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Reputation Management in Santa Rosa

Using Local Reviews for Your Business

You use local reviews all the time, but as a business owner are you considering their impact on your bottom line? Online local reviews are a powerful indicator to consumers about the quality of a business. Whether it’s a restaurant, CPA, cleaners, or other local business, positive reviews speak volumes about a company.

If you did a search right now, let’s say for a lawn care service, and found many listings with no reviews and one or two with a few positive reviews; which one would you consider first? If they all had reviews, some with a lot of positive reviews and the rest with a couple mediocre reviews, which one would you consider then?

I’m sure in both cases you’d pick the ones with more reviews and those with more positive ratings.

Now take a look at your business relative to your competition. How do you show up?

What Does Your Local Reviews Say About Your Business?

Do you stand out? Are you way behind? Or are you leading in the group?

One of the single most important things you can do as a small business is manage your online reviews. Studies show that 86% of consumers read reviews for local businesses and 57% of consumers will only use a business if it has 4 or more stars.

Not only does it pay to have higher ratings and more reviews, but the search engines take note of this as well. Google My Business listings that have more reviews and higher ratings tend to get a boost in the search rankings. Google’s goal is to give consumers the best option for their local searches, so it’s easy to see why they promote local businesses that manage their reviews well.

Think your business is doing “just fine” with word-of-mouth marketing? According to the 2018 BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey, “91% of 18-34 year old consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.”

Convinced yet? We sure hope so!

So, how can you raise your ratings and gather more reviews?

The majority of consumers are happy to leave your business a positive review, even more so if you’re one of those local businesses that truly delivers. You only need to ask them.

You can achieve this by sending out some emails or test message requests. Hand out thank you cards as people leave your business with a link for reviews. Or, you make individual personal requests of your favorite clients.

We believe in reviews so much that we’ve invested in becoming a ReviewLead Certified Partner. This allows our clients a simple, effective system to help build their online reviews. We can even do most of the work for you!

The ReviewLead system drips out special email requests based on a plan that fits your needs. Want to send out a few a day over a longer period of time (recommended), we can do that. Want to get reviews on Google, Yelp, Angie’s List, or Facebook? We can get you reviews on the platforms that matter to your business the most.

Interested in learning more about our Reputation Management options? Request a free audit to see how your reputation shows up online and we’ll send you a custom report and recorded demo.

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Is Review Management Right for Your Business?

A little effort in this area goes a long way. Contact us today for a reputation assessment and we’ll schedule a quick Q&A session. We offer cost-effective solutions that make big impacts on your business.

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