Positive Review Are Great – Until You Get Caught

Reviews make a huge difference in today’s world. Customers and prospects are consistently checking for reviews of products, services, and even individual service providers. You can’t do a Google search for a company without seeing their average review rating. Amazon items are constantly sorted by people’s opinion of them in a simplistic 5-star organization.

Basically, good reviews will really help your business, and bad reviews will really, really hurt it. Because so many companies know this, many engage in practices to post fake online reviews on multiple sites. It sounds like a great plan to pay someone to get you a bunch of fake goodwill – until one of you gets caught.

Just yesterday, 19 companies came to an agreement with the state of New York to pay a collective $350,000 in fines for posting fake reviews online for other companies. 4 years ago in an unrelated case, Lifestyle Lift was forced to pay a $300,000 fine for posting fake online reviews on various sites across the Internet.

Beyond the legal ramifications, Google, Yelp, and others are cracking down on reviews like never before. It’s no longer good enough to tell someone to sign up for a Google account and post a review – it’s almost 100% unlikely that it will get through their parsing systems. Most legitimate reviews actually get blocked on Yelp – we have a client whom Yelp suddenly dropped 15 legitimate reviews overnight for no good reason.

However, there are several actions you can take to get positive reviews that are within he law and the parameters of review sites:

Encourage customers to post reviews – both negative and positive

Make a point to display which sites you want the review on and make it easy to get there – with a QR code for example. Make it clear that both positive and negative reviews are desired. “Bribing” customers with gift cards or incentives to post reviews is on the edge of legality and it’s what got some of the companies in New York in trouble – so keep that in mind.

Respond to all reviews – negative + positive

Simple responding to all reviews is very, very helpful. You can do serious damage control by simply offering an olive branch on a site – even if it means swallowing your pride. 80% of viewers are likely to discount a negative review if the owner has responded in a calm and peaceful manner. So, respond, respond, respond. Just take a breath before you hit the submit button.

Pay attention to the indicators of a bad review

These are the indicators of bad reviews that Yelp uses and Google uses similar parameters:

Are from someone who has only written 1 review
Are from someone who has no profile info (profile photo, additional info, link to Facebook, etc.)
Are strongly slanted both positively and negatively
Short and lacking details
From a location other than where the business is located

So, encourage people to post reviews while in your shop and be specific. You can’t control how many review they have or how much profile info they have, but try and court people who meet those specs by offering a Yelp deal or event.

There are a lot of ways to get more reviews on your site – just be very careful in how you do it. It’s likely going to be a while before these crackdowns make it out to Colorado – but you don’t want ot caught in the crosshairs when they do.

Back to All Insights

Brittany Mathisen

2023-09-27

OTM has been a wonderful marketing partner for the last four years. We have shifted marketing plans over time and they are very open and explained all the details as we moved forward with new plans. They have done everything from help design and update offices, managed social media, planning marketing events, and many more things. The Hear for Holidays Event that we do each year is one of my favorite events that we work on together. Rachel and the whole OTM team have brought my marketing vision to life and I love everything they have done for my business. I look forward to what the future holds as we continue to work together.

Yvonne Myers

2023-07-30

I worked with Old Town Media (OTM) on a quick grant project that had a 6-week timeline. They were very thoughtful about whether they could meet the grant expectations and needs before accepting the work. The team at OTM then completed extensive research and facilitated focus groups to ensure the product they created met the needs of the end-users. They met all of the grant deadlines and far exceeded our expectations of the portal they created for us! I would not hesitate to use their services again and highly recommend them to others looking for a professional, high quality, and FUN team to work with.

Julie Dokoupil

2023-07-18

OTM is a locally owned firm that I have worked with for over 13 years. They are an amazing team of people who know and understand current marketing technology and strategies. My husband and I are starting a new business and they have helped us out even with small details to get our business going.

TunDesign

2023-06-20

I have seen a significant increase in community engagement which has helped bolster our brand presence, exceeding the expectations of the entire team. Carrie and her team provides consistent communication through slack and emails which has led to an effective and trusted partnership. Truly appreciate how hard-working, agile, and driven everyone on the team is. Thanks again for eveything your team has done for our company.

David Haase

2023-06-07

OTM has done a fantastic job bringing the Fort Collins Peach Festival back to the public! OTM is dealing with several volunteers on a committee and keeping everyone informed, best in business advice and a platform that will serve us for years. We didn't know what we needed and were presented with choices and educated about each before implementation. Kerrie and Brianna have done great work for us! Dave Haase Committee Chair Fort Collins Peach Festival

Dana Sednek

2023-03-15

Using their Path to Growth Model, OTM not only gave me a path forward, but they helped me clarify my strategy, direction, and actions for how to set and launch my business. I was able to launch quickly and I see the flywheel ahead that is necessary to accelerate customer intake and revenue building. Thrilled with the outcome!!!

Liza Adams

2023-01-13

As the Head of Marketing at Encompass Technologies, I considered Old Town Media an extension of our marketing team. OTM worked closely with us on rebranding and repositioning, multiple industry-first product launches, key industry events, and integrated demand generation campaigns while we grew our marketing team and acquired new companies. With the help of OTM, we grew our pipeline and bested industry benchmarks for Software as a Service (SaaS) sales and marketing efficiency metrics. We came to rely on OTM for tactical execution to augment our team but where they added the most value was in our rebranding strategy and market positioning efforts. OTM played an integral role in conducting research and deeply understanding our market dynamics, ideal customer profile, customer challenges, competitive landscape, products and innovation, key differentiators, vision, and mission. This was no easy feat with a highly complex ecosystem, multiple segments, wide variety of audiences, and a broad array of products. Armed with market insights, OTM helped us develop a compelling brand, an inspirational story reflecting our vision and strategy, a unique and defensible market position, and messaging that was relevant to our target audiences. I appreciated that the team was respectful and empathetic, intently curious, insightful with their observations and recommendations, and candid with their feedback. OTM set realistic expectations about deliverables/scope, level of effort, roles, timeline, and cost. The team was responsive, highly collaborative, and open to suggestions. OTM plugged our expertise and resource gaps which allowed us to break the compromise between doing good work and doing it quickly. On top of that, they were fun to work with. OTM was truly a partner of the business.

Eric Dengler

2023-01-11

Great team! Small company service. Big firm power and expertise.

zach fulton

2023-01-06

Simply put, OTM is a well oiled machine! Thanks for all you do

Positive Review Are Great – Until You Get Caught

Encourage customers to post reviews – both negative and positive

Respond to all reviews – negative + positive

Pay attention to the indicators of a bad review

Growing a business
is hard and finding the
right partner matters.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Our Location

Quick Links