Question: How important are search engines to your business?
Answer: In this day and age when looking for a product or service to buy, 73 percent of consumers say that they use search engines to find a good business. In fact, with everyone having smartphones, now nearly 1 out of every 2 phone searches are to find out where a business is located.
Q: What are people looking for when searching for a business online?
A: They are looking at reviews. I began to notice how important this was recently when we were trying to take our mom out for her birthday dinner.
We chose a nice restaurant because we had a $25-off coupon and she would eat free because it was her birthday. However, after reading the restaurant’s reviews, we decided that we needed to choose a different place. Another time, we took a friend to the mall to buy a straightening iron for her hair. I watched as she stood in the aisle for more than an hour just reading reviews on her phone to see if the product that she was about to buy was actually good.
Q: What is the most trusted form of advertising today?
A: People do business with businesses that they know, like and trust. In a recent survey done by the Nielsen Co., they discovered that next to a personal recommendation from a friend, the most trusted form of advertising is what other people say about that business online.
But here’s the interesting thing: Another survey done by Bright Local revealed that 73 percent of consumers want to read at least 10 reviews before they make a buying decision.
About 70 percent of these consumers say that they only trust a business after they have read a minimum of six to 10 positive reviews. So if you don’t have at least 10 reviews, many consumers will feel that your business can’t be trusted.
Q: What is “reputation marketing,” and why should my business focus on it?
A: Reputation marketing is simply building a five-star reputation online and then marketing that reputation to get more customers.
When it comes down to the bottom line, a new Harvard Business School study determined that a restaurant on Yelp that increased its star rating by just one star increased its revenue by 5 to 9 percent. This is why “reputation marketing” is the most important thing that a business needs to be focusing on today. Yet, most businesses that we work with do not have a system in place to capture or, more importantly, encourage people to leave reviews online.
Q: What do I do if I have a bad online reputation?
A: You need to do two things. First, get as many positive reviews as you can to balance out the negative reputation. You cannot delete reviews once they have been placed online.
Second, both Google and Yelp have a response mechanism in place where you can respond to the negative review. You need to do what you have to do to make it right.
One of the other strategies that you might consider implementing is a “review portal,” which is a specific site that you set up for customers to leave reviews. When you have a bad review in the portal site, you can deal with that situation right away and not have to deal with the negative review being online forever.
Q: What’s a good five-step plan to get me started in reputation marketing?
A: 1. Claim your listings on all the business directories, such as Google, Yelp and Bing.
2. Develop a five-star reputation online and aim to get a minimum of 10 reviews.
3. Market your excellent reputation everywhere.
4. Have a system in place to manage your reputation in case you get a below-par review.
5. Make sure your employees know how important reviews are so they will actively seek those reviews from customers.
