As a local business owner, online reviews can play a big part in your success.

If you’re continually generating positive reviews, you’ll find it easier to drive traffic to your business in the future.

Conversely, negative reviews can hold you back from reaching your goals, which is why you need to prevent these at all costs.

While you have no direct control over online reviews, there are things you can do to improve the likelihood of positive feedback:

• Provide the best possible customer service experience
• Immediately address any customer issues or concerns
• Let your customers know that you’d appreciate a positive review (if you deserve it)

Tip: share a list of the best places online to leave reviews. Giving your customers some direction increases the chance of them leaving a review.

With that out of the way, let’s examine three things that make an effective online review:

• Although it can be difficult to swallow at times, you want your customers to leave honest reviews of their experience. If you do your part in providing what you promise, you can be rest assured that the majority of your reviews are positive.
• Comprehensive feedback. The best reviews are those that touch on the finer details of the experience, as opposed to one or two sentences on what they did and/or didn’t like.
• If the platform allows for it, don’t hesitate to respond to every review you receive. Good or bad, you want to join the conversation to show the customer (and potential customers) that you’re dedicated to serving them.

With 84 percent of people trusting online reviews just as much as personal recommendations, you need to take full advantage.

Once you have a system in place for generating effective, positive reviews, stick with it for as long as possible.

For more insights on marketing strategy that actually works for small business, subscribe to the FreshLime Newsletter here. Connect with Jay Bean, Founder of FreshLime and Small Business Marketing Expert on LinkedIn and Twitter. And last of all, if any of these tips have helped you or if you have anything to add please comment below. We’d love to hear from you!