The unknown can intimidate people—particularly people who don’t like wasting their time or money on experiences with businesses they don’t know. That’s why 88 percent of consumers turn to online reviews before whipping out their wallets.

Maybe you run a great business with loyal customers who love you; but if those customers aren’t posting online reviews about how awesome your business is, then other potential customers are going to wonder what’s wrong with you—even if there’s nothing wrong at all!

But that’s not the only reason you need to build a solid collection of online reviews from your regular customers:

1. Online Reviews Boost Your Search Rankings

The more text there is online about your business, the more attention it’s going to get from Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. when someone types in a search query about a product or service you offer. Encourage your happy customers to post reviews about you and it will help strengthen your SEO position on the Internet, which will generate more organic traffic to your business.

2. Giving Your Customers a Voice Cements Their Loyalty

There’s a certain level of relationship trust you bestow on your customers when you sincerely ask for them to post reviews. On one level, it spurs you on to give them your best service. On the next level, your customers appreciate that growing relationship along with your great service. They want to post a positive review and share with their friends and family. This is the very essence of today’s “relationship marketing”.

3. Just One Positive Review Can Boost Your Sales

Recent studies show that even your very first positive review can convert the merely curious into new customers—by up to 10 percent! The first 50 positive reviews can ratchet the conversion level up by about 30 percent. Another study showed that 85 percent of consumers feel they need to see at least 10 positive reviews about a business before they venture into customer-hood; but that there is a growing contingent of consumers who feel the need to read even more reviews than that.

4. Great Reviews Can Shoulder Some of Your Marketing Budget

If you’ve got a great product, a great service and are really going above and beyond with customer service—and your happy customers feel engaged and are posting reviews for you, they are helping you out with your marketing. Because 88 percent of people trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations from friends and family, freely encouraging your customers to post online reviews actually saves you dollars you can funnel into other budgetary needs.

5. Reviews Generate More Reviews

When you take positive reviews and broadcast them across all of your media channels (website, social media, other marketing efforts), it stimulates other customers to post reviews as well. It encourages them to become part of your conversation and boosts repeat and new sales as well.

Of course, you may be asking this: what if you or a customer has an off day and things don’t go as well as planned with your product or service? It happens. And negative reviews can cause red flags for potential customers.

That is where Reputation Builder comes to the rescue.

Our package funnels less-than-satisfied customers to you first so that you have a chance to make things right for those customers before a negative review goes live; it gives you a chance to turn that frown upside down and into a smile.

Why is this great?

Your online reviews will stay positive and generate trust and more sales for you, while giving you an opportunity to see where you can grow and improve and improve customer relationships.
And when you sincerely and satisfactorily handle a customer complaint, 9 times out of 10 that initially-unhappy customer will turn into a loyal, positive-review posting customer who will generate more trust and interest in your company online.