The internet has massively altered the landscape for local businesses. It is increasingly important that your business is visible online and that you keep abreast of reviews and respond courteously when customers offer their opinion of your business.
Why Reputation Management is Important
According to a survey by BrightLocal conducted in 2019, 90% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses and 82% of consumers read reviews before they consider shopping at a local business. Additionally, 53% of consumers won’t even consider shopping at a business that has less than a four-star rating.
Why You Should Use Local Directory Listings
Because people rely on the internet so heavily when locating local businesses, it is vitally important to the success of your business that customers are able to find an up to date address, phone number and website for your business on the internet. Keeping up with business directories can help to make sure that all of this information is readily available online.
Key Sites That May Determine Your Reputation
Yelp, Google, Angie’s List and YellowPages all make it possible for customers to review your business. Some of your reviews will be good, and some will be bad. Hopefully you get more good reviews than bad ones, but what matters most is how you respond to them. You should check your reviews and respond to them in a courteous manager, apologizing for negative experiences and offering further conversation to help make sure that similar bad customer experiences do not occur again. If you are absolutely certain that a bad review is completely false and has been placed there to smear your business, you can contact the site which hosts the review and request that the review be deleted. Most review sites make it possible to do this. Whatever you do, don’t respond to false reviews because this will only add fuel to the fire and will make you and your company appear aggressively defensive.
If you have any questions about reputation management, simply contact us here at Empowered Pulse, and we will be glad to help!