Why Online Reviews are Crucial for Small Businesses

The Value of Reviews

For small businesses, online reviews are as good as money. If you were not already aware of the power that effective uses of online reviews hold, here are some of the reasons why reviews are so valuable:

• Reviews increase your visibility in SERPs. SERPs are Search Engine Result Pages, meaning the website list that gets displayed when someone searches a query on Google or any other search engine. Boosting SEO results in your business showing up higher on searches.

• Reviews build consumer trust. Just like trust is built through testimonials and case studies, having a plethora of reviews shows consumers that you are a tried-and-true operation.

• Reviews can encourage customers to convert to your business from competitors.

• Having a montage of reviews in various locations gives your business a competitive advantage over those who do not value reviews.

Here are some statistics that show exactly how much of an impact online reviews have on your company’s success and growth.

• 32% of customers will go to a company’s website after reading a positive review

• Products with 5 stars generate 126% more orders than products with 4 stars. In other words, reviews generate income.

• 82% of consumers read online for local businesses.

• Consumers, on average, read 10 reviews prior to trusting a business.

• SEO experts agree that generating online reviews in a top 3 ranking factor for SEO.

Online reviews give customers into the pros and cons of your company, as well as your competitors, and can be the make-or-break when consumers are choosing where to make a purchase. This is certainly true of your Google My Business profile, from which customers can easily see reviews of your company as well as write reviews for themselves. When customers see reviews here, they are then able to go direct to your website following reading reviews. At the same time, reviews on product pages, like Amazon, lie very close to the purchase button, and can be that last “push” to get customers to make a purchase.

How to generate reviews: The more, the better

While, as stated, consumers read roughly 10 reviews prior to a purchase, review timing is crucial. It is extremely important to continuously get reviews. Nearly 50% of consumers only pay attention to the reviews which were left within the past 2 weeks. This means the quest of lead procurement never stops.

So how do you star increasing the number of online reviews you have?

First, you want to see where your customers find you. This may be Google, Facebook, Instagram, or the App Store. Each of these have their own unique set of potential customers and require their own set of leads. This is why you need to prioritize where your reviews are placed so that you don’t waste time getting reviews that your customers will never see.

For example, if you are a lawn care business, you may want to start by getting reviews on Google My Business. Many people search for lawn care over google, primarily on desktop. Meanwhile, if you run a business in apparel, you may want to create profiles on TrustPilot, Stock X, or any other apparel platform that certifies users and sellers.

So how exactly do you know where to start generating reviews?

Look at where your target audience finds your business:

• Look at where your competitors are found. This can be done simply by searching your competitors’ brand names and seeing where they are generating their reviews.

• Find out where your reviews are lacking. Say you are getting a ton of organic reviews from Google. That’s great! Now see where else your customer base is located, maybe somewhere that has been neglected, and start pushing reviews there.

Requesting Reviews Over Email:

One of the simplest and most time efficient way to procure reviews is over email. Whether each of these reviews are sent out individually or if you have them automated to sed upon the customer making a purchase, it is important to thank the customer for their time and purchase before asking them to give you a review.

Hi {{Customer’s First Name}}, 

Thank you for visiting {{Your business name}}!

We love hearing back from our customers and would appreciate it if you could take a minute to let us know what you thought of us by clicking the link below:

[Link to review site]]

 We always want to better ourselves for our customers, so when you let us know how we do, it helps us to always keep improving. Thank you!

Respectfully,

{{Your Name}}

Request a Review Through Text

Texts work just as well, and sometimes better for the younger crowd, than emails when performing a review outreach. But, in order to leverage text outreach on a bulk scale, you need to use a provider that facilitates doing so. This can be extremely worthwhile for reaching customers where it is most convenient for them.

Once you have settled on a text platform, like Twillio, what’s left is just getting the consent from your customers to collect their phone numbers. From here, make these text no longer than 160 characters long, templatize it and automate.

In Person Review Requests

If you are a brick and mortar store, you can always take it old school by asking for reviews in person. This could look like providing a QR code on your receipts to a review site of your choice. Of course, you need to make sure that the customers know that it’s there before they walk away.

Google also has a free marketing kit to help facilitate getting reviews while the customer is still in the store.

Analyzing Reviews: I’ve got the reviews… now what?

At the point that you gain an extensive online review repertoire, you now ask “what do I do with all of these reviews?”

Other than taking these reviews and prominently displaying them on your website, you can analyze them to grow your business to the next level, like helping with product development.

Additionally, you can see if you are starting to get compared to new, emerging competitors, which you can use to continue to analyze your ever-changing competitive landscape.

Summary

Whether you procure your reviews over email, text, or in person, just know that they are essential to growing your business reputation amongst consumers, SEO, and analyzing internal and external competencies and shortcomings.