How many times have you read a review for a new restaurant you want to eat at? How did you take a look at it? On Yelp? Google? Facebook? I don’t know about you, but every time I’m looking at a new place to find some delicious grub, I do a little homework before committing to a place to eat. And this practice or habit doesn’t just relate to restaurants. We all do our homework on almost everything before making a purchase. We do it when we’re looking to buy a new car, a new jacket, a new fireplace or a new mountain bike. We all read reviews to justify our purchases and investments. We want verification that other people enjoy the product and have had a good experience. The fact of the matter is that 90% of people read reviews before visiting a business. And 88% people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.

I want to give you a little insight into a client of ours, Ladonna’s Cleaning Service. Ladonna’s business is cleaning. One thing we’ve noticed about the cleaning industry is that, due to a low cost of entry, competition is fierce. And it’s just as competitive when it comes to Google AdWords and digital marketing. Ladonna’s is a business that focuses on a personal customer service experience with a relatively small budget. With this small budget, we do what we can but with their competition going above and beyond in marketing budgets, we began looking at other avenues to help them online. This is what lead us to a review-building strategy.

Earlier this week we heard from Susan, the owner of Ladonna’s Cleaning Service. She’s a bundle of energy and always a blast to talk with. This time she was chatting about her new dog and how she just got back from travelling to New Zealand. She also called to say how she couldn’t believe how much business was coming in as January is normally a slow time of year for her. She told us how she was actually having to turn down people looking for cleaning and that now she could pick and choose who she worked with. Looking into the leads that have been generated year over year, we can see why she’s now able to do this. We did a comparison from January of 2016 to January of 2017 and found that the number of leads have increased from 27 to 75 a month. That’s an increase of 178%!! Being the curious individual and number loving person that I am, I decided to learn what actions were attributing to these results.

Over the last year, Ladonna’s rankings have improved, but they haven’t improved drastically. However, her reviews have, especially on Google. They’ve doubled in the last year in fact. If you’re a business owner and reading this, you know how difficult it is to get people to leave you reviews. With a review building strategy you make it easier for your happy customers to leave you reviews. And with more glowing reviews, you can slowly see them make a positive impact on your business.

So in short, should you be working to improve your reviews online? Absolutely! With only 12% of the population not reading reviews before purchasing, it would be insane not to. If you’re struggling to get customers to leave you reviews, we’ve got you covered! Contact us today to learn more about a review building strategy.