Buying Reviews? Here’s Why You Should Never Buy Fake Reviews
Are you buying reviews to help kick-start your business online? STOP! Read this post to understand why you should NEVER buy fake reviews.
All business owners recognize the struggle of marketing their product or service. A key element of that is social proof, i.e. positive word of mouth from existing customers. In today’s day and age this invariably means online reviews.
Having mostly positive reviews can skyrocket a business to the top, but having a lot of negative reviews can completely ruin it, even if the problems are quickly fixed.
Of course the best way to prompt positive reviews from customers and clients is to provide high quality products and services, with excellent customer care, so they genuinely want to tell others. However it’s only natural for business owners to seek quick ways to generate the same buzz.
The fact is, having no online reviews can be just as bad as having negative ones, so many businesses try to get a leg up by resorting to buying fake reviews.
To learn more about online reviews, the facts and figures, and how they influence consumers – check out the following infographic from WebsiteBuilder.org.
Buying reviews or giving an incentive to leave a review.
Buying reviews can come in many forms.
An acceptable method is to offer people the product or service for free, in exchange for their honest opinions. You might also pay them as an added incentive. Targeting bloggers and ‘influencers’ within your niche is particularly beneficial, because they often carry authority and customers value their opinions.
The key words here are “honest opinions.”
It would be unethical to pay people to leave positive reviews and in the long run it might even have a negative impact. Nonetheless buying fake reviews are rife online and it’s not at all surprising.
Here’s why you should NEVER buy fake reviews:
Fake Reviews Are Often Obvious
People aren’t stupid and it’s not too difficult to spot your average fake review. For example if many reviews say one thing negative about your product or business, but then there’s a flurry of others that completely contradict it – readers are going to think something fishy is going. Likewise if you purchase fake reviews in bulk or from the same person, they often appear similar and repetitive. There are now services like FakeSpot.com that can help identify fake reviews, so is it really worth it?
They Don’t Always Work
Trust in reviews is at an all time low – only 27% of people will trust a review if they believe it is legitimate. If they think it’s fake then you’re screwed. Plus if your business is exposed publicly as using fake reviews, you’re going to have a permanent black mark against you.
It’s Lazy
Ultimately fake reviews are lazy and you’re not going to see the benefits long term. You’re not going to get better at business, you won’t be refining and improving your products and services, and you’ll have to go to bed at night knowing – YOU SUCK!
