Business 2 Business Pro

Recently I was contacted by a Used Car Dealer about working with him to promote his business online. He had been referred by one of our clients.  If you are in business you know how much you appreciate a referral.  There's nothing better than someone else helping you make the sale. 

Reviews are basically a third party referral posted online by a customer or client.  If your business is listed with any of the companies like Merchantcircle, Google or more than 500 other review sources you will be receiving reviews from your customers.  If you google a restaurant in most any city you will see reviews with star ratings. I find them interesting. People will write pages about a business. Some good, Some not so good. 

Here's the thing about reviews. People trust them.  Ebay and Amazon have grown huge because people trust the rankings and reviews.  Here's an interesting statistic, if a business gets a bad review 47% of the people that have found them on the net will never go to their page.  When you consider that only 3% of any search turns into a purchase, this is huge. 

Back to the Used car place.  DAS business has dropped off by 60%.  The guys there have email, they do some parts ordering on the internet but had never done a search on their own business.  They didn't have a website - didn't know if they wanted one.  I told them we could do a cheap site for around $50 per month and they could easily update it daily themselves.  Here's the kicker.  DAS cars has the reputation of a ripoff business.  The reviews on the web were killing them.  I declined their business because going online without changing the way they operate would be fatal and that's what I told them.

Reviews are the Good, Bad and Ugly! Great for consumers, Good for good businesses and really bad for the crooks.  Remember this about reviews, just because a business has a lot doesn't mean anything.  Look 10 - 12 deep to see what's going on.  A 1 in 10 bad review is not that bad. People have bad days and businesses have bad days but read several before you make a decision as to whether you do business with them.

Anybody can get a bad review - even Jesus.  So what do you do.  First you try to solve the problem.  If it's a bad receptionist, waitress or worker that caused it, you can fix it.  If it's you, you may want to reassess your practice, product or business model.  The good thing about a bad review is, you can actually find the problem and fix it if you want to stay in business. 

You can't get a bad review off the web.  All you can do is bury it. First you have to address the problem, second you will have to start collecting good reviews and post them.  Part of our business model is to help you get reviews from your customers then post them on the web.  You see, bad news travels fast and a mad consumer tells everybody.  You may have hundreds even thousands of customers that love your business but they won't tell anybody unless a friend ask about you.  Start getting reviews from your clients - Don't post them yourself you will get flagged by the search engines and black balled. Our review service can handle it for you.

Remember this, 75% of the purchases made now days are preceded by a local search - Good reviews equal good results! 

This is just a start - For more information email me or go to our site.

Have a great day and start gathering reviews.

Jerry