A successful business owner will advise you that having a strong reputation online is not just a luxury. It is vital. When you receive a positive review, it reassures your potential customers that you are reliable. You want the customers should be aware of offer quality products or services. Being aware that how to keep your existing customers satisfied will improve your bottom line.

Some of the small businesses, such as offline businesses, have their blinders on when it comes to the internet. They say they serve the localized base of consumers- the maximum portion of which is foot traffic. That is the reason people have a perception that the web is irrelevant.

Every small or offline business have their own significance and reviews play an important role in business. Therefore, they should focus on and utilize review collection, publication, and management. This article will describe how you can start today and why reviews can help small-scale business to grow.

Your Small-Scale Business & Reviews

Having a small- scale business, you may think that reviews are not vital for your company. You may not even be aware you can utilize reviews. Similarly, you may essentially depend on the referral alone and feel that this does you just fine.

In the year 2017, however, the fact is that the content of online reviews on sites such as Glassdoor, Yelp and even Facebook can mean the difference between success and failure especially if you have a restaurant or a hotel business. For instance, did you know that positive comments can produce an average increase in sales of approx 28-20 % and that consumers are likely to spend 31 % more because of positive reviews?

We have a piece of great news for you! Reviews for small-scale businesses are not only beneficial in helping your business grow by garnering new customers, but also help toward seeing more in the bank each month too.

Reviews can also boost your sales and SEO, leading to a higher search ranking, since reviews are social proof. Social proof is the idea that if others like your business then its safe for me to like it- everyone else is doing it, right?

Moreover, customers take every review very seriously.

Check these stats from our expert:

82 % of customers go to the review site because they want to buy a service or product.

89 % make a purchase within a week of visiting review sites and 29 % will do so within a day.

Small-scale businessman still depends on word-of-mouth referral to spread their brand, services, and support, however, word-of-mouth has seen a change since the dawn of e-commerce. Instead of people using word-of-mouth to simply find a company now, encapsulate how people get information by digging deep into a business.

Possible customers will do research before making a purchase and choosing your small-scale business to do so, and as the main part of that search, review factor in. Approx. 70 % look at the review when building their shortlist, so if you are still dependent only on old school word-of-mouth and not incorporating reviews into your marketing strategy, you are essentially voiding yourself from the list.

Reviews are everywhere

The majority of people search for reviews and from that 93 % of people incorporate them into their purchase decision. People leave reviews for small-scale business online whether you are gathering or not. It is common for feedback, which is left organically to be more negative, as people jump online to exhaust their frustration.

Therefore, we cannot stress enough how vital it is for small-scale business to collect reviews, because through collection and management you take control of the review left for your company, use the reviews to enhance your services, manage any negativity, as well as see a huge number of other benefits.

The main aim to share this article is to give you valuable insight into utilizing reviews for your small business, and how they help to build trust, reassure and inform the current and potential customer, create a consistent reputation, as well as see an increase in revenue!

Take a look.

Trust Can Grow Your Business

If you are not able to show or build trust, then trust me, no one is going to use your service. The best way to trust and show it for all to see is to collect feedback from your customers in the form of a review and publish as testimonials on your website.

Reviews offer social proof, with 88% of customers saying they trust review as much as personal recommendations. Other people have taken the plunge to use you, they have had a great experience, so display to shopper you can offer them that as well.

As we said before, trust can be built when people make that initial search. A company with a licensed Google Review Partner can take your Seller Ratings, which are aggregated from your reviews, and display it as stars in your AdWords under your company name. These stars help towards SEO, improving your ranking in Google, thus enhancing visibility.

If people see you instantly having 4-star ratings as compared to the other companies providing similar services with fewer ratings than you, or else no rating at all, they can make an easy decision. This creates trust among the customers and through this; you can convert many visitors to potential customers. If this scenario comes true, congratulations! You are at the top of the list.

How to Get More Reviews That are Positive?

Every business loves receiving positive reviews from its customers. Nevertheless, this is hard, since leaving a review is not always a piece of a cake. Firstly, it is an extra thing that has to be done in a day, which requires little extra time and most people do not want to spend this extra time in leaving a review. Certainly, they are boiling and they want the world to know about reality. Odds are, you have a lot more satisfied customers that are not necessarily reflected in your Google and Amazon reviews.

The rub then, as they say, is tapping into all that positive experience and encouraging customers to add their feedback where people can see it.

Steps to consider:

Serve quality products or services so that your customers have something good to say about it.

An IMPORTANT thing to consider; make sure you make the review form easy and simpler for the customers. The less time and pain in the feedback process, the more likely the customer will leave their opinion.

Try to keep it personal. Have someone the customer actually interacted with extended the invitation to provide feedback.

Use multiple review platforms to collect feedback. More feedback means having a better idea of how well you are meeting the goals.

To Know More: Google Business Review Guide

How to Deal With Negative Reviews?

Firstly, accept it you will receive negative reviews and trust me you want them to. They help you know what the part for concern is. What improvement is that you find them (monitoring tools as if Google Alerts and TweetDeck can notify you when your brand is mentioned online) and that you do not ignore them. Everyone is watching how you deal with this criticism, and no reply means either disregarded for the customers.

It can be difficult to understand how to respond to a negative review. Here are some guidelines you can follow to make it easier, though:

Reply to negative reviews as soon as possible but in a professional manner.

Take the full blame for the bad experience.

Give a sincere apology.

Give an attempt to solve the problem, if it is possible.

Never ever, blame the customer.

Let them know you care about them as a person, not just a source of revenue.

According to a survey, approx. 80% of online reviewers said that seeing a business respond to reviews made them trust that business more. Even though you cannot persuade the original reviewer to return, but those who read it will see you as an organization that acts professionally.

1. Promotion

The next benefits through reviews and the purchase affirming stars they provide, you are promoting your business through the voice of your sponsors. You can show what people say about your service including areas such as delivery, experience and customer service.

People have more faith in reviews as they are deemed as peer generated, allowing deeper insight than marketing material, which shoppers can integrate into their purchase decision. Build up those voices, garner more reviews and boost your brand through public support.

2. Revenue

Accompanied by the increased trust and promotion for your small-scale business using reviews, you see further prosperity than just the figure. With the presence of reviews, customers will prefer to visit your site online over others, enhancing click-through rates. Business with reviews have experienced 22 % greater traffic than those without and with that, conversion has increased as well.

As we said before reviews enable social proof, and if your customers can see their needs will be fulfilled, that will help you to convert your visitor to customer. A whopping 90 % of users will make a purchase within a week of reading your reviews, and those who interact with reviews spend 11% more than they spend those who do not do.

3. Social Media Platforms

To share your image further afield using reviews, and if you still staunchly support word-of-mouth, you can share your review on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Furthermore, you can promote your brand in the form of tank you shout-out by your customers, to drive traffic towards your small-scale business further.

Gathering and publishing reviews and keep the content on your webpage updated. Customers are able to see activity through the reviews dropped. So keep reading and finding out how you can easily start collecting reviews. During my research, I came through a great article: How Online Review Help Small Business. Visit this article there are many things to learn for small-scale business owners.

Get Started

You can utilize the power of your previous or current customers using a review booster, which invites them asking them to drop a review for your business. Not only that, as you collect and post your reviews. This enhances your online reputation, increase traffic to your site as well as conversion, creating an exponential well of reviews and updated content on your webpage and Google local.

You can also include voucher codes in your review invitation email to encourage customers to drop a review for your small business. It is also a nice way of thanking people for choosing your brand, which increases the chance of the customer to return again for shopping.

So remember, online reviews can be a valuable asset even for small businesses. Do not neglect them just because they are not in your field of expertise. Spend some time managing your business’s professional brand and you will reap significant rewards.

Read Also: The Power of Online Reviews

Best Review platform, which you can use to collect reviews from your customers:

Price: Free

Price: $179/month to $999/month

Price: Average $100-200/*month