Nearly everywhere you appear online, your reputation influences your target customers. Your reputation, made up of reviews, comments in social media can appear in many locations. The big players like Google, Microsoft and Facebook are instrumental in connecting you with your customers.
When a customer jumps online to find someone to fix their leaking plumbing or to help get the lights back on the reviews are sure to show up. Try a search for “plumbers in Chicago” on Google and you may overwhelmed with a variety of choices. However, showing up along side are all the ratings Google has collected. Have a look below:
Now, if you’ve got a leak in your plumbing, how much time do you want to spend researching these? Probably about 5 minutes. The customer is going to shortlist “J & B Plumbing”, “John Baethke & Son Plumbing” and “Apex Plumbing” since they have a star rating (which draws your attention), have pretty good aggregate rating with 10 or more reviews.
Given that they’re only got 5 minutes, those 3 companies is enough to provide the customer choice. If you’re any other company you’ve been eliminated because you either have bad or non-existing reviews. If you’ve not yet clued in that online reviews impact your business, you need to understand that no online presence means you’re missing business. Even though you might be a remarkable company providing superior service, realize that 67% of customers trust online reviews as much as word of mouth referrals.
Ignoring your online presence and reputation already impacts the number of leads you’re getting. Those companies that realized this, have built up their online reputation and are getting the leads.
