Technology continues to raise clients’ expectations. They want improved performance, better communication, accurate billing and quicker results. Lawyers will fail to keep up with those expectations if they refuse to incorporate the necessary technology into their work. Brilliant tools are available to help you meet clients’ desires faster, without compromising on quality. Here are five types of productivity tools, and a favorite in each category.

1. Note-taking: Evernote

Evernote is more than a note-taking tool. It is a one-stop tool for organizing all the information you want to record and store — research, links, case notes, important documents, business cards, brainstorms and more.

If you don’t have time to type notes, you can record voice memos and even doodles — and all this information is stored in the cloud, easily accessible and searchable on any of your devices. You never have to look through bulky folders for hours to find that crucial evidence docket. (Related: How Evernote Helps You Network in a Crowd.) (Pricing: Free version available. Premium version starts at $5 per month.)

Pro tip: Install Evernote’s Web Clipper, one of my most favorite features. The browser extension helps you save, tag and store web pages in different formats for future reference.

2. Text Expansion: ActiveWords

In legal writing and document production, you often find yourself using the same phrases or paragraphs over and over again. ActiveWords essentially allows you to create shortcuts to insert frequently used text —  but it also helps you handle other, repeated computer tasks, thereby reducing the amount of time you have to invest in them. For example, you can assign a specific word such as “Letterhead” as an ActiveWord command. Then, all you have to do is type “‘Letterhead” and your entire letterhead (with contact info, logo, etc.) will be inserted into your document automatically.

You can also set such keywords for other functions such as sending email, navigating to a web page, searching for a file, opening your LinkedIn account and more. (Related: Text Expansion for Fun and Profit by Matthew Yospin.) (Pricing: Free 60-day trial offered. $30 annual license fee.)

Pro tip: Use text expansion functions to automate multiple repetitive tasks so you can spend your time on more important things.

3. Timekeeping: HoursTracker

Today you need a time-tracking tool that is adaptable to your needs, which makes the HoursTracker app a good option. It has a “clock-in” timer option to track your work, as well as a record option to insert the hours manually after you are done with a task. Plus it comes with a number of customizable options, including tags for organizing multiple jobs and their status, location awareness, and the ability to export time entries to email in text or CSV format. You can filter by specific jobs or date ranges.

The app is extremely simple to use and easily becomes a second-nature work tool. (Pricing: Free version available.)

Pro tip: Use location tracking to start recording a time entry. For example, you can set it up in such a way that once you reach your office or your client’s office, HoursTracker starts clocking in and automatically stops when you leave that location. 

4. Email Collaboration: Hiver

One of the most important issues law firms face is streamlining communications with clients. If you use Gmail, you probably use labels to tag emails from a client — a smart way to organize important emails. But the one big problem is: How do you keep everyone on your team informed about client emails without having to forward each and every email to every single one of them?

Hiver aims to solve this problem by making collaboration easier. (Disclosure: Hiver is my company.) It is a Gmail extension that allows you to access and manage shared email inboxes. For example, you can give a unique label (folder) to each client and share these labels with your team using the Shared Labels feature; this way your whole team is a part of the email conversation. Other features include the ability to add notes to emails and use email templates. (Pricing: Free for up to three users. Paid version starts at $6 per month.)

Pro tip: Assign tasks to your team using the Shared Labels feature. For example, if you want to assign a task to John, add a label “Task: John” and share it with him. Once John finishes the task he can add another label “Task: Done” and share it with you. This makes it easy to both delegate and track the task.

5. Legal Research: Fastcase

Accurate information is critical in a lawyer’s work. But quickly and reliably accessing that information isn’t always easy. Fastcase is one legal research app you definitely should have in your toolbox. An alternative to Lexis and Westlaw, this legal research tool allows you to do keyword (Boolean) search, natural language search, or citation lookup, and has visualization and timeline tools to help find relevant search results faster. It also lets you save documents to your library and refer back to them later. (Pricing: Free to those who may subscribe through bar or other partner association. If not, pricing starts at $65 per month.)

Pro tip: Fastcase’s newspaper search allows you to look through different publications for keywords.

We all want more to be done in less time. But you don’t always have to shell out hard-earned money to hire more people to meet that target. Powerful tools are at your disposal, waiting to be deployed so you can meet client expectations.

Embrace the technology, let it change the way you work.

Niraj Ranjan Rout is the founder of Hiver, an app that turns Gmail into a powerful customer support and collaboration tool.

Illustration ©iStockPhoto.com

The post Five Tech Tools to Add More Hours to a Lawyer’s Day appeared first on Attorney at Work.

Happy Friday, PPC pros, and welcome to this week’s edition of the Clix Marketing Blog’s PPC News & Views!

From the Experts

KlientBoost

The Internet’s PPC History & Its Unknown Future: Refresh your memory on the history of PPC with this fun, year-by-year look back at the internet and pay-per-click.

Boost

3 Video Ad Tests for a Changing Landscape: Want to run some video ad tests but don’t know where to begin? Check out this post for some suggestions.

CPCStrategy

A Guide To Facebook Targeting Options: Facebook targeting – there’s a lot to know. Read this post and then bookmark it so you can refer to it later when you’re brainstorming your next Facebook campaign.

WordStream

Bing Expanded Text Ads: 5 Things You Need to Know: Get ready for Bing expanded text ads by reading this post.

Search Engine Land

Google rolls out Campaign Groups in AdWords: Monitor performance of multiple campaigns with this new reporting feature.

From the Engines

AdWords

Track your goals with campaign groups and performance targets

Bing Ads

New in Bing Ads: Compare your performance between two time periods

From the Clix Team

Don’t Miss AdWords Location Group Targeting by Jill DuPre

In June, I started a free webinar series for beginner, intermediate and advanced advertisers. The goal was to segment these groups so that I could offer each registrant a more relevant product (either my Power Hitters Club for advanced marketers or one of my 4-week training programs for beginners or intermediates).

This has been a fun experiment for me, and it’s fallen mostly on the down-low for the first few months. For now, I still don’t even have a public facing landing page for my training programs. Until the kinks are worked out of my process, I’ve focused only on remarketing to the groups who sign up for these webinars.

This has become a a nifty little funnel for me. As it currently stands, I conduct all three free webinars (always live, but the content changes very little) on the final Monday of each month. I then have a week to promote the relevant training program before the four weeks of training begins the following Tuesday.

Until August 5, I relied entirely on organic methods to promote this series (as I type, ads don’t yet exist for the 4-week training programs). But after a modest start, I now commit a few hundred dollars per day to webinar promotion.

In order to do this, I need to expand my targeted audience beyond my website visitors. Those who know me realize this is uncomfortable territory. I don’t enjoy targeting people who aren’t connected to me. But I saw this as a challenge and an experiment to multiply my spend.

Early results tell me that a registration is worth $6. That’s a very conservative value given that this was prior to major promotion began and prior to the existence of landing pages for my training program products (only checkout pages).

But equipped with the framework of a $6 registration value, I knew that I could move beyond targeting only my website visitors (who routinely register for $.50 to $1.00) and venture into the uncomfortable waters of Lookalike Audiences (who will undoubtedly cost more).

I don’t have lots of faith in Lookalike Audiences, but I prefer targeting people similar to some key audiences rather than picking and choosing interests. And given the large sizes of these audiences, I also know that there is built in potential to scale, and it’s less likely to over-market even if I spend upwards of $500 per day.

I thought you may want to get a look behind the curtain at how I’m promoting my webinar series. I’m constantly tweaking and experimenting, so it’s by no means a finished process. While I’ll continue to find ways to optimize, it may provide some inspiration for your own promotions.

Let’s take a closer look…

Carousel Ads Promoting Recent Content

Facebook carousel ads can now include up to 10 images or videos. I’m able to take advantage of that for the purpose of promoting recent blog posts.

The Goal:

I know that few advertisers promote content for the purpose of driving website traffic only. I find that to be foolish and short-sighted.

I have two primary goals with this. The first is to build my most active Website Custom Audiences because I’ll be targeting them later in this process.

The second goal is to leverage Instant Article traffic driven on mobile devices. I’ve placed my own ads on my Instant Articles, which are all focused on promoting my webinars.

I may need to write an entire tutorial on customizing ads for your Instant Articles (not to mention a tutorial for setting up Instant Articles). In the meantime, read this.

Targeting:

I’m experimenting with four different audiences, three of which are my most active website visitors.

1. Visited JonLoomer.com 2-5 times during the past 180 days
2. Visited JonLoomer.com 6-19 times during the past 180 days
3. Visited JonLoomer.com 20+ times during the past 180 days
4. Collection of Lookalike Audiences

As you might imagine, the first three are very effective, but the volume I can get is limited given they include my most active visitors only. So I also wanted to expand these audiences.

The fourth ad set includes Lookalike Audiences of the following:

• JonLoomer.com Visitors – 180 Days (10+ Frequency)
• Registered to Any Facebook Advertiser Webinar – 180 Days
• Time on Site (25%) – 180 Days
• Time on Site (5%) – 180 Days

If you haven’t already, make sure you start creating Website Custom Audiences based on frequency and time on your website. They are awesome!

Promotion of Most Recent Blog Post

Goals:

The goals here are nearly identical to the ads above. In this case, though, promoting my latest blog post also happens to be part of my normal routine. I’m trying to drive traffic to build my engaged WCA traffic as well as Instant Article traffic from mobile.

Targeting:

Unlike the ads above, I focus only on my engaged audience here. With a carousel ad, I can target a broader audience, hoping that at least one post will appeal to someone who doesn’t know me.

But while promoting my latest post, I prefer to focus on warm audiences. I chose a happy medium between anyone who visited my website and those who are most active on my website here in an effort to boost the potential audience size while cutting out one-time visitors.

Here, I’m targeting anyone who visited at least twice during the past 180 days. This gives me a potential reach of 140,000 people.

Ads Promoting Facebook Ads Quiz

If you haven’t taken my 30-question Facebook ads quiz, make sure you do so. You’ll quickly see just how much you know!

The Goal:

The primary goal here is to get people to take the quiz. Immediately after taking the quiz, the user will get a recommendation for one of my three webinars based on their results. Taking the quiz will lead to more people signing up for an appropriate level webinar.

Even if they don’t immediately sign up for the webinar, these people again fall into remarketing.

Targeting:

Based on testing, I’ve decided to focus only on my most active website visitors. Lookalikes simply weren’t worthwhile.

It makes sense, really. I’m not getting an email address, but I’m asking the user to do something that takes lots of effort. It needs to be a highly engaged user who knows me.

I’ve been testing three different audiences:

1. Time on Site 5% AND Frequency 3+ (10 Days)
2. Time on Site 10% AND Frequency 2 (10 Days)
3. Time on Site 25% AND Frequency 1 (10 Days)

In each case, I’m combining two different Website Custom Audiences, one based on frequency and one based on time spent. You may be surprised to know that currently the most efficient audience is the 25% + 1 frequency audience.

I use a 10-day window in an effort to avoid overmarketing the audience. My assumption is that the people who are most active on my website during the past 10 days aren’t all that likely to consistently be the most active people. I have no proof of that, but I’m hoping there isn’t a ton of overlap.

By limiting the window to 10 days, I can hope to keep this ad relatively evergreen and limit ad impression frequency. Combined with using Daily Unique Reach bidding, I’ve done reasonably well at that. Even though these are small audiences, frequency over 14 days is no more than 4.

I’m also excluding the following groups:

• Already took the quiz (Website Custom Audience)
• Registered for beginner, intermediate or advanced webinar
• Purchased beginner or intermediate 4-week program
• Member of the Power Hitters Club

I this case, I only want to pay to show the quiz to people who are new to the funnel. The exclusions I use to assure this are a bit ridiculous — and probably overkill. I exclude every possible Website Custom Audience, Email Custom Audience and Lead Ad Custom Audience associated with those groups to make sure they are cut out — a total of 54 excluded audiences.

Website Conversion Ads for the Webinars

The first set of ads created for the purpose of driving signups for my webinars are remarketing plays.

The Goal:

Not surprisingly, my goal here is to get more webinar registrations. But I also want it to be rather evergreen. You’ll notice that I don’t mention dates. That will be updated on the landing page. I do this with the second set of ads as well.

Targeting:

I took a few different approaches here.

First, I did an abandoned page, targeting those who previously visited the landing page for that webinar.

Second, I targeted anyone who registered for the beginner webinar during the past 30-60 days to promote the intermediate webinar. I also did the same thing for those who registered for the intermediate webinar for promoting the advanced one.

Here, I exclude anyone who registered for the webinar I’m promoting as well as the 4-week program for the same level. I also exclude anyone who participated in anything that is a higher level. For example, if promoting the intermediate webinar to those who attended the beginner webinar, I’ll also exclude those who attended the advanced webinar.

I could also use a carousel to promote my webinars.

The Goal:

The goal is to get webinar registrations, but this time it’s to get volume. While the approach above will lead to inexpensive registrations, potential for volume is very limited.

Targeting:

Since I need a larger group to spend more, I focus on Lookalike Audiences here:

• JonLoomer.com Visitors – 180 Days (10+ Frequency)
• Registered to Any Facebook Advertiser Webinar – 180 Days
• Time on Site (25%) – 180 Days
• Time on Site (10%) – 180 Days
• Time on Site (5%) – 180 Days

For the 10% audience, I’m also experimenting with dayparting. I researched my ad reports to find the most efficient hours of the day to get a conversion during 2016.

I’m also experimenting with an audience that knows me very well, but creating variations of the targeting. I combined those who visited 3+ times or were in the top 5% of my most active visitors during the past 10 days. In one case, I let Facebook optimize. In the other, I expand the net a bit by using Daily Unique Reach.

Lead Generation Ads for the Webinars

On the surface, this is a lot like what we did above with individual webinar ads. However, in this case, I am mentioning the date. That’s because each lead ad form is date specific, so I create special ads for them.

The Goal:

Get registrations. You know that! But I like to split test vs. sending to a landing page to make sure I’m doing it most efficiently.

Targeting:

To avoid overmarketing, I’m not doing the exact same targeting as above. The audiences and targeting are very modest for this campaign.

I’m promoting the beginner webinar to two groups while promoting the other two webinars to one each:

• Beginner Webinar: Group of Lookalikes
• Beginner Webinar: Abandoned landing page or form
• Intermediate Webinar: Registered for Beginner webinar 30-60 days ago
• Advanced Webinar: Registered for Intermediate webinar 30-60 days ago

In the first ad set, I combined the various Lookalikes instead of splitting them out this time. I also used Lookalikes only for beginners since I find that webinar to be valuable due to the potential to send them through multiple products.

As mentioned, these ads are date specific. So I’ve actually created forms and ads in preparations for future runs as well.

It’s possible I may be a bit obsessed!

Next Steps

Once the landing pages are ready for my 4-week training programs, there is a logical next step. I will then run Facebook ads promoting each program based on the webinar someone attended. These ads will make my email campaigns more effective and vice versa.

Your Turn

Keep in mind that I’m leaving a lot of details out here, but this is a good start. I should have close to 10,000 total registrations for the next webinars on Monday, and a big reason for that is these campaigns. Hopefully my process will provide some inspiration for your own campaigns.

Any other approaches you’d take? Let me know in the comments below!

The post How I’m Promoting My Webinar Series with Facebook Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Thinking of starting your first remarketing campaign? Here is a step-by-step guide to launching your first remarketing campaign today.

The post The Step-by-Step Guide to Launching Your First Remarketing Campaign by @IAmAaronAgius appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Happy Friday, PPC-ers, and welcome to this week’s edition of the Clix Marketing Blog’s PPC News & Views!

From the Experts

There was a lot of buzz about Google’s Keyword Planner this week. Here’s a couple of articles to check out.

Search Engine Land

Google officially throttling Keyword Planner data for low spending AdWords accounts

Neptune Moon

WTF Is Happening To The AdWords Keyword Tool?

PPC Hero

Google Announces Controversial Updates to the Keyword Planner Tool

TheSEMPost

Abusive Bots & Services Behind the AdWords Keyword Planner Data Restrictions

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

CPC Strategy

Facebook Holiday Ads Tips for Retailers Who Want to Stand Out: Use these tips to make the most of Facebook this holiday season.

Merkle

Recapping the Biggest Google Shopping Changes So Far in 2016: Make sure you know all the latest Google Shopping news with this recap of 2016.

WordStream

How to Apply Game Theory in PPC Marketing: An interesting read about different targeting that can be applied to your AdWords accounts.

PPC Hero

7 Overlooked Facebook Power Editor Features That Will Save You Time: Check out this article before you next work your Facebook campaigns. These tips are sure to save your time and your sanity.

ClickZ

55% of users don’t recognise PPC ads in Google search results: An interesting read with many charts about what non-PPC pros see on the SERPs and what they click on.

CommerceHub

Making Facebook Dynamic Product Ads Worth the Investment: If you’ve been wondering if you should dive into Facebook’s dynamic product ads, be sure to check out this post.

AdEspresso

How To Market Your “Boring” Business On Instagram: Check out this post for tips on how all business types can take advantage of Instagram.

From the Engines

Pinterest

Introducing Promoted Video

Bing Ads

Upgraded URLs now available in Bing Ads: An easier way to manage your tracking URLs

On the Clix Blog

3 Simple Expanded Text Ad Writing Strategies by Robert Brady
The PPC Account Checklist for New Clients by Andrea Taylor
3 Crucial Tips for Training PPC Newbs by Abby Woodcock

Posted by calindaniel

As a business, you have few online allies more powerful than customer-written reviews.

You could say people trust reviews—but that wouldn’t even be the half of it.

BrightLocal’s 2014 Local Customer Review Survey of over 2,000 consumers revealed some critical and compelling data:

• 88% of respondents read/used reviews to determine the quality of a local business; an overwhelming majority of respondents, 93%, said they checked reviews before dining or shopping. This means no matter how good your website is, or how compelling your offering, your customers will seek out other opinions. Having a strategy to earn, manage, and respond to reviews is a must.
• 85% of respondents to the BrightLocal survey read up to 10 different reviews while researching their purchase, pointing to the fact that customers aren’t blindly accepting the first review they read, but triangulating the feedback they find to get the real story behind a business. (That ought to be encouraging for businesses, as it means one terrible review is unlikely to sink you. But shoppers do weigh reviews heavily.)
• 88% of respondents said they trusted online reviews as much as they’d trust a personal recommendation (overwhelmingly the most trusted form of advertising by consumers, according to Nielsen’s Trust in Advertising Report), though the caveat is reviews had to be authentic, and there had to be enough of them to make a judgement call.

One thing that’s no longer up for debate is that reviews can have an enormous impact on your business and your bottom line.

Whether it will be a positive or negative impact, is largely up to you.

In this post, we’ll share some tips on getting more reviews as well as when and how to respond to the reviews you get.

How you can get customers to leave more reviews

This is the golden question for any local business: Since reviews are so powerful, how can I get more customers to leave them?

The most important thing is also the most obvious: Ask for them.

Prime a customer to review you at the beginning of your relationship

Let customers know their feedback is welcome and expected. For example, if you’re a contractor, include this in the description of your process, or tell the customer on the phone that you’d love to earn a referral.

Remind the customer to review you at the end of the transaction

For a coffee shop, this might be a reminder on the receipt. For an ecommerce retailer, perhaps it’s a slip of paper included in the shipment with a reminder or incentive to review, provided that's within the rules of the site.

How this looks will depend on how you do business, but be explicit in your ask.

Identify the most important sites in your niche (and where you’re already being reviewed). There are a myriad of reviews sites out there, and trying to manage them all is nearly impossible. Do a quick bit of research to find out which sites are the most influential in your niche.

A quick “[brand name] + reviews” search in Google will reveal where people are already talking about your business or product. It may be easieer to encourage more activity from an existing source than to ask people to review information on your site.

You want to make it as easy as possible for people to review you, so focus on the platforms your customers arealready using.

Make sure you know the rules of engagement for each review platform

Different sites have different rules when it comes to how and where you can ask for reviews.

For example, Yelp expressly forbids asking or incentivizing customer reviews, but if you’re trying to get reviews on your own website, no such rules apply.

Google has no problem with you asking customers to review you, but they’ll discount reviews filled out on an in-store kiosk or computer (too many reviews from the same IP).

Be patient and timely

Even if you implement a great review-capturing process, it’ll take a while before you’ve built up a solid body of feedback. Don’t get discouraged. Sustain your effort and keep on plugging away. Asking for a review weeks or even months after a transaction is a poor strategy. You want to develop a system that reminds people you’d love their feedback as quickly as possible.

Worthwhile tactics for getting more reviews

Put up signs at your business location

Yes, it’s a bit passive, but putting up the “People Love Us on Yelp!” signs, or your own, homemade handouts for reviewing on Google (or whatever platform you choose) are great on-location reminders that feedback matters.

Incentivize check-ins

While you can’t incentivize reviews for most platforms, there are no rules against incentivizing people to check into your location on apps like Yelp. The bonus here is once they’ve checked in, you can capture that information and remind them you’d love their feedback.

Showcase the reviews you have

Printing and displaying reviews is a powerful way to show people that you take them seriously. That could mean displaying reviews in-store. (Cheesy as it sounds, bathroom stalls are a great place for this, as the person will be naturally looking for something to read.)

On your website, call out review sections. Show reviewers' faces as a way of proving that the reviews were left by real people—and that their feedback is making a difference.

Use remarketing campaigns

If you run an ecommerce site, you can use AdWords to retarget anyone who makes a purchase from your website with a polite request for a review.

Simply drop the cookie on the last page of your conversion funnel (usually the thank you page), embed it in their digital invoice, create a splash page offering previous buyers an exclusive deal, or add the cookie to an online feedback form.

What will happen if your business gets a bad review?

This is the classic fear of companies who hold out on getting involved in customer reviews, and where the reality of today’s communication really comes to light. The truth is, your business has little control over whether or not people will talk about your brand. Your only choices are to engage with or ignore people when they do talk about your brand.

Whether it’s Yelp, TripAdvisor or Google My Business, reviews about your business or product are likely already online. They’re being shared in formal environments like review sites and in informal environments like social media platforms and discussion forums.

If you remain silent, only one perspective will be being shared: the reviewer’s.

Worse, a failure to respond now makes you look apathetic about your own reputation and your customers’ concerns. In this way, the hands of businesses have already been forced.

If you’re most worried that someone might say something nasty to you online, your defence is two-pronged:

1. Learn from the feedback and improve your business so future complaints will be mitigated
2. Work to generate positive contributions to the review ecosystem

Yes, there’s a chance your business may become the target of trolls or someone who is simply angry at the world. However, research conducted by MIT and Northwestern reveals that a brand's most devoted customers are typically the ones who vent most often about their negative experiences.

Whatever you do, don’t ignore bad reviews and hope they go away.

Should you always respond to bad reviews?

First, acknowledge that silence is almost never a smart response to a bad review. Perhaps the most poignant incentive to engage with reviewers comes from Bazaarvoice’s research, which shows that:

• Leads who see a brand respond to a negative review reported an increase of 116% in purchase intent
• 71% of customers changed their perception of the brand after seeing a public response to a reviewer
• Shoppers who saw a brand response offering a refund, upgrade, or exchange to a disgruntled customer were 92% more likely to purchase than those who saw no response
• Reviews with company responses were much more likely to be voted as “helpful” by readers

Customers want to see that your brand cares about their concerns, and is actively engaged with them in ways that demonstrate that your concerns goes beyond protecting your own reputation.

Lisa Barone, a well-respected digital strategist, wrote a post that recommends always responding to a negative review if one of the following statements is true:

You really did screw up

If a complaint is legitimate, you owe it to the customer to acknowledge and respond to their frustration.

The reviewer is misstating the facts

If the event in question never actually happened, or if the facts have been invented by the reviewer, it’s time to step in and (politely) set the record straight, sharing whatever substantiated proof you have. You need to share your side of the story and give context to new readers.

The situation can be salvaged

If there’s a simply way to fix the problem or resolve the customer compliant, get in there and do it. It doesn’t matter who is in error, communicate openly and make a good attempt to right the perceived wrong. This is a chance to win back your customer.

The conversation is getting louder

If the story is spreading and the troops are rallying, it’s time to step in and put out the fire. If someone well-connected has a gripe about your business, remedy the situation as quickly as possible.

You should consider holding off a response if…

You’re still angry about it

Nothing good will come from a snarky, sarcastic, or overly pointed response. Take a breather, think through the issue, and come back prepared to be polite and act like the bigger person.

The reviewer is angry at the world, not your business

Never feed the trolls. If you’re going through a person’s profile and all you see are bad reviews, it’s probably not worth it to reply to them unless they’re providing inaccurate information that taints your reputation. When in doubt, simply respond with the facts.

How to respond to a bad review (5-step plan)

A bad review can feel like a punch to the gut. Here’s how to handle the situation with tact and get the best possible outcome as often as possible in just five steps:

Step 1. Cool down

Be sure you’re in the right frame of mind to reply. Getting angry, defensive, or sarcastic will do more harm than good.

Step 2. Acknowledge and look into the problem

Ask your staff or anyone who was involved in the situation what actually happened. Gather the facts you need to determine whether or not this is a situation where the brand screwed up, the customer screwed up, or a bit of both. You want to be fully aware of what’s actually happened when you respond to a bad review.

No matter what, give the customer the benefit of the doubt. The knee-jerk response is to defend yourself. But remember, this is a chance to salvage a customer relationship and look great doing it! Don’t blow it by coming across as defensive.

Step 3. Address the problem directly

Did your business screw up? Apologize and make things right.

What if your business was not in the wrong? Apologize anyway, and explain the situation. Let the customer know what you’ve done, will do, or are doing to solve the problem for them. Let them know their concern is being addressed by a real, live person. Most importantly, make them feel like you understand their concern and and empathize with them.

Note: A “non-apology” won’t work here. You can’t pump your company’s tires, and then apologize for not coming through. Always be sincere, direct, and polite.

Step 4. Take the conversation offline after your first response

This is especially important on social media. Once you’ve acknowledged the issue and offered to help, do whatever you can to draw the conversation away from the public eye. You want to show you’re proactively responding. However, the nitty-gritty details don’t need to be shared with the general public.

Be upfront with the customer, and invite them to contact you directly to receive a resolution to their problem.

Note: Be certain that the channels you provide are prompt, personal, and effective. Otherwise, you'll risk making them feel like you’re simply passing the buck.

Step 5. Document the complaint and watch for patterns

Your process shouldn’t end once the problem is solved or the customer checks out. Document the details of the complain. As for future complains, keep details records about when people are complaining, and what they’re complaining about.

You can learn a great deal from negative reviews, including how to improve your business and make your customers happier. Bad reviews are actually one of the best ways of identifying and solving systemic business problems.

Should you also respond to positive reviews?

You should respond to positive reviews, depending on the norms of the platform you’re receiving the reviews on. Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter are forums for conversation where a response is expected, and people won’t be surprised to see a brand engaging with every single review on either one.

On TripAdvisor, responses from business owners are both welcomed and encouraged.

On Yelp, however, the culture of the site is a bit sarcastic, so the community might sneer at seeing constant one-to-one communication between reviewers and brands. On platforms like this, you might choose to respond to reviews privately. That said, in the right context, responding to a positive review with a thoughtful reply will make a happy customer even happier, and demonstrate to other potential buyers that your brand is listening.

Finally, don’t underestimate the power of reviews

If nothing else, I hope this post has opened your eyes to the need to develop a strategy for responding to online reviews. When managed well, reviews can be a huge business generator, as well as key indicators of areas your business is succeeding in and areas where improvement is needed.

While it can be a bit scary when getting started, with careful planning and oversight, local businesses can reap huge rewards from online reviews.

Your brand should be one of those businesses.

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Update: 3/3/14: Only 11 seats left.

There are only 9 days left until our next Local U Advanced, just outside of Philadelphia, at the DoubleTree by Hilton in King of Prussia, Pa.

This year we have limited the total ticket sales (including sponsor seating) to just 65 folks. As of yesterday afternoon there were only 16 spots 11 seats left. Its only $899 and the rooms can be had for $129.

The event starts with a mixer (with great foods and drink) Friday the night before and continues all day Saturday. We cover your  day of breakfast, lunch and post even refreshments. It’s a day and half full of all things local.

Google is sending Derek Wetzel so you can ask him your most daunting question (off the record of course) as well the full compliment of Local U folks including David Mihm, Mike Ramsey, Aaron Weiche, Will Scott, Mary Bowling, Ed Reese and myself. So whether you have an agency related, process related or technical question we will have you covered.

It’s an incredible event with great conversation, great presentations and great learning. The keynote this year will be by Will Reynolds of Seer Interactive sharing some of the most effective strategies for driving local customers.

Sign up now. You’ll be glad.