One-Star reviews are the best advertising

How many times do you find yourself checking negative reviews of the item you're considering buying?

Customers who like the product are generous with words and ratings. Most give 5-star reviews when insisted. 5-star reviews are great for discovery over platforms like Amazon and Flipkart.

However, When a consumer is considering buying a product/item, 5-star ratings don't paint the complete picture as there are cons that a seasoned buyer knows.

The saturation of 5-star reviews had led to many users preferring to read critical feedback of the product. It works as a customer get their expectations aligned pretty much correctly reading the negative feedback.

In an ideal world, business owners don't need to worry about reviews. But due to digitalisation, has come services where business owners are paying to get fake reviews so that they can rank higher in the search engine listing.

Some pay to tarnish the reputation of competitors. In 2020, Amazon removed over 200 million fake reviews. [Source]

With the transition to the digital medium, such tactics are only going to increase.

From a small businessman and indie-hacker perspective, Fake reviews or negative reviews can hurt your business. More so, When you're a small team and your competitor is doing this to you. Complain to moderators over amazon and google, fall on deaf ears as most of the reviews never violate community guidelines, hence they stay.

Solution:

I always viewed 1-star reviews as my best advertising.

3 stars will be ok. People get tired of looking at the 5-star reviews, but they always look at the 1 stars. Make your best marketing pitch on the 1-star responses.

Make sure to respond to every review - positive or negative. When looking at reviews, the Customer is looking to see what happened that caused someone to leave a negative review.

Customers will read your response asking for more information etc. Stay professional in your reply, don't ever over-explain and argue in a comment.

Also, Google ranks profiles. If someone goes around leaving negative reviews without saying anything and you have an empty profile, Google will give this comment a low ranking and most customers won't see it bubble up.

Keep getting positive reviews. Encourage your happy customers to leave you feedback. Such practices are best implemented along with the sales funnel.

Trust my advice helps.

Until next time,