Seventy-five percent of consumers regularly check online reviews before purchases, according to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts at BrightLocal. Customers check online reviews for everything from groceries to gardening services—dental work to diamond rings—and car parts to commercial buildings. And they’re checking your competitor’s reviews.
These positive affirmations, glowing endorsements, online reviews, or as you probably know them, “customer testimonials,” serve several purposes. Let’s take a closer look at customer perceptions and how reviews affect your business.
What Effect Do Reviews Have on My Business?
Credibility, Trust and Testimonies
Online reviews are real-life endorsements that you operate a consistently reliable business.
People spend their money where they believe they’ll get the best deal and easiest buying experience. Reviews give prospective customers a chance to see that you make your customers happy and, in the case of negative reviews, that you’ll go out of your way to fix mistakes.
As with so many other parts of life, people go to the internet for business reviews, so online reviews are increasing in value. The trend now is customers relying on human-written online reviews rather than conventional word-of-mouth advertising for purchasing decisions.
Increased Local SEO Authority and Higher Rankings
The more reviews you have, particularly in places like your Google Business Profile, the more authority your profile, account, or website claims. For instance, with Google reviews this means your website is shown higher in search results more often, thanks to the customer satisfaction signals received by Google’s big giant group of computers.
These results affect your “local SEO.” These location-based results give searchers your area’s best services. For many businesses, optimizing for local traffic gives you better leads.
So, reviews benefit your business by showing customers the quality they can expect with your services, and you get higher organic and paid search results. There is another benefit we haven’t discussed yet.
Marketing and Competitive Advantages of Online Reviews
Online reviews provide an unappreciated multitude of marketing benefits, including improved visibility and higher conversion rates. In fact, you’ll notice many digital marketing agencies offer some variation of review gathering or management, and that’s for a particularly good reason: the data supports the cost.
Experienced marketers know what your Online Presence needs for higher rankings and better leads. A good agency will work with your budget and your business for a custom plan of action to find the growth you need.
Also, don’t ever doubt your competitors are out there doing their own digital marketing. They may already have a robust review gathering procedure in place and are steadily climbing search rankings. Don’t worry, all is not doom and gloom.
If your business has a serious lack of reviews, and you want that to change, don’t let another year pass for your competitors to continue building their presence. But what can you do?
Three Tips to Get More Online Reviews
We’ve found there are three main things you can focus on to build your review profile.
- Ask nicely. Ahh, good old-fashioned communication. Some businesses dedicate an employee, some share the workload, and some outsource this work. However you go about it, contacting satisfied customers and specifically requesting they leave a review is the best way to start.
- Make it easy for customers with technology. Have QR codes linking to your reviews posted around your business, on big signs that draw attention. Or you can send emails with links to your reviews to any address gathered. Or you can do both or something else! But use technology to get your reviews at your clients’ fingertips.
- Respond to existing reviews. We know this seems counterintuitive, but this does show clients and customers that you care and are responsive, and you will see higher engagement rates over time after deploying this tactic.
Things to Think About
Regardless of how you feel about the digital world, your business will feel it if you ignore modern trends. More people are checking online reviews for almost every purchase, and your business could be suffering from a distinct lack of presence.
Do you need help with reviews? Get in touch with the Digital Fusion team for a consultation and personalized review.
About Channel Fusion
For more than 20 years, Channel Fusion has been delivering strategy, customer experience and return on investment outcomes for brands and their channel partners with a wide variety of solutions and industry expertise. We continue to invest in the overall ecosystem of our channel marketing offering to ensure our clients can provide their channel partners with an optimal customer experience to drive results. Our core technologies and connected platform are supported by a team of customer-centric “Fusers.” Let us know if you’d like to learn more about how we deliver desired outcomes for brands and their channel partners.