Running a gym or fitness center requires you to be on top of bringing in new business and delivering a great experience to your customers. However, something like a bad review can make it seem like your entire business is in danger of shutting down. Knowing how to handle those types of complaints or reviews is what reputation management is all about.
With so many channels for customers to voice their concerns or feedback on, managing every source can be difficult and time-consuming. That’s why it’s important to find the best reputation management platform for gyms and fitness centers. With the help of the right platform, you can manage your reviews, get a sense of brand sentiment, and respond to your customers in a timely and effective manner.
Managing Your Reputation in Today’s Customer-Driven World
Almost all consumers in today’s business world do their own research before making a purchase or finding a business for a service. Most of that research is done online. Think about it from your perspective. When was the last time you ordered a product from Amazon or went to a new restaurant without looking at the reviews or asking for a recommendation first?
Consumers are the driving force in the modern world. Rather than coming to you for explanations or details, they prefer to find them for themselves first. That can make managing your reputation much more complex. You not only need to deliver a great experience to your customers, but you also have less control over what new customers will think about your business before they choose to sign up for membership.
Reputation management is about taking proactive action to protect your reputation and build a better online presence. By taking control of your reputation management strategy, you have more options and opportunities to repair bad relationships with customers and provide firsthand information to potential customers.
Why Reviews are Important
Reviews are often the foundation of online research for new products and services. Customers will check out the star rating of a new business or product and make their determinations based on the highest star rating. They may also dive into written reviews or images associated with reviews to pick between highly-rated businesses or products.
If a business doesn’t have a 4-5 star rating, then there is a significant risk of losing customers and potential business. Star ratings drive incoming leads, and without enough of them you won’t be able to stand out against competitors. Gathering as many 5-star reviews as possible is the best way to build a better reputation online and manage your reputation.
How to Build a 5-Star Reputation
A 5-star reputation starts with every interaction you have with customers. Even if someone selects a different gym or fitness center to give their business to, you still want them to think positively about your business. That way, you can be an option if their first choice doesn’t work out. By making every experience positive, you are more likely to generate 5-star reviews.
It’s also important to have a plan in place to gather reviews. It’s wonderful to have happy customers, but if they aren’t showcasing that publicly with reviews, it’s hard to translate those happy customers into new business. Some business owners are afraid of being pushy by asking for reviews, but it’s a crucial part of your online marketing strategy.
How to Respond to Reviews
Another important step of reputation management is to respond to every review you get, both positive and negative. Responding to reviews proves that you take feedback into consideration and are appreciative of people who have taken the time to review your gym or fitness center. The type of response you have will depend on the positive or negative nature of the review.
Positive Reviews
A positive review is fantastic to receive. It means someone liked your business and your services enough to want others to know about that experience. It’s always a good idea to respond to these reviews with genuine and heartfelt thanks. You can mention specific details to make the review look more legitimate, like mentioning their trainer by name or saying something positive you remember about the interaction. Just don’t violate any privacy laws or standards.
You can also encourage new positive reviews by offering rewards to customers. You can surprise someone who left a review with a discount, a free session, or a gift. That encourages others to leave reviews as well. You should make leaving a review as stress-free as possible, with easy forms and direct links to review platforms. That also encourages more reviews from your current customer base.
Negative Reviews
As much as we would like to have nothing but 5-star reviews, the reality is that not every customer will be satisfied with your business or your services. 1-star reviews are inevitable, so knowing how to manage them is essential for your online reputation.
The first thing to do is not take the review to heart. As a small business owner, it can feel terrible to know that a customer was unsatisfied with your gym or fitness center. Just remember that they are allowed their opinion, even if you disagree with it.
The next step is to respond to the review professionally and with grace. If you become defensive and start accusing the customer of lying or misrepresenting their experience, it looks terrible to any new leads or customers who may come across the review. Instead, apologize for the bad experience and offer a solution while driving the conversation offline. You might suggest a refund or give a number to call to come up with a solution.
By offering a solution, it shows new audiences that you care about feedback, even if it is negative in nature. It also showcases your professionalism. Leaving the right response on a negative review can actually negate the negative feedback altogether, and leave customers with a better impression of you and how you respond to criticism.
How Surefire Local Can Help You Get More 5-Star Reviews
Managing your online presence and reputation is multifaceted. There are many platforms where people leave reviews, and you don’t want to miss even one. That’s where a reputation management platform like Surefire Local comes in.
The Surefire Local platform connects you with the top review platforms, like Google Business Profile, Facebook, and Yelp. This allows you to see all of your online reviews in one place as a timeline view on your dashboard. That saves you a lot of time from jumping around between platforms and signing in to different accounts just to find your reviews. You can easily see new review posts in one place.
In addition to seeing all of your newly posted reviews in one place, you can also respond to them directly from within the Surefire Local platform. You can type a response to both positive and negative reviews within the Surefire Local tool and make sure that the response is posted on the right review site and to the corresponding star rating.
Surefire Local also gives you a platform where you can send review requests to happy customers through either text messages or emails. By automatically sending requests, you can generate more reviews and get more business through the door. You can also send reminder emails or text messages to customers who have gotten a review request from you but haven’t clicked a link yet. That helps you generate more reviews from people who want to leave a review but forgot about the email.
Surefire Local helps with reputation management outside of reviews as well. You can use the tool to measure brand sentiment with a word-cloud graph that shows you the most frequently used words from customers in their reviews. That allows you to find both positive and negative keywords, like “great customer service”, “clean facilities”, or “high cost”. These keywords can then be used to support your decision-making on what you are doing right and what areas can be improved in the future.
Finally, you can use Surefire Local to optimize your brand presence across all review sites and on more than 80 local business directories. By managing the information found about your business, you can control the way your business looks to people who first come across it. Items like the photos displayed, any special offers you’re running, and your highlighted reviews can all be managed from the Surefire Local marketing platform.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform Demo
At Surefire Local, we want to help gym and fitness center operators like you manage their online reputation and build strong business relationships with customers. That’s why we’ve developed the best reputation management platform for gyms. To learn more about Surefire Local and all the ways we can help you manage your most important online marketing activities, get a demo of the platform today and discover how we can support your small business.