If you have been keeping up with the Conscious blog then you will have read part one of the ‘online reviews for law firms’ trilogy which charted the introduction of Google’s new review monitoring tool.
Having a tool to help track reviews posted about your law firm from across the web is handy, but how important are online reviews to the success of your law firm? We’ve put together a list of five reasons why we think that your law firm cannot afford to ignore online reviews any more.
1) Law firm reviews affect purchasing decisions of potential clients
Let’s start with the most obvious reason why a law firm should not ignore online reviews, people take reviews from others seriously. When prospects are researching your services online, reviews can now be one of the most influencing factors that affect the decision to purchase. How often do you look at Trip Adviser for example?
2) Improved Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns
If your firm is engaged with any PPC advertising on Google’s Adwords platform then you may already be familiar with the importance of online reviews. The seller ratings extension will appear on your advert if you have at least 30 online reviews with a 4-star average over the last 12 months.
The advantage of seller reviews aside from improving your advert’s ranking is that these adverts may have higher clickthrough rates and the prospects that do click on your adverts are likely to enter your website with a preconceived confidence. This is likely to translate to more sales leads and greater conversion rates.
3) Reviews influence reviewers
People are impressionable. A study by Muchnik et al (2013), which looked at group mentality on online reviews sites, found that prior ratings created significant bias in individual rating behaviour. In a nutshell, popular opinion can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you have a few positive reviews to begin with this will encourage more, if you start with a few bad reviews these are likely to attract more negative reviews. As a law firm can you take advantage of the fictional biases that occur with online reviews by encouraging your most satisfied clients to post online reviews.
4) Free marketing
Being proactive by encouraging your clients to post online reviews on your Google+ page is an inexpensive and effective way to boost your firm’s online reputation. Positive reviews from real clients are far more powerful than any copy your marketing team will produce.
5) Learn more about your customers
The number one reason in my book for encouraging and monitoring client views is to learn more about your clients and improve relationships. Don’t forget to add client reviews to whichever CRM system you are using, these comments can be invaluable when dealing with repeat clients in the future.
Concluding thoughts
With all your online reviews now seemingly in one place there is little reason for your firm to ignore monitoring its online reputation. Get started today, if your clients aren’t leaving you reviews then go ahead and ask them! This Wednesday you can look forward to the final instalment of the online reviews trilogy which looks at the three sins of online reputation management in law firms.