Word of mouth has always been particularly influential to consumers when they are considering their options in the service industry. And it’s easy to understand why. An inadequate product can be returned or exchanged, but a disappointing service is more difficult to correct. It can leave the client with a more personal sense of dissatisfaction that might only be pacified by letting others know about the bad experience.
Reviews Help Clients Take You Seriously
So, the reviews are out there, good and bad. The important thing is that potential clients are use to relying on reviews to help them make decisions and they will be looking for them. If your company name is floating around the internet with no reviews linked to it, a user is likely to give your business little to no consideration when they can read the reviews of your competitors. They’d really have to be willing to take a chance to give you a call. How often are you excited to “be the first person to leave a review” for a product or service?
Reviews Affect Page Rank
Search engines, like Google, can make it even easier for users to overlook your company if you don’t have reviews. Search engines understand the value consumers place on honest reviews and they want to give users what they’re looking for online. So, a company with positive reviews tend to have a better page rank than a company with very negative reviews or no reviews at all. Since a user is likely to hire a company they found listed on the first page of search results, it’s important to do everything possible to beat out your competition for a high page rank.
But don’t go purchasing phony reviews as a quick solution! Fake reviews will be spotted by search engines just as easily as they are by users. Fake reviews can damage a company’s page rank and reputation. A collection of legitimate reviews will be posted periodically over a stretch of time and will vary in satisfaction. Reviews should also be posted continuously, so users always have something recent to reference. If the most recent review is over 6 months old, the user starts to question if the quality of service is the same or why no one has left a review.
How to Get Reviews
You can request reviews from clients face to face or through an email, mail-stuffer or leave behind after your service has been completed. And there are a variety of online platforms reviews can be collected on, including Facebook, Google, Yelp and more. Earning that first review can take a lot of work, but our Reputation Marketing services can help you simplify the process. Our comprehensive, easy to use system for collecting reviews has proven results and will allow you to create an online reputation…and keep it clean. Contact us today to learn more about our Reputation Marketing services and how we can help you.