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Managing your reputation can unlock huge growth for your business. Having a five-star brand is not just a gimmick, but a powerful way of persuading your potential customers to buy from you. It links to a basic need in society for trust.
Imagine what life would be if we couldn’t trust people? Would you be confident eating food you bought, or taking that prescription the doctor wrote? Large parts of society are set up to help create that trust, like having food standards or lengthy training for doctors. But when it comes to businesses, we use reputation to serve that purpose. If other people trust your business, then your potential customer can, too.
Why reviews are so powerful for customers
You might have heard of the buyer’s journey. This is the process they go through before making a purchase. They will start by identifying a need, perhaps a product they desire or a service they require. They will then consider the options, looking around at competitors or alternatives. Finally, having developed a shortlist, they will make a decision.
And each purchase follows this journey. The purchase of a new car might be lengthy, slowly deciding it was time for a replacement, followed by detailed research, then visits to showrooms to test-drive a few cars. But even an impulse buy follows the journey: first, a decision they want what they have seen, a consideration of the alternatives (which might simply be not having it), then a decision to purchase on the spot.
But at each stage, customers will research. Over the whole journey, you can expect 90% of customers to check reviews during at least one stage. And this means that there are several opportunities for your reputation to sway a decision. In the initial stages, it might be ensuring that your business remains an option. However, in later stages, it could be the difference between purchasing from you or someone else.
Why using your reviews as marketing works so well
Using reviews as a key part of your marketing, right up to buying, will have a profound effect on your sales. When compared with a straightforward sales page, a site that features reviews can see a sizeable increase in conversion rate.
This is because, even at that tail end of the buyer’s journey, decisions are still being made. Indeed, around two-fifths of customers will still be checking reviews at this stage. Having positive reviews visible can make the difference between them clicking the ‘buy’ button or leaving the items in their virtual basket and going to another site.
At each stage, though, reviews help a customer feel trust in your business. When people can see that others rave about your offer, they are naturally inclined to expect to feel the same way.
Using reputation management to handle your reviews
The difficulty is in dealing with your five-star reviews. First, you must develop a strategy to encourage customers to review you. Then you must monitor numerous sites to reply and harvest positive reviews. Then you have to use them on your site.
And this must be a constant process, around two-thirds of potential buyers will ignore any review that’s more than three months old.
The effortless way to avoid that work is to use a reputation management service. At Gemini web media, our team specialise in reputation management. We can monitor sites and automate the whole process, providing you with reports summarising reviews for you to act, and a feed of your most positive reviews for you to feature in your advertising.
If you want to see a boom in sales from your reputation, get in touch today to find out how we can make it happen.
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