By Ben Kinsey
Every business owner knows that a business is only as
good as its reputation. When it comes to
judging a business’ reputation nowadays, that means going online. Most consumers and other business owners
scope out review sites and customer testimonials long before they walk through
your door. If they like what they see
online, chances are they’ll give your business a go. On the other hand, if they don’t like what
they see, good luck getting them to buy your products or services. More and more, an online reputation makes or
breaks most businesses.
When’s
the last time you checked your online reputation?
If you’ve noticed a sudden slow down in your business
that has nothing to do with seasonal variations, negative reviews could be to
blame. If you have an unexplained drop-off
in customer volume or client’s start unexpectedly cancelling appointments with
you, the first place you should check are review sites like Angie’s List, Yelp,
Google My Business and Facebook to see if you have any negative reviews.
When it comes to online reviews you need to take a
lesson from Johnny Mercer to accentuate the positive and eliminate the
negative. The problem with most business
owners is they don’t have a tried and true method of accomplishing either of
these goals. Since customers are ten
times as likely to post a negative review as a positive one, if you haven’t
made the process of gathering positive reviews for your business part of your
corporate culture, odds are it’s likely that one or more negative reviews are
gumming up the works.
Negative
reviews are like a cancer that eats at your business from the
inside. I don’t care how conscientious of a business
owner you are, sooner or later you or one of your employees is going to rub a
customer the wrong way. While in the
past this may have resulted in the loss of a customer, in the Internet age the
results can be far worse. Not only is it
a snap for a disgruntled customer to tell the world how your business wronged
them, it’s just as easy for a competitor to post fraudulent complaints to
undermine your business. That’s right,
an unscrupulous competitor can easily create bogus negative reviews to do your business
harm. Since it’s all too easy to post anonymous
complaints on many review sites, this could quickly lead to a loss of
business. Unless you scrupulously
monitor the most popular review sites to make sure your good name isn’t being
besmirched, it’s child’s play for the competition to put a shot across your bow. The other side of the coin is since one bad
review is worth ten good ones, you need to do everything in your power to
redress any wrong that a customer feels you did if you ever hope to get them to
remove the negative review. Sometimes
this might mean taking a hit and losing money on a transaction to make the
negative review go away, but it’s worth it.
Positive
reviews must be cultivated like crops. That means that you shouldn’t assume that
they will magically appear. You need to
actively plant the seeds with your customers if you hope to generate positive
reviews. Again, it comes down to making
the effort to garner good reviews and testimonials part of your corporate culture. This means asking happy customers to provide
reviews and testimonials and then rewarding them for it. Simply asking a customer to post a review is a
waste of time, since as soon as the customer leaves your store or office, they
will invariably forget to follow through.
Better to ask a happy customer to say a few words while you hold your
smartphone up to shoot a video than to let them walk out the door. Better still is to hand them a postcard with
a QR code that takes them to Google My Business, Yelp or Angie’s List and offers
for 10% off their next order to get them to post a positive review on their
own. It’s the squeaky mouse that gets
the grease these days. I have even had
clients throw a party for their customers, during which they asked them to post
reviews and shoot testimonial videos on the spot. Whatever it takes to get your customers to
tell everyone how much they love doing business with you is worth its weight in
gold.
Once
a negative review is published, the damage is already done. If you haven’t begun
actively soliciting positive reviews, you know what that leaves, don’t
you? Negative reviews. Since it takes 10 positive reviews to
eliminate one negative one, the bad reviews will soon eclipse the few good ones
you have accumulated. Even worse is the
fact that as soon as a negative review is posted, the damage is done. Not only do negative reviews damage your
reputation, they also hurt your websites SEO.
That’s right, any 1-star review against your business is registered by
search engine spiders that decide what businesses are displayed on page-1 and
which ones are relegated to page-10. Don’t
think you can game the system by having your friends and family pile on bogus
reviews either. The search engines have become pretty savvy at determining fake
reviews from the real deal. While fake
reviews may increase your website visibility for a short period, eventually you
could find your site delisted by search engines like Google.
Even sites like Angie’s List and Yelp use reviews to
determine how often your business is seen online. A report by BreezeWorks.com had this to say
about Yelp:
Perhaps one of the most
surprising findings of our Yelp study was the fact that on average, a
whopping 99.2% of businesses are hidden from search results anytime a Yelp user
sorts results by “Highest Rated” or “Most Reviewed”. These frequently-used search
options display the top 40 highest-rated businesses in any given category, or
those that have received the highest number of reviews by Yelp users, obscuring
the remainder of businesses from results.
In large metropolitan areas like Jacksonville, Florida,
negative reviews could not only affect a company’s ability to rank highly, it
could literally result in a company being nearly impossible to find
online. Armed with this knowledge, any
prudent business owner needs to make a concerted effort to cultivate positive
reviews and testimonials while doing everything in their power to eliminate
negative reviews if they hope to stay in business. In our wired world, online reviews can either
help or hurt your business.
Ben Kinsey, CPA of Small Business Group works with owners of closely
held corporations in the Northeast Florida region. If you work in the
North Florida area we offer a FREE initial Consultation at our office, please
contact Small Business Group if you would like to know more about strategies
for your business.
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