Why online reviews are critical for your success online

Online reviews are critical for the overall success of your online marketing efforts for two key reasons:
1. Online reviews significantly impact conversion and influence whether someone chooses you or your competition. More reviews = more people who are considering you actually choosing you.
2. Having a number of true online reviews from your real customers in your true service area will help to drive better positioning in the Map Listings on Google Search. More real reviews = better ranking on the Google Map in your area.
According to the Local Consumer Review Study (2012) the study, 52% of consumers who make their decisions based on quality over price report that positive online reviews will help sway them to make the leap and do business with that company; this is compared to just 28% of consumers who look for price and location before anything else. Another positive finding is that 52% of consumers trust online reviews as a valid source of information just as much as they would a personal recommendation from a friend or colleague as long as the review looks authentic. Another survey published by Bazaarvoice Survey added an additional side note in that 51% of their respondents actually found the reviews more important than the opinions of their friends and family.
So it’s imperative that you are consistently requesting and getting real online reviews if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your overall online marketing success.
So how can you get online reviews?
What we feel is the best thing to do is first of all, have a strategy in your business where you’re consistently asking for reviews.
• Print out review request cards, make sure that each of your guys have a stack it with them, and start passing them out after service. It’s just a simple card that reads “We appreciate your business, if you enjoyed the experience of doing business with us, go here. You can either direct them right to the Google Places page, or, if you want to get a little more strategic, if you have a little more technical know how, direct them back to www.yourwebsite.com/reviews, and have a place on your website that will link out to all your online directory sites. Like Yelp, Kudzu, Insider Pages, CitySearch & Google Places. That way maybe they could write multiple reviews, or maybe for some reason they’re just a big advocate of Kudzu and they want to write the review on Kudzu. Make it easy for them to write a review, and be consistently asking for those types of reviews. The other thing you want to do is you want to start sending emails to your customers after service.
• Start collecting email addresses and then after service, send your customer some type of email that thanks them for their business and reads “If you had a good experience we’d love to get your feedback. Write us a review.” Again, linking directly to the Google Places page or a place on your website where they can access all of your different review profiles. There’s a couple of different ways you can go with that but when done correctly.
• Automate the review request process by setting up a automated drip email that would go out to customers, thank them for their business & request a review.
Having a systematic process for requesting and getting real reviews from your real customers in your true service area will have a major impact in your business in terms of ranking on the Google map and conversion from all your online and offline marketing efforts.