Finding your business is one thing, engaging with it is another.
In our last installment, we explored the first part of New Plains MediaMedia’s Online Snapshot report for your business, an overview of your listing presence and accuracy with the major business directories and data providers. Consistent, accurate basic business information with these are critical to consumers finding your business when searching online.
Once found, consumers will start to evaluate your business based on your reviews, along with recommendations and information they find on social media. In this installment, we’ll look closer at the Reviews and Social Media information in New Plains MediaMedia’s Online Snapshot report.
Reviews
After word-of-mouth from friends and family and your website, online reviews are now the 3rd most trusted source of information according to Nielsen, equal to editorial content like newspaper articles. It’s word-of-mouth from people you’ve never met and it helps drive online conversions, turning consumers researching online into actual customers.
The Online Snapshot report will scour the internet for reviews on your business, including the big 3 — Google, Yelp and Facebook (GYP) — along with important industry-specific review sites like TripAdvisor for hotels and restaurants, Vitals for medical providers and HomeAdvisor for home service categories where applicable.
The Reviews section of the report focuses on 4 key metrics, measures them for your business and then compares those total to the Industry Average. The average is based in large part on the total number of businesses measured by Vendasta, New Plains MediaMedia’s technology partner for Snapshot Reports and Online Monitoring. With over 550 agency and media partners, industry averages are based on 400,000 local businesses in the U.S. and Canada that have either requested a Snapshot Report or are utilizing the Online Monitoring.
In our experience, the average is very sub-par. You don’t want your business to be average online! You want to beat the averages handily to insure the best digital success
Reviews Found
How many total reviews were found for your business? The single most important factor for reviews is the total quantity, even more important for your overall score. The big 3 (GYP) all count your total review score first when ranking your business is searches.
Reviews Found Per Month (Last 6 Months)
Reviews should be a steady stream, a never ending process of independently validating your business’s performance. One of the biggest mistakes business’s make today is chasing customers to load up the review sites in one big burst. Yelp in particular will put a fair number of reviews that show up in a burst into their “not recommended” category.
Average Review Score
While this might seem to be the most important factor, the average of your reviews on a score of 1-5 stars, the total number of reviews and a steady stream of them are more important to consumers find you online. Your average review score is critical however to how customers perceive your business once they find you, sometimes making their final purchasing decisions based on very small variations in review scores.
# of Review Sources
Finally, the Online Snapshot looks at the diversity of your review sources. If all of your reviews are coming from just one source, say Facebook, you’re missing the critical importance of building a review profile in Google, Yelp and other sites consumers use. A good rule of thumb is to have a minimum of 5 reviews on any review site that matters. It’s also the minimum for Google to show your review score on your Google My Business listing in search results.
How to Build Positive Reviews
We explored review sites more deeply in a previous series, but there’s a couple of key factors to consider:
You Can’t Remove Negative Reviews, You Bury Them
Generally, it’s a very steep climb to remove a negative review, requiring a business to prove deception or maliciousness from a reviewer that can be nearly impossible to even identify. No business is perfect and consumers understand that. Your negative reviews matter most in relation to your overall reviews. If you’re like most businesses, you have hundreds to thousands of happy, returning customers, but perhaps a handful of negative reviews that are titling your overall score in the wrong direction. Focus on building good reviews from happy customers to set the record straight.
You Can Incentive Reviews Direct to You, But Not to Any 3rd Party Review Site
It’s a violation of every review site’s terms of service to incentivize customers to leave reviews , whether good or bad. If a 3rd party review site finds out you’re paying customers to leave reviews on their sites, they can remove reviews and go so far as to remove your listing. They expect you to pay them to help grow your reviews. However, you can incentivize customers to leave a review directly with you, positive or negative, and then to make it as easy as possible for the positive reviews to share than on 3rd party site.
Always Take Negative Reviews Offline
Address every review, good or bad, but always take negative reviews offline by inviting the bad reviewer to contact you directly. It’s most important that consumers see you respond to negative reviews to try to fix the situation. DO NOT ARGUE WITH NEGATIVE REVIEWERS ONLINE. It’s a losing battle and the perception could be this is how you respond to any criticism.
New Plains MediaMedia has had great success using it’s OmahaReviewed.com (in Omaha) and ReviewBump.com (outside of Omaha) for consumers looking to grow their review presence. From medical providers to boutiques, home service providers and auto service, these sites and our processes help build a steady stream of feedback and make it as easy as possible for consumers to share reviews to the 3rd party review sites.
To find out more, contact us today.
