![]() Better yet, leaning into the world of online reviews might be the only marketing plan a small business needs these days.Yelp is the go-to review site for businesses, especially those in the services and hospitality sector. Word of mouth happens online now, and small businesses finally get to add their voices to the conversation. If you run a small business, it’s time to embrace online review sites and use them to your advantage. Engaging with dissatisfied customers in online review forums can actually lead to repeat business, and up to 70% of complaining customers will give the business another shot if their concerns are resolved. Small businesses can use online reviews to uncover any legitimate blind spots and show acts of good faith for all the public to see. In the past, dissatisfied customers might not even fill out a comment card - they’d just lambaste the business via word of mouth, and the owner might never know anything was wrong. Everyone has a bad day, and business owners deserve to know when something’s wrong. Second, small businesses can turn negative reviews into a second chance. This activates the business’ happiest customers, buries any unfair negative reviews and ensures that the company’s “ review ratio ” is healthy. First, they can proactively encourage their customers to post reviews about their experience - 68% of customers will leave a review if asked. Small businesses have more control of their online star ratings than they know. If you run a small business, the very best thing you can do to attract more customers is to maintain a high star-rating on the most popular review sites. That’s good news because 90% of customers say that what they decide to buy is influenced by positive online reviews, and 94% will use a business with at least four stars. In truth, two-thirds of all Yelp reviews are four or five stars, meaning most customers are logging on specifically to rave about their great experiences with local businesses. While there are certainly internet trolls out there, one of the great myths about online reviews is they’re all bad. Review sites are at the epicenter of “near me” searches. ![]() This is the new normal: 97% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses, and one in eight search online for a nearby business every single day. When you’re looking to try a new restaurant or find a mechanic, what do you do? You might get a recommendation from friends or family, but you probably also do a “ near me ” search on Yelp, Google or OpenTable. That’s an invaluable opportunity for small businesses with tight - or non-existent - marketing budgets. If traditional advertising is a megaphone that enables businesses to shout and see who’s listening, review sites are tractor beams that pull consumers toward local businesses precisely when they’re actively looking to spend money. When a consumer uses a review platform like Yelp or Google My Business, the decision and urgency to buy are exactly what prompted the person’s search. If you buy a radio ad, for example, the message has to do two hard jobs: Convince the customer to spend money with you and create urgency to do it now, before distractions take over. In the past, small businesses had to rely on inefficient “push” methods to attract new customers. Online Review Sites Are A Tractor Beam For Customers The days of window shopping and scanning the Yellow Pages are over. ![]() Consumers are using the internet to figure out where they want to spend money locally before they go there, and their visits are increasingly prompted by real and urgent purchasing intent. ![]() Foot traffic to retail businesses is down 57% in the past five years, but the value of every visit has tripled.įor small businesses, this means the iconic physical storefront has been replaced by many digital ones. About 90% of global sales still happen in physical stores, but 97% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses and three in four people who use their smartphones to search for something nearby end up visiting a local business within a day. This dramatic shift in technology adoption has led to similarly dramatic shifts in consumer behavior. Everyone has the internet in their pocket all the time, and this changes everything for small businesses. has doubled since 2001 to nearly 300 million users, and smartphone penetration has risen from 20% in 2010 to 69% in 2017 among American consumers. More on that soon, but first, let’s take a quick look at how technology has transported the classic small business storefront onto the internet.Įven the busiest business owner must recognize that access to real-time information has exploded. In fact, if you run a small business today, the single most important thing you can do to attract new customers is to take control of your online review score on sites like Yelp, Google My Business, FourSquare and TripAdvisor.
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