set it up and train you? Schedule a 30-min intake meeting with us, and we'll get you started.

Step 2: Review and respond

Look through each of the sites for a new review. Most days this will take a few minutes to just skim through. If you do find a good review, make sure to let the person know you appreciate them.

If you find an unfavorable review, respond in a professional voice. And offer to take the conversation offline. If you know their phone number, give them a call. If not, post your business number so you can have a conversation. Resolve the issue and politely ask them to remove the review or give you more stars.

Blow are some canned responses. Feel free to copy and paste them from this how-to guide into your response. Adjust as needed.

NOTE: DON'T COPY AND PASTE THE SAME RESPONSE. MAKE VARIATIONS. YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL NOTICE THE SAME TEXT THROUGHOUT YOUR REVIEWS AND YOU WILL LOSE AUTHENTICITY.

Positive review response inspiration:

Positive Response 1

[insert name] we really apprieciate the positive feedback! We work really hard every day for [insert clients or product information]. We happy you're happy.
Positive Response 2

[insert name here], we're so glad you enjoyed working with [insert employee name]. [he/she] does an amazing job. We're luckly to have a full team of people like [insert name]. We will be sure to pass you apprieciate onto [insert name].
Positive Response 3

Thank you [insert name here] you have been so much fun to work with and we look forward to [insert product or service info here]

Negative review response inspiration:

Negative Response 1

[insert name] we are sorry to hear about your experience. This is not typical for our company or our team, nor is it acceptable. We would like to gather some more details about this issue.

Please give us a call [insert number] and ask for [insert name] let them know you are calling about this review. We will get this fixed for you.

We work really hard every day for [insert clients or product information]. We happy you're happy.
Negative Response 2

[insert name here], we apprieciate your feedback. Both postitive and negative critiques will make us better.

I'd like to find out a little more about what happenend with your situation. Please give us a call [insert number] and ask for [insert name]. We will make things right.
Negative Response 3

[insert name] I'm really sorry to hear about your experience. Please give us a call [insert number] and ask for [insert name]. We will fix this for you!