Sales & Marketing Consultant, Bestselling Author & Sales Conference Speaker

There are many ways for consumers to review products and services online—from sites dedicated to reviews to sites that market the products or services to the comments sections on blogs where the products or services are mentioned. Perhaps you have a review feature on your own website. When the reviews are positive, it’s a sign that you’re doing the right thing. But when you get a bad review, it can feel like a slap in the face.

When you receive a negative review, the worst thing you can do is ignore it. Consumers pay a lot of attention to reviews, and studies have shown that negative reviews will often influence a consumer to spend their money on something else. By taking a few proactive steps, however, you can turn the situation around and come out on top.

Monitor Reviews

For some businesses, monitoring reviews can be as simple as frequent checks of sites like Yelp, AngiesList, TripAdvisor, Google+, CitySearch, and so on, or setting up a Google Alert with the name of your business or product so that whenever it gets mentioned you receive an email. For others, however, it may involve a more sophisticated approach, such as hiring an online reputation management service to scour the Internet looking for mentions. These services offer convenient tools for monitoring reviews and provide an easy way to respond to bad reviews.

Respond Promptly

As soon as you see a bad review, nip it in the bud. You should have a plan in advance for how to respond to a bad review. If the comment is blatantly offensive, many sites offer a way to request that the comment be removed. But the most important thing is to respond promptly. The sooner you respond the better, as it leaves less time for others to add their own bad reviews.

Personalize, But Don’t Make It Personal

Take care in how you craft your response. It’s a good idea to use your own name so as not to come across impersonally. In your response, don’t ever turn the negative review back on the reviewer. This will only make the situation worse. Keep your response positive and emphasize your desire to set the situation right.

Consider Prospective Customers

When crafting your response, bear in mind that you are not only speaking to the person who wrote the bad review. You are also speaking to people you will read the bad review—and your response to it. Try not to make excuses. Simply take responsibility for the issue and offer a solution.

A well-considered response to a bad review can actually be an opportunity to show yourself as a concerned and responsive businessperson. If you handle the situation right, it can actually help your business and turn a bad situation into a positive tool for promotion. Do you have experience with a bad review? Leave a comment in the section below.

Happy Marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com

(Image by David Castillo Dominici)

Getting positive attention from the press can be a big advantage for any business. A positive mention in a news story—or better still, a story devoted exclusively to you or your product or service—is worth more to your bottom line than an entire successful ad campaign. Yet garnering such attention can be difficult, especially if you’re a small- or medium-sized business without a dedicated public relations person who is skilled at making contact with journalists and media professionals. This week I’ve put together a brief “how-to” guide to help you discover what works in the world of public relations.

Pitch newsworthy ideas. Before you pick up the phone to call a news reporter, make sure your idea is newsworthy—the launch of a new product or service, the opening of a new site or business, the release of a study or data that relates to your business, the formation of a high-profile relationship or partnership, and so on. If your idea isn’t newsworthy, your contact will dismiss you; if you make a habit of calling with non-newsworthy ideas, your contact will stop taking your calls, and when you do have a newsworthy item to report, you’ll be out of luck. Have all the important details at the ready before you call so you can answer all of their questions promptly. Remember the “Five W’s” of journalism—who, what, when, where, why—and be prepared to provide them. The bottom line is that, like you, journalists and media professionals are busy people with deadlines to meet, make yourself an ally by giving them useful information they can turn into genuine stories.

Know your audience. You take time to target key sectors of the public in your advertising. Do the same with journalists and media professionals. This means you won’t simply pitch to every business reporter out there, because not every business reporter covers what you’re pitching. Research which publications and journalists cover your market ahead of time, and make a list of your top ones. Then you can work on building relationships with them over time, pitching to them whenever you have a story they might be interested in. One advantage to building relationships with reporters is that you could become a source for them when they need a comment on a story related to your product or service, thus establishing yourself as an expert in your field.

Be mindful of timing. Give reporters enough advanced notice so that they have time to report your story. If you’re announcing a big event for your company, five to seven days is a general rule of thumb. Any more than that and reporters may forget about you. You can release information or studies on an embargoed basis. This gives reporters time to write their stories, which will then appear on the same day you make your announcement.

Happy Marketing!

Sean

(Image by Digital Art)

Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com

There is a debate as to whether writing and sending out a press release is actually beneficial for your business. On one side of the coin, naysayers state that press releases, when sent out in bulk, are actually detrimental. Why is this? Critics say that when you send the exact same press release to a multitude of outlets, you aren’t generating new content. On the other side of the coin, individuals claim that sending out a press release is extremely beneficial to a business. They claim that announcing new products and having these announcements broadcast via different outlets drives traffic and increases sales. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Press releases aren’t optimal for all businesses but for many they are. If your business is one where writing and submitting press releases is a good idea, there are 3 things that you must never do.

Don’t Announce Everything
It is not necessary to write a press release to announce every single thing your business is doing. When you write too many press releases, they truly aren’t newsworthy. The purpose of a press release is to announce something big, something that will make waves and most importantly, something that people want to hear about. If your press releases aren’t interesting, they will not be read.

Keyword Stuffing
The use of keywords needs to be done sparingly. If you are just stuffing your press release with non-relevant keywords with the hope that it will come up on page one of every search engine, you will be disappointed. The same applies for the infamous buzzwords. Make sure that you aren’t stuffing your press release with phrases and sayings that are used by every other business under the sun.

Useless Quotes
How many times have you written and submitted a press release that has a quote from the head honcho in your industry or at your company that offers absolutely no value to your press release? If you choose to insert a quote, be sure that the quote adds something to the press release. In many cases, the quote will add nothing but more words that all say the same exact thing.

A press release can be an extremely effective tool to drive traffic and gain attention. They should be used sparingly and only when you truly have something exciting, interesting and have value to announce. If you find yourself just cranking out press release after press release, you will do more harm than good.

Another important thing to make note of is whom do you have writing your press releases? There is a formula for writing a great press release and not everyone has the necessary skills to write a great one. If you want to maximize your press release, consider finding a professional with that expertise.

Happy Marketing!
Sean
(Image Creative Commons)
Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com

In today’s volatile market having a good public relations plan is more important than ever before. Today’s consumers are more intelligent than ever – but they’re also more skeptical of new advertising campaigns, products, and approaches. It’s pretty safe to say that the average consumer has been burnt by an illegitimate company on some level at least once – even if only insignificantly. People don’t forget bad experiences.

Public relations focus less on advertising and more on giving valuable information to the public – usually without including a sales pitch. It’s often much easier to educate an individual so that they recognise their own wants or needs rather than attempting to directly sell a product.

In order for your public relations campaign to be successful you have to maintain a high level of credibility. This means either reaching out to the public on your own or partnering with a trusted third-party. You may want to make friends with a local news reporter willing to write articles or simply have your own marketing department write press releases. Other companies host public events – either fun days or informational. All of these things help to bring their name into the spotlight without actually advertising a specific product or service.

Now, you can’t launch a public relations campaign and then sit back to see what works and what doesn’t. You have to carefully monitor every single aspect – from events to simple clippings – to find out which are drawing attention towards your organisation and which are not. Of the ones that are, you’ll want to determine if the attention is positive or negative and then take action to either enhance or correct the image you are portraying to the public.

Public relations can be difficult, but it can also be fun. There’s nothing more rewarding than knowing that the people you reach are walking away with valuable information – whether they choose to take immediate action or not. You’ve left an imprint in their minds and they’ll eventually react!

Sean

http://www.seanmcpheat.com