Manipulate Your Review Count to Help Your Golf Course

You may be wondering why your golf course isn’t reaching its highest potential.

The answer may lie within your review count.

The truth is that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) algorithms prefer quantity over quality. To gain an edge over your competitors, you’re going to need as many reviews as you can possibly get for a couple of reasons.

1.) The “Sweet Spot”

If you are constantly generating reviews, your review count will naturally find itself in the “sweet spot” range.

The “Sweet Spot” is between a 4.2 and a 4.5 rating out of 5 stars. If your rating is a perfect 5.0, this will actually hurt your business. This “sweet spot” is optimal because it gains consumers’ trust in honest reviews. A perfect rating is likely to cause your golf course to underperform because consumers will believe that it is too good to be true.

And they have a point. A perfect rating probably means there isn’t enough data to give an accurate rating or the system by which they are collecting reviews is fixed. Both of which will not gain consumer confidence.

Constantly generating honest reviews solves this problem.

2.) Using bad reviews to your advantage

A golfer who is dissatisfied with their time at your course is likely to leave a bad review as a way to vent out their frustration. Sometimes they have a poor experience. And chances are that it’s out of your control.

But don’t worry, even getting a bad review could be beneficial to your golf course.

Bad reviews can be looked at as opportunities to address the issue.

Make sure to take the criticism positively and offer a resolution in your response. Other prospective golfers will read your response and realize that the negative review probably wasn’t that bad after all. Additionally, they’ll see you are willing to go to lengths to rectify the issue.

3.) Quality of your reviews

A recent study has shown that 97% of consumers take the time to read reviews before making a purchase. This means that quantity isn’t everything. Your star count matters but quality holds its own weight as well. The content of the reviews will be read.

But as mentioned before, if you don’t maximize your review count, your prospects will have nothing positive to read.

4.) Low review counts are driving away business

Your low review count may very well be more of a reflection of the people that had bad experiences, with the occasional happy camper, rather than your entire pool of customers.

Someone who has a positive experience with your golf course has about a 1 in 10 chance of actually leaving a review on their own accord.

So, if you’re shooting for an average rating of 4 stars, you’ll need about 40 people who have had the 5-star experience you offer in order to compensate for every 1-star review.

Easier said than done, right?

That is why you need the tools and resources to continuously generate reviews with minimal effort.

Well, we’ve got great news.

TeeReach can do that work for you and put you a step ahead of your competitors.

Our review generation software will integrate into your software. This gives you the ability to send your golfers reminder texts to leave a review after they leave your course.

Because we know that there are many more people that have positive experiences at your course than there are those that have negative experiences.

But if you don’t capitalize on the opportunity to pump up the quality and quantity of your reviews, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.