Five Ways Negative Reviews Help Your Online Reputation

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 by Andy Beal

Five Ways Negative Reviews Help Your Online Reputation

Rejected It might seem counter-intuitive, but if you want to build a stellar reputation for your business, you should embrace negative reviews. Sure, the more positive reviews you have for your business, the better it looks, but there are some benefits to having some negative ones too.

Andrew Goodman, guest writing for HomeStars, hits the nail on the head:

I was recently a little disconcerted when I visited the American Apparel site, because of the presence of too many glowing, cheerleading reviews of its products. Some simply said "I haven’t tried this yet but I’ll be getting one really soon!" Poring over the various reviews, I actually felt like I’d be more likely to buy the product that had at least one negative or moderate review. Why? Because I wouldn’t be as likely to suspect that the reviews are fake.

Here’s how you can benefit from negative reviews:

Your need to know. If your products or services are crap, then you need to know about it. It’s better to hear it from your customers–so you can fix it–than never know about it and wonder why your sales suck.
Build credibility. As Goodman points out, negative reviews add authenticity to your reputation. Consumers are smart–mostly–and they know that if you have 1000 customers, a few will be upset over something. Take a look at the hotel industry. Just about every hotel has a review that mentions dirty sheets, cockroaches, or rude staff. Yet we still stay in hotels. We just look for the ones that have the best overall reviews.
Fix the problem. Research suggests that a customer will tell ten people about a negative experience with a business. However, if you fix the problem to their satisfaction, they’ll tell twenty people how happy they are! Look for negative reviews and fix the problem!
Show you care. Potential customers look at how you handled the situation. If you do find yourself with a negative review or critique, rectifying the situation publicly will demonstrate to potential customers that you care about your reputation–and your customers.
Learn from competitors’ mistakes. Don’t just read your negative reviews, read those of your competitors. If you learn where your rivals keep slipping-up, you can fine-tune your offering to make sure you don’t make the same mistake. Better still, how about reaching out to an unhappy customer of one of your competitors and fixing their problem–you could win a new customer for life!

What tips and advice do you have for responding to negative reviews? I’d love to hear about your experiences!

(Want more online reputation management advice? Pre-order my new book!)

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23 comments on “Five Ways Negative Reviews Help Your Online Reputation”

HMTKSteve Says:

November 20th, 2007 at 8:49 am

Not only do positive reviews make people suspect the product being reviewed by they also throw the reviewer into a negative light. If they only ever say positive things they come off as a shill.

You don’t want a review to tear you a new one but you do need honesty. If some part of a product is bad you need to know!
Dan Schawbel Says:

November 20th, 2007 at 8:50 am

Negative reviews are great for gaining precious feedback from your audience.
» Negative Reviews Can Help Your Business Grow Local Advertising Journal Says:

November 20th, 2007 at 10:48 am

[...] like reading Marketing Pilgrim. They have useful information in every blog post and I always learn something new. For instance, [...]
Drew Stauffer Says:

November 20th, 2007 at 11:00 am

Any news is good news.
minicix Says:

November 20th, 2007 at 11:51 am

Thats why ‘bad advertisement is also an advertisement’ works
Spence Says:

November 20th, 2007 at 2:37 pm

I entirely agree with these points, though I don’t know what Andrew was looking at on the American Apparel site. They have some of the funniest and most biting negative reviews you will read anywhere.
Bettie Says:

November 20th, 2007 at 3:16 pm

I agree with Spence. What products were Andrew looking at??? There are quite a few products with nothing BUT negative reviews! And they are pretty HILARIOUS!
elliottng Says:

November 20th, 2007 at 8:59 pm

Andy, super interesting. I think I would rather embrace authentic conversations between my company and users, than “negative reviews” My company (Kango Inc.) is aggregating user reviews from across the Web on hotels and things to do for travel. We’ll try to provide reviews that are most relevant for the factors that users might want to see based on their search. We highlight 4 reviews with the top review always being positive, but then the following 3 being randomly selected (from amount the relevant reviews for that search query). That way the user gets a better feel for the overall “review zeitgeist” of that hotel. Totally agree that providers can learn from negative reviews as they are often the clearest and most pointed reviews out there. We often run into false positives in identifying “clean” hotels, but NEVER misidentify “dirty” hotels!
Selbourne Designing Says:

November 20th, 2007 at 11:34 pm

Negatives reviews if responded correctly could in fact turn out to be a very beneficial marketing bit for your service or product.
Furniture Store Says:

November 20th, 2007 at 11:36 pm

So any publicity is good publicity?

Seriously though that was a good article, negative reviews do help you clean up your act so to speak.
5 maneras en que las reseñas negativas mejoran tu reputación « El Blog de DarkChoche Says:

November 21st, 2007 at 12:08 am

[...] por ahi, me encontre este interesante articulo, y me tome la libertad de traducirlo, nos muestra lo que [...]
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November 21st, 2007 at 5:32 am

[...] credibilidad: Las reseñas negativas le dan más autenticidad a tu reputación. Los consumidores son inteligentes y saben que si tienes [...]
Barry Welford Says:

November 23rd, 2007 at 5:41 pm

Some excellent points there, Andy. I particularly liked the idea of correcting whatever points had caused problems. You could even add a comment in response outlining exactly what was done to correct the situation.
J Says:

November 24th, 2007 at 3:08 pm

Super good reviews are not easily believable. Someone is bound to have some negative comments about a certain product or service. Even the very best.

This is a good article. We shouldn’t be happy about negative reviews but once someone gives a negative review we can use it to sort things out.

Great article
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November 30th, 2007 at 9:28 pm

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