We’ve mentioned multiple times on this site before, but we’ll mention it again—online reviews are essential for your businesses and their industries. You’ll miss out on a lot of opportunities if you choose to ignore them.

Customers look at reviews to judge industries as reviews are unbiased opinions from a third party. They emphasize your good ratings as you’ve been backed by happy customers. Reviews also show how professional you are—whether good or bad, you make sure that your customers feel listened to.

With that said, some industries get hit harder than others by online reviews. If you’re in any of the following industries, you must exercise extra caution when dealing with online reviews:

1. Hospitality

With over 1.4 billion arrivals all over the world each year, the hospitality industry is one of the most expensive and most in-demand industries out there. People are always looking for hotels, motels, apartments, and other types of accommodation. As customers want to have a good night’s sleep without breaking the bank, they tend to look up their options on Google and judge heavily by the reviews they see.

Statistics show that 49% refuse to consider a hotel with no reviews. Research also shows that a hotel or motel can lose up to thirty reservations from a single negative review.

So, if you’re in the hospitality industry, online reviews should be one of your biggest priorities. Focus on getting as many reviews as you can, posting lots of pictures and videos, tracking mentions, and responding properly to negative reviews.

2. Food & Beverage

According to research about restaurants and online reviews, 60% look up restaurants and read their reviews before even visiting. Additionally, 67% of customers would prefer to eat in restaurants with four or five-star ratings.

There are a variety of reasons for this. First and foremost is, of course, people have their own food preferences and want to make sure there’s something they’d like to eat at a restaurant. This could also be due to dietary restrictions—some can’t eat meat, dairy, gluten, and other foods due to health concerns or religious beliefs.

Some people even research the restaurant itself—whether they do kid’s meals, allow pets inside, offer outdoor seating, have takeout and delivery options, etc., especially with the pandemic going on.

The bottom line is this: restaurant owners must not only encourage and respond to reviews, but they also need to update their profiles with information customers might be interested in.

3. Healthcare

People take their health very seriously—as they should!

Many patients evaluate their doctors online, and 76% of prospective patients trust these online reviews as it really shows how trustworthy these doctors must be towards their patients. Doctors have the difficult job of having patients’ lives on their hands, and nothing short of a great experience can convince people to give great reviews. A good reputation can do wonders for the healthcare business.

Meanwhile, negative reviews can be deadly. People would be wary of a healthcare provider with a bad rep, and your calls and visits could decrease by 33% with one negative review. Additionally, it’d be hard to deal with a negative review—with HIPAA in place, doctors aren’t allowed to disclose any time of patient information. So, it’s just best to avoid negative reviews altogether.

4. eCommerce

Product reviews might have the most interesting data set out of everything in this list. With the other four industries, people want to see as many 5-star ratings as possible. In the e-commerce industry, on the other hand, people want to see ratings between 4.2 and 4.5. Some even distrust products with too many 5-star reviews!

The explanation for this is simple—it’s way too easy to leave 5-star reviews. Some people leave them because the product simply worked, or because it was cheap, or because it was delivered on time. But it doesn’t exactly describe how high-quality the product really is.

So instead of getting high reviews, you should focus on getting plenty reviews for your e-commerce website. It would be even better if they were detailed. Customer trust brands that have a lot of feedback as it shows you’ve got a lot of happy customers and are consistent with your work. In fact, reviews can bolster your sales by 200% to 300%!

5. Service

Businesses that fall under the service industry include insurance companies, real estate, salons and spas, cleaners, home repairs, and more. Basically, they’re all businesses that provide services to customers in their physical offices/stores or the customer’s home.

As with the other industries, bad reviews on your service business is bad news for you. People are less likely to enlist your services as the negative review will be easy to see on your local profile. However, not all hope is lost! You can still soften the blow by responding appropriately to their feedback—explain your side of the story but don’t justify any mistakes on your end. Then, apologize for the customer’s poor experience.

This will show a lot about your brand’s character. It tells searchers that you care about customer feedback and are always looking to improve. It will go a long way to improving people’s perception of you.

Conclusion

Maintaining a good review profile isn’t just about garnering positive reviews. It’s also about responding to negative reviews tactfully. It’s realizing you can’t avoid negativity no matter how hard you try but still trying hard to give your customers a great experience regardless. You need to prioritize review management if you want your business to be successful.

Have questions about reputation management? Drive Traffic Media is a digital marketing agency in Los Angeles that can help you tackle it with no problem. Contact us at (949) 800-6990 or visit our website to get started.