It is not an exaggeration to say that marketing and building your brand’s reputation online has become the single most critical aspect of any online marketing you do for your company.
This task is completely different from the Search Engine Optimization or Social Media Marketing that is the mainstream, and that you have a lot of companies calling every week and offering to do for you.
The reality is that the strategy for online marketing of your business forever changed in September of 2014.
Did you know that?
Yes, 2014 is “ancient history” in the world of the Internet, but it’s important that you understand just how significant this change was, and how it is still impacting search results.
In August 2014 the search engines dramatically changed their algorithm for ranking websites on their search result pages. This wasn’t just Google; Bing and Yahoo agreed and rewrote their programs at the same time.
Here is the major change.
Prior to that time where your site appeared on the page was the result of a complicated calculation that included more than 200 variables but was most heavily weighted by the number of “backlinks” connected to your site.
Without going into a lot of tech-speak, let’s just say that it was a relatively simple matter for those of us in the SEO business to artificially manufacture these backlinks.
Which meant that we could take a website and drive it to the first pages of the search engines using technology without regard to how many people might actually be looking for or finding value on the website.
The fundamental change that was implemented is replacing backlinks as a primary criterion for page rank with your company reputation, as defined by actual customers who have used your service and then posted a review of their experience online.
The search engines are now monitoring your brand by sending their spiders through dozens of “review sites” looking for what customers say about your company. When they find a review, it is harvested and combined with other reviews in a formula that results in a “Star Rating” for your business. One star is bad, five stars is the best.
This is a game changer in how you market your company online. In this article, we want to share with you what you can do to take advantage of the reputation wave and what’s being said about your business online.
It’s an interesting fact that all these years later many companies still do not have a plan in place to consistently grow their reputation online.
That’s good news for you reading this article–you can be the market leader in your area. Here’s what we’re going to talk about:
- Specific game changers and how they impact your business
- What your prospects are looking for today in choosing a business
- What is “Reputation Marketing”
- Strategies to make your company the reputation market leader
- Some questions about Reputation Marketing we often hear
Before we share those ideas with you, let us ask a question. You likely realize that every day people go online searching for a product or service vendor. But do you know just how many people are searching? You might be surprised.
At the time I’m writing this, one of our support team members did a quick analysis of how many people searched for a HVAC contractor in several cities around the country. This is the number of people who search each month, on average, in each of these cities:
Phoenix, AZ 3118
Miami, FL 3670
Charlotte, NC 1568
Portland, OR 1847
Des Moines, IA 948
Columbus, OH 2983
Just imagine hundreds, if not thousands of people online every single month looking for your business. The question is, can they find you? Everyday people in your community are looking for the product or service that you offer.
As they do so, they are asking themselves these questions: “who should I do business with? Who can I trust?”. What they’re doing is looking for the most reputable company.
Make Your Brand Stand Out
In this article, we’re going to show you how to make your brand stand out to help ensure that you’re the business they call, and not your competition.
Here’s another question for you. Think about your own process when you are looking for a specific product or service. Would you buy from a company that has bad ratings and the reviews are negative feedback? Obviously you wouldn’t.
But let us suggest a more realistic way to think about that question.
Three companies are, for all practical purposes, identical. All three have what you are looking for, and the price point is the same. One has six good reviews; the other has four good reviews but one bad. And the third has no reviews at all. Which one do you buy from? Almost everyone would say the company with six good reviews.
Now why is that? Because we want to have a great buying experience too. We’re looking to see that a company is consistent in delivering that experience on that product or service that we want to buy.
This is exactly what prospects looking for your company do every single day. They go online and search to find the most reputable company to do business with.
Only one bad review can send the customer from your website or your listing online to someone else’s. That means the difference between your phone ringing or your competition’s phone ringing.
Four Game Changers That Affect Your Company Today
Game Changer Number One.
When you do a search for a company name and their city, the resulting listing reveals the company’s reputation. Let’s say it in a different way.
Google and the other search engines are going to share the reputation information they have associated with your business listing, positive and negative reviews, whether you want them to or not!
Here’s why it’s important to take this into consideration:
Anyone searching for a company listing, even just for directions or to get the phone number, is going to see their reputation. This is done automatically by the search engines. As a business you have no control over your reputation being shown.
Consider the situation where someone recommends your company to a friend. According to both Real Strategic and Bright Local, there is an 87% probability that the person will look up your company online…maybe just to get the phone number.
If you have a poor review score, what are the chances they are going to call you, even though they were referred?
In the past it’d almost be a guarantee that you’d get an opportunity to bid for that business but today, if your reputation score is less than 4 stars they will probably go elsewhere.
Test this for yourself. Take a minute right now, open a browser window and enter your company name and the city you work in. What is your reputation score? Does it show no reviews at all, or some good and others not so good? This is what your prospects see too.
Game Changer Number Two.
Customer reviews are now a major factor in almost every type of online marketing, and this is all done automatically. Your reviews, good and bad, show up in your Google Business Profile, previously known as a Google My Business listing. (Same for the other search engines.)
This means that these reviews have an effect on your local SEO performance. Your star rating is included in your Pay Per Click ads. They show up on organic website listings. They show up in local directories like Yelp, City Search, Bing, Yahoo, and in the online Yellow Pages.
Reviews are now a major factor in almost every type of online marketing. Like it or not, everyone searching for your company or in your category will see whether you have a good reputation or not.
Game Changer Number Three.
That’s the reality that SEO, social media accounts, Pay Per Click ads, local marketing–all of the strategies we’ve done online for the past five or more years–none of it is as effective anymore if you have bad reviews or a bad reputation online.
Think carefully about what we’re going to write next–especially those of you who have done it yourself or paid someone to do online marketing for you. Maybe you’re still paying.
Why would you want to do all that work, spend all the time and money getting to the top of the search engines, and then when people find your business they see bad reviews? You’ve just wasted your resources!
At Alchemy Consulting we’ve totally changed how we prioritize work with our clients.
In the past we would do several activities to start. We’d analyze and update the on-page optimization of a website, claim some directory sites, create a blog, write press releases, our tech people would create link wheels all designed to help our clients get to the first page for their primary keywords. That’s completely the opposite of what today’s marketing is about.
Step one if you want to be effective in marketing online today, is you need to create a five-star reputation first. Then market your products and services online. Your phone is not going to ring if you don’t have the five-star reputation that your prospects are looking for.
What Your Prospects Are Looking For Today In Choosing A Product Or Service Provider
OK, let’s change it up a little. We’ve been pretty negative about the impact reputation has made on search results, but there are some really positive aspects that are a result of this emphasis on reputation.
Game Changer Number Four.
Reviews send you prequalified, pre-sold customers; the reason is because buyers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. That is to say that reviews can be incredibly bad for you if they’re bad. But they can be incredibly good for you if they’re good!
According to independent studies conducted by two international marketing agencies, Bright Local and Local Marketing Genius, 87% of people who are referred to a business will first go online and look up the company’s reputation. That is almost 9 out of every 10 prospects!
Now, stop for a minute and think about growing your company.
Would you rather create a marketing plan that focuses on people that don’t know you, don’t like you, don’t trust you, and are always worried about price?
Or would you prefer a marketing plan that attracts people that feel they know you, people that already like you, people that trust you and act like they are all referrals?
Of course you want the latter, you want to create a referral-based marketing plan.
Well, for the first time ever our online marketing can be just as powerful as referral marketing. Why, because nine out of ten people trust reviews just as much as personal recommendations!
That means you need those five-star reviews on your website and on your listings. That’s as good as someone’s mother saying you should shop at this company. That’s as good as someone’s best friend saying, you know what, you should call ABC Plumbing, I used them, and they were amazing.
Having positive reviews is just as good as a colleague at work saying look, if you need a new roof you should go to this business. They do a great job. You can think of it that way because 87% of buyers trust reviews just as much as personal recommendations.
Reviews are powerful marketing that you need for your business.
If you’re not yet convinced why having a 5-star reputation is so vital to business, let us share just one more statistic with you. Consumers look up an average of 10 reviews before making a decision. What does this mean for your business?
First, all these consumers are online. They’re looking for reviews.
Second, and more important, they’re looking at multiple reviews, not just one or two.
For those of you that have been wondering to yourself how many reviews is enough, here’s your answer. 78% of consumers trust a business with a minimum of 6-10 reviews. That means you want a minimum of ten 5-star reviews for your business.
That’s the current statistic, but here’s the advice we give our clients. Let’s see how many reviews your primary competitors have. If one of them has 35 reviews, then you need 40. However, from the perspective of the search engines, it isn’t just the number of reviews that is important.
They also calculate the “recency” in their algorithm and give reviews less than 90 days old a much higher score than those that are more dated.
The reality of the marketplace today is that you are not credible without five-star reviews. Without a five-star reputation and a minimum of ten recent reviews, your business just can’t be trusted when people find you. This is the difference between your phone ringing and it not ringing.
More importantly, this is the difference between your phone not ringing and your competition’s phone ringing.
What exactly is Reputation Marketing?
It’s simple. The definition of reputation marketing is positioning your company as the market leader in front of thousands of buyers with your five-star reputation. It’s building a five-star reputation online and then going out and marketing that reputation.
As we just learned, this is the most powerful and trusted type of marketing you can do to grow your company in today’s market.
OK, enough background…let’s get to the bottom line. How do you create a reputation marketing program for your business? Here is a step-by-step strategy.
What is your online reputation today?
The first step is to really understand your current reputation. So let us ask you. Do you know your reputation online? Do you know what people are saying about you right now?
If you didn’t do it a few minutes ago when I suggested, then take a minute right now and go online, type in your business name and city, not with the www, just your business name. Click enter.
The results page will start with your paid ads if you are using Google AdWords in your marketing. Then in most cases you’ll see a link to your website followed by several links to individual pages within your website.
What you want to look at is on the right side of the page where Google offers a more complete listing of your business. This is your “Google Business Profile”.
If you have properly claimed this listing it will include photos you have uploaded as well as accurate information on your business hours and address. There will also be a link someone can click on to go to your website and another link to get directions to your place of business.
Most important, right under your business name, is a summary of your review star rating and a clickable link so someone can go read those reviews. What did you find? Do you have current reviews (less than 90 days old) for prospects to read? If not, then you are losing business opportunities.
Now do a more general search for one of the important keywords for your business and your city.
For example, if you own a massage spa in Orlando, type in “massage spa Orlando” or “massage therapy Orlando” or “couples massage Orlando” or another primary keyword you want to rank for. Several of your competitors will be on the first page.
Many search categories also have what we call the “map pack” of three or four listings that are highlighted and separate from the organic listings.
As a general rule, the companies in this Map Pack are leaders in the category and will have quite a few reviews. We occasionally see exceptions, or a company with more reviews than one in the Map Pack but is elsewhere on page one or two.
Buried somewhere in Google’s algorithm is a reason for this apparent discrepancy. What is important is not to focus on the infrequent anomaly, but to concentrate on enhancing your company’s reputation.
Reputation Rules Update
There are three other “rules” that the search engines consider in the credibility of reviews. These have been enacted more recently.
- All reviews must have a minimum of 30 characters or they will not be included in your star rating calculation. The search engines are looking for a couple of sentences from your customers describing their experience. Giving a five-star rating with no comment, or just a couple of words is no longer acceptable.
- Reviews older than 24 months will no longer be considered. This means that every month all reviews that are two years old “drop out” of your star rating. Google wants to be sure that your prospects are seeing reviews that reflect your current level of service.
- Companies with a new star rating of less than 4.0 will be penalized in search results. That means that your website will not be presented to someone searching for a vendor in your business category as frequently if your net score is not at least 4.0.
To put that in perspective, the average star rating for all companies in all business niches in the United States is 4.16. In essence, Google is asking that you are “almost average” to maintain your status in the search engine results pages. If your rating is less than 4.0 it doesn’t mean your site will not be offered when a prospect is searching for a contractor, but it will not be shown as frequently.
- “Anonymous” reviews will no longer be posted. That is, reviews from “a Google user” that used to be allowed have now been deleted by Google. Every review must be ‘signed’ by the reviewer.
Building Your 5-Star Reputation In 7 Steps
We hope to have conveyed the importance of achieving an excellent online reputation as defined by your Star Rating with the search engines. If you have never focused on developing your online reputation, how do you do it? Here are some steps to consider:
Step 1
First, your staff needs to be made aware of the important role each of them play in building your company reputation. You will want to create a reputation marketing culture in your company.
It’s not enough to try to fix things after the fact, you want to be proactive inside your business to make sure that every single person in your company is on the same page when it comes to service standards.
Online reputation management is not a “one and done” process. You want to continue to keep your 5-star reputation going. In reality you’re only one customer away from a bad review.
Think about it, everybody has a bad day: the receptionist, your salesperson, one of the guys out on a crew, even you. Every one of our businesses is just one day and just one customer away from a bad review. We want to keep every team member’s eyes on the ball to make sure we stay focused.
Step 2
Second, where do you want your reviews to be found? There are literally hundreds of sites where a customer can leave a comment about your company. How do you prioritize them? Simple, just one word: Google.
For almost every business in every niche, the most important place to ask your customers to leave a review is on your Google Business Profile. This is where prospects will be searching, so make it easy for them to find you.
There are exceptions.
Restaurants are best served building their reputation on Yelp and hospitality industry companies on Tripadvisor.
We have a massage therapy client who has built a nice segment of her business with people vacationing from out of town and looking to get a massage by a therapist that has a great rating with Tripadvisor.
Medical practices can choose from a wide variety of specialty sites, but we still recommend Google since most of their prospective patients won’t know to look on these sites.
If you have not yet “claimed” your Google Business Profile, make this a high priority. Go to this link and click the “Start Now” button: business.google.com.
Step 3
Third, make it easy for your customers to leave a review.
We like to provide our clients with a simple business card that has an invitation to leave a review and gives them the link they’ll need to get to your Google Business Profile or other review websites where you would like them to leave one.
The best time to invite someone to leave a review is at the end of the transaction. If you wait just a couple of days and send them an email invitation, the percentage of people who will follow through and leave a review drops significantly.
By handing them a card with directions, personally asking for a positive review, and sharing how important this is for your business, many people will take the time to leave a review.
Step 4
Fourth, consider a third-party review collection and display program.
Did you know there are several software programs that have been developed specifically to request and post reviews? These are usually available only through advertising agencies or search engine optimization companies. If you have a marketing company working on your behalf, ask them about this.
We use one of these programs for our clients and have found that automating this process on their behalf saves the business owner a lot of time and results in more reviews being given. We also monitor 15 of the most common internet directories where someone can leave a review so that our clients can quickly respond to both good and not-so-good reviews.
If you decide to employ an agency to help you develop and maintain your online reputation, be sure they are compliant with the latest Google updates we mentioned earlier.
Many of these software programs offer an “internal loop” that divert a negative review, generally defined as 3 stars or less, to a different page that did not allow the reviewer to forward their review to the internet.
Instead, it ‘captured’ that review and sent it to the business owner for their response. This strategy has been specifically prohibited by the new search engine guidelines. Do not make the mistake of engaging one of these services, you could see your website severely penalized.
Step 5
Fifth, the testimonials you have on your website are not included in your overall star rating by the search engines.
In fact, they are not indexed at all. Since they cannot be sourced to an IP address that is independent from your website, the search engine spiders ignore them completely.
Related to this is an important fact. Frequently we get asked, “why can’t I just have several of my employees type these old testimonials into the Google page and have them used?”.
The simple answer is that Google tracks the individual computer address (its IP address) that is the source of the review. If multiple reviews are submitted for the same company from that unique address they will all be ignored.
(If you have a company server and multiple computers in your office, Google views this as one IP address connected to your server. Don’t try it.)
How can you include your good reviews on your website?
Several of the third-party review programs have a way to add their review collection page to your website. Your web master can add an item into the menu bar for reviews and paste the code for the review page into your site. One of the reasons we use the program we do for our clients is the ease of doing this.
Step 6
Sixth, you’ll also want to post your 5-star reviews on the social media sites you belong to. With all of the talk about social media in the last couple of years, for many companies it has been a disappointment as far as generating new business.
That all changes when you’re using reputation marketing in your social media. When 5-star reviews are being posted several times each week to your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and other pages they become a powerful source of leads.
Step 7
Seven, do you have salespeople in your company?
It doesn’t matter if they work on site or off, when you arm them with marketing pieces featuring your 5-star reviews their closing rates will go up dramatically.
Imagine the ability to sit in front of a prospect that’s on the fence about whether they should go with you or buy from a competitor. Then you say, “don’t take my word for it. Let’s go online and see what other customers just like you experienced, and what they thought about working with us.”. Then you read all your five-star reviews in front of them.
You should also provide each salesperson with a hard copy of the reviews in a notebook to show a prospect that might not have a computer handy. You can also use an iPad or Android tablet, as most people will have wireless in their homes.
Remember, statistically speaking, having those reviews is just as powerful as having their best friend, a family member, or colleague at work recommending your company to that customer. You’re going to be able to close a lot more sales if you arm yourself with reputation marketing.
Some Questions About Reputation Marketing
One that comes up a lot: “I have had someone leave a bad review on Yelp, how can I delete it?”.
The short answer is that you can’t. We know that there are companies out there who promise to eliminate past bad reviews, but the truth is that it’s just not possible.
The only real solution is to focus on generating as many 4- and 5-star reviews as you can, as quickly as possible. Most of the sites display reviews in order of the most recent first. Over a period of a few months you will be able to “push down” the bad review so not as many people see it.
There is also an “aging” component to the calculation used to determine your star rating. The most recent reviews are given a greater emphasis by the online review sites that aggregate reviews and apply a rating number.
The only exception to this is your Facebook business page. If someone says something negative there, you or your page administrator can delete the conversation. The challenge is that you must monitor Facebook frequently so you can stop a problem review before it goes viral.
Another question we frequently hear is from businesses with multiple locations: “How do the search engines determine the reputation of our company if we’re in several towns or have more than one office in our city?”.
Here’s the reality if you have multiple offices. While it’s the same company, it has multiple locations to the search engines and the prospects looking for a vendor in each city.
That means you need to do all the work of claiming your listing on the review sites and building your Google Business Profile page for each of the search engines for every location. If you have offices in three cities, you’ll need three GBP pages and to claim the top dozen or sites at a minimum for each location.
One more question has to do with the weather.
Many contractors who can only work outside six to eight months a year run another business in the winter. How should they handle reputation marketing?
If your “winter” business uses a different name and is a completely different business from your “summer” company, then you’ll need to do all the steps we’ve described for that business as well.
If you do landscape in the summer but remodel kitchens in the winter, and use the same business name for both activities, you only need to claim your sites one time.
Keep in mind that most of the review sites use your primary business telephone number as their method of identifying your company. If you do run both businesses using the same main number, you’ll want to talk about the two companies in the description section of the listings you claim.
Our Reputation Marketing Strategy Can Help Enhance Your Online Presence And Attract New Customers
This has been a lot of information but is possibly the most important information we can share with you to help your business grow. Investing in reputation marketing and proactively building a positive reputation for your company is critical to your success.
It’s clear that online reviews wield significant influence over potential customers, which is why your reputation marketing efforts matter, and should be an essential aspect in growing your local business.
Don’t let a negative online reputation be the reason your company doesn’t succeed.
Take charge of your brand’s image and attract more customers by implementing a reputation marketing strategy. If you need help with this, reach out to us here at Alchemy today. Using our proven method, we can help improve your brand’s online reputation, driving growth and success for your business. Call us today at 877-978-2110.
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