Reviews of a company are undoubtedly a very useful tool among PR services. Reviews serve to reveal the full potential of the company to potential and existing clients. Most people, before buying anything, always read reviews about the company and/or the product and service.
If a review about a company is written correctly, it will undoubtedly be believed. Roughly speaking, the scheme of buying a product or service looks like this: desire to buy something > search for information on the internet > choosing the optimal solution based on reviews > purchase! If you are interested in specific numbers on how many people read reviews, how many believe these reviews and under what conditions, you can check out the statistics compiled and processed by the company BrightLocal. There, you will also find other useful statistics that may be helpful to you.
If you think you can write a review yourself or buy a review from someone who offers the cheapest price for this service, then I will disappoint you. In 95% of cases, you will not achieve anything good, and most likely, you will not get any benefit but harm from such activities. Such reviews are immediately recognized as commissioned, no one will believe them, and the administration will delete them at best. But as a rule, such reviews are intentionally kept on the websites of the administrators of these portals to emphasize the fact of reputation manipulation and to show that companies cannot be trusted.
In some cases, you may want to remove reviews from the internet that were written incorrectly, but this is not so simple. Some websites charge $2,000 to remove one review – this is something we have personally encountered. So, is it worth saving $20 on a review just to ask for its removal for $2,000 later? I think you already know the answer to this question.
What makes some reviews attractive and others repulsive, despite the fact that they are essentially aimed at promoting the same service or product? There are many factors. Here are the most common mistakes:
- Registering an account and writing a review on the same day as the first post (this pertains to a forum). You might say, no big deal, I’ll write a few posts somewhere else and then post where I need to. But it’s not that simple. You will still be a new user with an account that has less than 10 posts. No one trusts such users.
- Writing very promotional reviews. People want to write the best things about themselves, and at the same time fit everything into one review. Here, too, the psychology of the person comes into play. It often happens that we suggest, “Here everything looks bad, those who worked before us made gross mistakes, let’s write a little bit of ‘pseudo-negativity’?” The client was stunned, he didn’t understand the idea itself, only one thing was stuck in his head – “We will write negative things about you!”.
- IP addresses of the company representative and some forum accounts intersect (are the same). This is a very gross mistake! Moderators see this, wait a little while, and then tell everyone that these reviews are fake. The company is suspected, the thread is closed and as an option, it is sent to the forum’s trash section or blacklisted! Is this the result you paid for?
I want to disappoint you again. Just because you pay good money for a PR campaign doesn’t mean everything will go smoothly! Many internet resources have sponsors who are not interested in having someone look better or at the same level as them on the same resource. And the portal is not interested in losing this sponsor. We draw our own conclusions…
Another scenario is when a resource does not have explicit sponsors and they begin to create an atmosphere where we have to engage in dialogues with portals and sign various contracts with them on a paid basis.
Now you might think, “Well, I’ve conquered this article by reading it to the end, and now I can definitely write reviews about myself! I now know how to do it correctly!” Don’t rush, the article is not yet finished. Before describing the mistakes, I clarified that these are “the most common mistakes!” These are the ones that I observe in 90% of cases. Do you want to make a mistake that is made in 70% of cases? I don’t think so.
So, who should buy company reviews? This is a difficult question for a newcomer who has come to the marketing department. By entering the following queries in a search engine: order company reviews; buy reviews; buy feedback; reputation management on the Internet, and other similar ones, you will see that there are plenty of companies willing to help for a fee! Do we take the one that is at the top and the issue is resolved? Of course not!
First, familiarize yourself with what this company does. Is it familiar with your field of activity, does it understand it? After all, companies that promote, for example, online stores with household appliances may not work well with customers who promote automotive products or provide financial services. It is better to order PR services from a company that knows what you want from it and will tell you what to do, rather than waiting for information from you.
How much can a review cost?
The price can vary greatly. Let’s immediately eliminate all companies that are not even worth considering. I won’t name anyone now, that’s not the purpose of the article. Among those whose work can be evaluated from a weak C to a solid A+, the price ranges from $3 to $100. Yes, that’s not a mistake, there are companies that pay $100 for one review!
You may ask, what is so special about such a review that it is 30 times more expensive than the cheaper option? Is it worth it? For an uninformed person, a review is just a review. A text of 100 to 300 characters and nothing more. But for a knowledgeable person, a review involves a lot of hard work! A $3 review involves someone drafting a technical specification (TS) for writing reviews and a set of keywords, which is then sent for processing to schoolchildren and people far from the PR industry. Then, in the best-case scenario, everything that has been written is proofread and sent for placement by the same schoolchildren. This is what you pay $3 for.
The question arises, well, that’s how I imagined writing reviews, but can it be done differently? Of course, it can! Let’s consider more expensive options and what processes can take place until one review (an expensive one) is written:
- Monitoring of TOP websites, on which you appear and which will be found by Internet users primarily through popular keywords (note, on several queries).
- Monitoring of reviews on Internet resources and selection of those that need processing.
- Search for a company and reviews about it on well-known resources that may not necessarily appear in the top search engine results, but are where most people look for information.
- Development of a PR strategy on how to write the review and where to post it, so that it is beneficial. This includes answering questions and objections to negative comments and maintaining positive feedback.
- Writing the actual review for the platform.
- Registering an account, if one does not already exist, and skillfully developing 5-30 posts (this applies to work on forums).
- Posting the required review during account development (this applies to work on forums).
- Monitoring the reaction to the posted review, and if there are any questions or objections, the Internet resource is reprocessed.
- Preparation of a report on the work done.
- Additional processes that are unique to each company (Brand-UP.TOP has such processes, and they are very important).
As you can see, for some people a review is just a sloppy job that can backfire, while for others every review is a work of art! Each such review hits the target directly. Such a review is 100 times more effective than a regular review left by someone unclear by who and where, but it costs only 30 times more.
The question arises: is there a way to get good PR without spending a lot of money? Let’s start with the fact that the concept of expensive and cheap is different for everyone. Usually, the cost of services is always directly proportional to their quality. By ordering PR from Brand-UP.TOP, you can reduce the price by filtering out some of the processes for writing and placing it. This issue can be discussed in more detail when ordering services.
So, how much can PR cost for a company? It all depends on what the company wants to get. For some needs, $500/reporting period (usually the reporting period is 30 days) is sufficient, while for others, even $5000/reporting period will not be enough. Everything depends on the scale of the PR campaign and the goals pursued. All prices are set individually for each company.
