Reputation Marketing

So how do you dominate any market? In your local business you want to dominate your local market in your town or city. How do you do that?

Business Reputation Is Critical To Your Success

You are going to see how your reputation is critical if you want real success.

We deliberately took the survey being shown in the video that was taken in 2011. It shows you that things were already changing even then.

Because if you look at it, 92% of people trust a recommendation from people that they know, but a whopping 70% trusted people that have left an opinion or review online.

So 70% of us are trusting strangers about what they say on different sites.

Amazon & eBay Driving Reputation Marketing

This was originally driven by people like Amazon. We all have been on Amazon and seen the product pages where you see the reviews accompanying them.

The important thing to consider is in the example shown in the video, 372 people have taken the trouble to leave a review about a particular product and you and I as consumers are going to trust these reviews to make a buying decision about whether we want to buy this item.

ebay was another prime driver behind it because anybody that has ever dealt with ebay will know that positive feedback on the seller is critical. This is why all sellers on ebay are always asking you to leave a positive review and they are always looking to get the product out to you as soon as possible so that you leave a positive review.

So the 2 main major platforms online, Amazon and ebay, both started driving reviews and what people said about each other.

Reputation Platforms Expanding

Then as things started building out we started to see things like Trip Advisor. For example if someone was to go an area in France, they would first Google it and go to Trip Advisor to see what other people said about it, other strangers. But it is likely that people take their opinions into account before making a buying decision and booking a particular place for a holiday.

Does Reputation Marketing Apply To Local Businesses?

Now as local business owners you may turn around and say that is fine but that doesn’t affect us as we’re local.

Well when they did a survey in 2013 they asked people do you read online customer reviews. To determine whether a local business is a good business. Only 10% of people said they didn’t look at customer reviews to determine whether a local business was a good business to deal with.

A second question that was asked was how do online customer reviews affect your opinion of a local business. In 2013 over 70% of people said it affected their buying decision and what they thought of you as a business.

Showing Off Your Great Business

We all get reviews and the traditional testimonials and seen other local business getting written testimonials. But what happens to those written testimonials? Most of the time they take those written testimonials and put them in a drawer. Or may put it up on a board in the office or may even show the staff.

But none of your potential customers ever get to see it. Which is why in other lessons we have talked about building out an announcement network. You have got all of these online platforms and you could be blasting out that same written testimonial out.

If you had a written testimonial and you could get it online, you could do things like put it on your website so people see it visually. You could also share that same review on your Google+ business page, on your Facebook business page, on Twitter, onto your LinkedIn account, onto your Youtube channel, onto your Pinterest account and onto Instagram.

There are just so many different platforms out there. Where you can be broadcasting this one great review that you have just had. This is what people are doing with Amazon and eBay; it’s blasting it out there.

Video Reputation Marketing Videos

You can also take the same written review and create a video testimonial from that review. You can then take this video testimonial and put it onto your Youtube channel and then share it across all of these different platforms such as Google My BusinessGoogle My Business or social media platforms such as Facebook.
What is important to remember about reputation marketing is firstly that it is social proof. It is other people saying great things about your business and people trust other people as we have already seen.

Next is that 70+% of people looking for local businesses trust online reviews. You will also get a higher conversion rate. Because when people see other people saying you are a great business, they are more likely to make that buying decision.

Getting The Business

We have already seen how Amazon and ebay drive things like reviews and testimonials and why people trust these platforms. Now, this comes down as one of the most important factors when it comes to local businesses. People always advise you to go out and get 3 quotes.

If you’re one of those quotes and you have all of this social proof and testimonials of other people saying how great you are, you will have a higher trust factor and more than likely you will be the one that people decide to go ahead and purchase from.

This all makes reputation marketing critical to any success for a local business. If you want to know more about how it works you can phone us for a free consultation. We’ll talk you through what you need to be doing. Why you need to be doing it and how it can be done.