Why Reputation is Crucial in Local Business — and How to Boost It.
Reputation matters for any business and building brand credibility should be a focus area of your business. If you want to drive local business, reviews, ratings, and word-of-mouth recommendations from your satisfied customers are necessary to increase engagement and boost sales.
Local business marketing relies on these methods more than large businesses due to the budget constraints of local businesses. Digital marketing allows for geo-targeting to prospective customers based on location and helps in maximizing sales for local business.
Customer reviews help to create trust among those interested in the business and are crucial in helping people make decisions about your local business. Research has shown that 97% of customers rely on reviews to find local services with 94% of them making purchase decisions based on reviews. 92% of customers are reluctant to make purchases for products that have no customer reviews while 94% of customers have reported that they are likely to avoid a business on the basis of negative reviews.
Positive reviews on platforms like Yelp, Facebook, and Google can increase your rankings in search engines and make it easier for people to find you. They help to promote brand awareness, increasing the chances of conversions for your business.
Tips for improving reviews/ratings on Google, Yelp, and Facebook
1. The first thing you need to focus on is offering quality products or services. Without this, it’s going to be very difficult to get positive reviews for your business no matter how many reviewing platforms you’re on.
2. Spend time on creating your business profile on platforms like Yelp, Facebook, and Google. If customers have to leave reviews, you need to be present on these platforms to enable it. Profiles on such platforms are easy to create and must be filled out fully. Creating a business page on Facebook will automatically activate the review function for your page. Yelp also has free tools packages so that accounts can be set up without costing your business anything. Having a registered and filled in Google My Business page is necessary to collect reviews on Google.
3. Encourage customers to leave reviews for your business by reminding them through links on your website or via email signature. The more reviews you get, the lower will be the impact of a negative review on your overall rating. Reminding customers to review your business is especially important for those who have had positive experiences as people generally tend to review a business only when they’ve had a negative experience and not a positive one.
4. Interact with your customers online so that they feel like you’re listening to them. Responding to negative reviews and committing to making a change for the better can help customers feel heard and improve future reviews for your business.
Get ready to boost your reviews with us
At Local Influence, we have a proprietary ReviewBoostr™ platform that manages all of this for you, helping to maximize 5-star reviews for your business. Learn more at www.localinfluence.agency