Building your online reputation is one of the best things you can do to help get more customers. What do you think happens when a potential client sees your ad in the local newspaper, finds your website in the local search results, see your paid ad in the PPC platforms like Google Adwords?
What do you think they do? They go online and look at your online reputation. If you have a great reputation they most likely will pick up the phone and call you.
If you reputation sucks then there is not chance or a very slim one they will call you and want to do business with you.
There is a 70% chance if a potential customer sees your positive reviews they will pick up the phone and call you. There is a 60% chance they would recommend your services to a friend or family member.
Having a great online reputation helps build trust and now a days more and more people want to do business with people and businesses they trust.
There is several ways you can build trust.
1. Promote your online reviews using video. People love videos so if they find a review about your business in video format there is a better chance they will watch it and call your business.
2. Get interviewed as an expert. You can then take this interview and publish it as text on your website and on your web 2.0 properties. Better yet you can get interviewed using video and then take the video and shared on the top video sharing sites and then get the audio transcribed into text and then publish it on your web 2.0 properties, the online directories and your website.
3. Get your customers to leave reviews about your business online. This can be a challenging thing but if done properly your customers can leave a review shortly after they purchase your product or service.
You can use software designed to contact your existing list of customers and ask them to leave you a review. This can be extremely time consuming but it can be done. Another alternative you have is to use specially designed review software that is designed only for contacting customers to the leave reviews.
When people find these positive reviews they will share your information and visit your website so the search engines call this a social share which is the future in website marketing. This is the future of SEO, people sharing your information in the social networks and then visiting your website.
Having a positive online reviews is one of the best ways to build trust with your customers and you will be seen as an expert. Nowadays more and more people want to deal with businesses that have a positive reputation. No matter where you advertise people are going to research your business looking for positive reviews so be sure to include reputation marketing in your marketing budget.