If you are too busy all the time and don’t care what people say about your business, then go ahead and ignore this post.
Eugene can feel large, but if you consider all the business competition, it begins to feel much smaller very fast. Eugene can still be a very tight knit community of businesses that know each other and may not even give you a chance. Trust me, we understand and cope with this issue everyday.
So what makes you stand out from your competition?
While you don’t have to be one upping each other, you do want to make sure that you are not dismissed entirely before being given a chance to earn someone’s business.
This is were your online reputation management comes in. It is the digital version of word-of-mouth and like the face-to-face version, some are good, some are bad and some are total lies made up by people who don’t like you or are a competitor of yours. Having a reputation management plan or service provider will help to boost and encourage positive reviews, remove fake lies and even learn to turn negative reviews into a damage control or company betterment opportunity.
Statistically, the loss of potential business goes up the more your rating goes down. I know I take it into consideration when I am looking for food, products or services and 90% of all online consumers agree. 60% of people say they won’t even consider a business with an overall negative review rating and 87% of clicks in a search engine are for companies with over 3 stars and approximately 95% of those clicks go the the highest 2 ratings first.
A great review rating will help you get the chance to win new customers over a competitor, but do not forget this is part of a digital marketing strategy. A great Google review does not make up for a horrible/no website or no facebook page.