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While many small business owners take them for granted, online reviews are crucial to the growth of any business. 88% of customers trust reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations, according to a study. You shouldn’t take this for granted, especially if your business is web-based and the bulk of your leads come from online traffic sources.
More established businesses in your niche may seem to do good, paying no attention to online reviews, but that doesn’t mean you should follow suit. Read on for five ways your small business can benefit from online customer reviews.
With most people relying on online reviews to make purchase decisions, the positive feedback you get is bound to drive traffic to your sales or service website. Combined with a robust marketing strategy, those leads might convert and increase your company’s sales.
You only need to ensure most of the feedback you get is positive; the rest will fall into place.
According to statistics, 70% of consumers are willing to pay more for a product or service with positive reviews and higher ratings. This demonstrates the importance of credibility. Many business owners focus on marketing and sales, forgetting to build their brand image. By collecting and displaying positive customer reviews, prospects can get a clearer picture of who they are dealing with and potentially convert.
Online reviews are incredibly powerful for both organic and local SEO. All those mentions in popular review sites are indexed, and Google treats them as unique content, increasing your website’s online visibility. Whether it is a negative review or a positive one, online feedback will always be a contributing factor to your SEO strategy, so don’t delete any review that mentions your brand name.
Social networking platforms are some of the most common traffic sources for online businesses. Review sites are joining that list, with many marketers reporting a surge in inbound clicks from reviews.
When your brand name appears in a series of positive reviews, users become curious and develop an interest in your product or service. The best part is that these are usually high-quality leads that require little effort to convert.
People are more likely to leave reviews when they see other reviews than when they are the first ones to do it. This is because most customers are scared of saying things that others may disagree with, or that may make them seem fulsome or irrationally critical. Other reviews with similar sentiments give new users the impetus to write their own feedback without the fear of ruffling feathers.
These are some of the benefits of online customer feedback to small businesses. All you have to do now is find ways to incentivize your customers to write reviews about your product and brand. While you are at it, don’t forget to read what your customers have to say and use it to develop a better content strategy and grow your business.
