Word of mouth is a large part of marketing for small businesses. When consumers have a good experience with a business, they like to let others know about it. Similarly, when they have a bad experience with a local biz, they try to warn others away from said business. And where, in this digital age, do they turn for such “word of mouth” marketing? Review sites.
Online reviews aren’t just for consumer products and restaurants anymore. These days, reviews are impacting all kinds of businesses and professional services from, software companies to doctors to home care agencies and everything in between, and their impact is powerful. According to a recent survey, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 72% of those surveyed say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more.
Which Review Sites Are Worth Your Time?
While review sites are certainly powerful tools for both consumers and business owners alike, they aren’t all created equal, meaning your consumers trust some sites more than others when they’re searching for review information. ReviewsInc recently surveyed 1,939 U.S.. consumers to find out which review sites they trusted most. The top five most trusted review sites were:
- Google+ (47.3%)
- Better Business Bureau (33.0%)
- Yahoo (31.2%)
- Yelp (28.9%)
- Facebook (22.3%)
What do these stats mean for your business? With Google+ and Facebook in the top five of the most respected review sites, your aging care business must have a social media presence in order to take advantage of those reviews. You’ll also want to make sure your business is registered with the Better Business Bureau, and that you have a presence on Yahoo and Yelp.
Ensuring you have positive reviews on these sites is also crucial. While it’s impossible to control what people write about your business online, good or bad, you can encourage your happy clients to leave reviews for you on review sites and make it easy for them to do so. Since Google+ is the top trusted review site, we created a YouTube video that walks customers through the process of leaving a Google review for a local business. Feel free to share our video with your clients to help encourage them to leave a Google review for your business!
Need some help marketing your senior care business or getting some positive reviews for your services? corecubed‘s aging care marketing experts can help! Contact us today to learn more about our 5-star marketing services.