Conversely, one terrible review can cost you valuable business and damage your brand’s credibility.

In light of this, we’ve got some surefire advice on how to handle any negative reviews published about your company.

Let’s dive in!

Respond Publicly to Bad Reviews

First and foremost, you need to be monitoring your company online for any reviews that customer publish. Tools like PowerReviews, allow you to automate the monitoring and collecting of your reviews online.

If you receive a poor review, you need to respond publicly.

As you construct a response, ensure you address the issue in a way that remains professional. Ideally, you want to provide a resolution so that other prospects can see how effectively you handle customer complaints. Needless to say, keeping your cool always creates a better impression than losing your temper.

If you feel the comment was particularly unjust, take an hour or so to cool off, and then compose a friendly response. Trust us; you’ll be thankful you did. Fighting fire with fire when it comes to customer relations never pays off.

You should also provide an email address or phone number so that if the customer wants to discuss the issue further, they have the option of doing so offline.

Top Tip: Publish your response as quickly as possible- the online world never sleeps, so a quick acknowledgment is expected. Plus, a speedy reply helps to ensure the situation doesn’t spiral as more and more prospects read the unsavory review.

Lastly, if your company was at fault, be sure to apologize. Do NOT shirk responsibility or try and blame the customer. This never comes across well. Instead, show you take responsibility and that you’re keen to make things right. Consumers appreciate this and are far more likely to respect your brand because of it.

If you’re unsure how to respond, here’s a quick template you can edit:

“Hello [insert the name of the customer],

Thank you so much for your feedback. Here at [insert the name of your business], we take customer complaints extremely seriously. We’re sorry about [insert their complaint] To try and make things right we would like to [insert resolution]. Would you mind contacting us on [insert contact details] so we can find out a little more about how things went wrong?

Best Wishes,
[Insert the name of your company]”

Make Necessary Improvements

If the same negative comments are surfacing time and again, then you need to make a change.

Go through your reviews and compile a list of all the negative comments you’ve received. Then call a team meeting to discuss how as a brand you can tackle these issues. This is essential for ensuring the same problem doesn’t repeat itself.

Not to mention, when you make the necessary improvements you show customers you care about their concerns and want to provide a premium user experience. This is imperative for rebuilding trust with disgruntled customers.

Follow Up

Now you’ve addressed their complaint; you need to follow up with them and find out whether they’re satisfied with the way things were resolved.

Shoot over a private message, and if possible offer a discount or freebie to try and smooth things over. This highlights that their opinion is valued and that you’ve taken their feedback seriously.

Showing genuine concern in your follow up message increases the likelihood of the customer giving your brand another try. Who knows? Perhaps they’ll even delete or update the negative review they published?

Top Tip: If you’ve apologized and rectified the issue, there’s nothing wrong with asking the customer to erase their negative comments. On the whole, people don’t usually mind doing this once there query is resolved.

Stay Vigilant

The best course of action is to avoid negative reviews in the first place. To do this, businesses need to meet and exceed customer expectations. One of the biggest pet peeves of most customers is when a business doesn’t keep their word.

For a service based business this could be as small as not showing up on time or as big as not living up to the agreed upon work. Whether you’re a web design firm or a home service business, exceeding customer expectations can lead from a first time customers to repeat business and referrals.

To help businesses execute this goal they turn to technology. For example, home service software companies, like ServiceTitan, help create a seamless customer experience by communicating with customers at every step of the process. From automatically rerouting the closest technicians for on-time appointments to texting customers ahead of time with the name, picture and bio of the technician doing the work.

Top Tip: Stay ahead of the online review curve by heading off potentially negative review before they happen. Using your customer service or field representatives as your front lines is a great way to deal with reviews.

Final Thoughts

Receiving negative reviews about your brand can be heartbreaking. It can be tough to handle when you spend so much of your time and effort building growing your business. So much so, that some business owners forget these reviews aren’t personal attacks.

Instead, it’s important to try and see them as opportunities to improve business operations and to learn more about what your customers really want.

If you follow the above advice and respond appropriately by committing to solving the customers’ concerns, there’s a good chance you’ll rekindle the relationship while demonstrating to prospects how professionally you handle customer complaints- win-win!

The post How Your Business Can Deal with Negative Online Reviews appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC has also launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Use Online Incentives

If you’re operating an e-commerce business, this is the smartest way to bridge the gap. If brick-and-mortar shoppers know that they can get a bigger discount of some sort by purchasing your products or services online, they’ll do it!- Codie Sanchez, www.CodieSanchez.com

2. Look for Tactics That Work in Both Areas

Identify marketing tactics that involve both channels so you can create content that works in both places or that encourages your audience to visit the other channel. This could be adding social channels to your offline marketing information or hosting an event and asking visitors to share it or check in online.– Drew Hendricks, Buttercup

3. Make Sure Your Messaging Is in Alignment

Making sure your messaging is consistent across your offline and online marketing is extremely important. Your offline and online marketing should be closely aligned in language, target customer, and (as much as possible) call to action. Reaching different customers in different realms will lead to a confusing customer picture and a sales pipeline that is difficult to manage.- Kevin Bretthauer, FuelCloud. If you are looking for new marketing strategies, then consider using a Wide format signage. 

4. Use Ad Tracking Software

Aside from making sure you maintain brand continuity across your ads, you can also implement analytics tracking measures into your offline ads. Radio ads can have promo codes, brochures can have call tracking numbers on them and depending on your market, you can utilize QR codes, too.- Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now

5. Let Customers Do the Work

One of the quickest and easiest ways to merge the offline with the online is to host a competition. A good example is to ask customers to take selfies that promote your brand by having them upload their images to your social media accounts using a particular phrase or a unique hashtag. The details about the competition should be outlined on your offline marketing materials, including any products you sell.- Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker

6. Use Email Marketing

Email marketing is important for both offline and online marketing strategies. Ask your offline customers for their email address in exchange for a coupon, and ask your online customers using opt-in forms on your website. Make sure to keep the email addresses on two separate lists, so you know where the lead came from.- Syed Balkhi, OptinMonster

7. Make Your Brand Searchable

These days, new businesses focus too heavily on marketing edgy brand names that are hard to pronounce and spell. When you use a brand name or tagline that is memorable in your offline marketing campaigns, you’ll see a surge in organic search traffic for those terms as customers rediscover your business online.- Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep

8. Use Branded Merchandise

Branded merchandise feels like a forgotten strategy of the marketing world. Whether it’s a customized water bottle or T-shirt, these items serve as a walking advertisement of your products, increasing brand recall and word-of-mouth advertising. Encourage people to show off their flair online through social media. You can even offer free merchandise in exchange for signing up for an email list.- Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com

9. Connect Your Leads List

Although you found your lead while out on the street, you should still follow up digitally. And vice versa. Because you found your lead online, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them a call. In any case, going old school and making a call is a great way to break the ice instantly.- Andrew Namminga, Andesign

10. Use Augmented Reality

One of the interesting features of augmented reality is the way it blurs the boundary between offline and online. AR inserts representations of digital entities into the world. Companies like Heineken, Ikea and Visa are using augmented reality to inject digital marketing experiences into the physical environment of users and attracting attention through the innovative use of a new technology.- Justin Blanchard, ServerMania Inc.

11. Get Microinfluencers Shopping Offline

One new advertising model we have is allowing microinfluencers within our community to take a $100-$500 coupon and go shop at the advertiser’s brick-and-mortar store. Microinfluencers interested in the vertical of that advertiser get to spend time at the store, take pictures while shopping and then write an online article about the product, the shopping experience, display and potentially other products.- Tolga Tanriseven, GirlsAskGuys

The post 11 Strategies to Combine Your Offline and Online Marketing Efforts appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEChas also launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Find the Right Influencers 

Utilizing social influencers and bloggers can be a cost-effective PR solution. Influencers can be found for nearly any industry. The key is finding the right influencer with a following that aligns with your target market at the best price. Don’t forget to negotiate payment options. Some influencers will even work with you in exchange for some merchandise. – Duran Inci, Optimum7

2. Subscribe to HARO

Sign up for Help a Reporter (HARO), a free service where journalists and bloggers source ideas and quotes for upcoming stories. You can respond to inquiries relevant to your business, and it’s also a great way to get a handle on what themes and topics are interesting to the media. – Emily Bernard, PlacePass

3. Cultivate Thought Leadership Through Your Personal Brand

Small businesses live and die by their owners and their reputation. By amplifying the personal brand of the business owner, they can capture more valuable leads by higher-ranking people in the industry. This grants them opportunities for speaking engagements and draws eyeballs back to their business’s website. It’s an inexpensive strategy to augment other PR efforts. – Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com

4. Create Engagement and Distribute Value at Events

Use events to engage with all audiences in your community: employees, recruits, clients, press etc. Creating an event that people want to attend, where they will organically learn about your business, is an authentic and fun way to bring in interest. Relationships progress from there, and getting PR is all about connecting with journalists and showing them that there is a story to share. – Baruch Labunski, Rank Secure

5. Collaborate with Like-Minded Brands

Your business can partner with non-competing brands in your category to form an alliance in which you share PR contacts and resources. That way, you leverage the connections they’ve developed with journalists and bloggers for free. The only cost is reciprocation whenever you find media opportunities they can benefit from, too. – Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep

6. Donate To or Volunteer In a Space Relevant to Your Market

Whether it’s pro-bono work, volunteering or donations, take a look at your target market and identify organizations or groups of people that could use a helping hand. You’ll already have some relevant knowledge and experience, so your contribution will go even further, and you’ll get some authentic exposure in a way that feels natural and is low-cost. – Roger Lee, Captain401

7. Focus on Campaigns That Generate an Emotional Response

When I look at how to create a PR campaign that has any chance of going viral, I make sure it creates a strong emotional response, even if that emotion is negative. Somebody hating your pitch distributes your message just as well as if they loved it. – Liam Martin, TimeDoctor.com

8. Become an Authority in Your Industry

Become the ultimate reference for your industry. Scour the industry statistics and trends specific to your business and publish those in a way that beats anything else available. Make the content useful to others in the industry and your customers. The cost is the time spent to research and put the content together, but in addition to building great references, you become more knowledgeable. – Shawn Schulze, AffAction

9. Pitch Freelance Writers Instead of Staff Journalists

Instead of pitching staff writers, try seeking out freelance writers. Often times, freelancers don’t have as many deadlines and stories to meet as staff writers, so it’s easier to get a story to run. You can find freelancers in your industry on LinkedIn or the contributor section of a website or magazine. – Kristin Marquet, Creative Development Agency, LLC

10. Take Advantage of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the hottest social media network right now, and for good reason. If you make a habit of pushing quality, mobile-optimized content on LinkedIn on a consistent basis, you can build a brand for yourself and your company that gets noticed. From that foundation, it’s easier to get press coverage because the outlets see you on LinkedIn, which makes them feel safe writing about you. – Ben Lee, Neon Roots

11. Write Guest Posts

Find other companies in your industry that compliment your business and guest post on each other’s blogs. You can also self-publish on platforms such as Medium and LinkedIn, and apply to contribute to others like HuffingtonPost and Entrepreneur. – Syed Balkhi, OptinMonster

12. Promote Others First

It’s amazing how willing people and companies are to help you when you’re helping them. Rather than focusing on maximizing your own PR first, figure out ways that you can promote others that get them excited to promote you along the way. Reviewing other platforms, writing how-to articles of other tech products, and interviewing other founders are all great ways to create co-promotional content. – Ross Beyeler, Growth Spark

13. Join Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are incredible resources to spread your message. Find ones that relate to your business and join them. Then become a regular contributor. Once you have gained credibility, you can start posting your business material, as long as it’s not a straight sales pitch. You will get more traffic from Facebook than any other platform out there, so start using it now. – Scott Kacmarski, Reps Direct

The post 13 Effective PR Exposure Strategies That Won’t Break the Bank appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.