Attract or deflect customers from your doorstep with just the Power Of Reviews

Published in the August 2021 edition of Moneywise Magazine.

By Engaged Strategy|2021-09-02T12:55:28+10:00August 30th, 2021|

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canadian cialis February 20, 2022 at 4:08 pm - Reply

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Post Covid-19, customers’ reliance on reviews to make a purchase decision has increased exponentially. An obvious reason is that the pandemic took practically everything digital. People simply shifted their spending from the real world to the virtual world, which meant a lot more people shifted to transact and purchase online.

Lockdowns resulted in a boom in e-commerce. Suddenly, popular e-commerce brands were facing supply-chain and logistics issues. Customers needed alternatives and hence, started looking at other lesser known and hitherto unknown companies. Their only way to assess the reliability of this hitherto unknown brand was customer reviews.

While prospective customers started assessing reviews, there was an interesting trend that showed up. Firstly, businesses that enjoyed a comfortable rating of 3.5+ were no longer customers’ choice. Via the virtual world, customers definitely started preferring businesses that had a 4+ rating. But that was not the only criterion. Customers started assessing star ratings with reviews. And they did not just read customer reviews subjectively, but looked at certain factors in a very logical order that influenced their purchase decision:

Number of reviews: A business with many reviews shows up higher in an online search. Besides, a larger number of reviews is an attractive element to a customer.

Customers look at recency of reviews: Your business may have over 1,000 reviews, but if the last review is dated to three months ago, while your competitor who has 800+ reviews and was reviewed positively as recently as this week, the prospective customer is very likely to choose your competitor over you.

Frequency of reviews: Customers want to feel safe. A business with just ten great reviews is not something that will make a new customer feel safe about spending their money on an hitherto unknown brand. But if they read over a hundred reviews that have been posted consistently over time and offer a positive vibe, your prospect is all set to watch you weave your magic.

Does the business respond to negative and positive reviews? Customers want to be heard. In these difficult times of social distancing, they want to feel connected. You want your customers to review your brand and you request them to leave a feedback for you on Google or any other site that works for your business. But when they do leave a review, how often do you as a business interact with them? Good, bad or ugly, if you do not address your customers and acknowledge their reviews, then prospects are likely to scroll away from you.

Analysis of these reviews with the star ratings of the business: Customers want to trust you. You may have a super awesome rating. But if you have just four or five reviews or have just a couple of people rating your business, your customer is not going to invest his trust in your business.

If even one or two of these above factors does not appeal to the prospective customer, the customer may move on to explore other businesses.

Let me explain this with an example. A customer searches for a salon near his preferred location that offers home services. He finds two well-rated businesses. Let’s name them Business A and Business B. Let us now assess these with the logic shared above:

Assessment statement	Business A	Business B
Star rating	4.5	4.3
Number of reviews	30	118
Recency of reviews	Two months ago	Three days ago
Frequency of reviews	An odd review once a month or lesser	Four to five reviews every week
Customer emotions	Mixed	More positive
Business’ interaction with customers	Response to only positive reviews	Resolution provided for negative reviews and pleasantries for positive reviews
Comparison of star ratings with the comments	Leaves doubts	Wins the customer’s confidence

This tectonic shift on customer reliance on reviews to make purchase decisions also brought up some very interesting insights that can absolutely change the way businesses interact with their customers. Our partner Podium conducted a robust research in Australia and identified the following changes in the way customers have been doing business in recent times. These findings ratify the way customers are engaging with businesses based on online reviews across economies that have a large smartphone user base. According to Podium’s research:

Reviews influence purchase decisions of about 84% customers today.
Since the pandemic, about 50% customers have turned patrons and are willing to travel longer to purchase from a local business.
Here is something interesting though. 28% customers said they looked up a business’ reviews while standing outside the door to decide whether to go in or not. Your reviews could either attract or deflect customers from your doorstep.
About 80% customers said customer reviews needed to be recent and relevant
About 70% said unless there were a large number of reviews, they did not trust ratings of a business.

We all know that several small businesses suffered great economic losses since Covid-19 struck. It was however, wonderful to see many customers show their magnanimity by patronizing many of these small local businesses. In fact, 39% of the respondents to Podium’s research said they have found a local business near their home that they did not know about or engage with before Covid.

Hence, if customers visited large format retailers and malls for their weekly groceries pre-pandemic, many of them shifted their purchases to nearby local supermarkets and smaller retailers to patronize them in a difficult time. Some even travelled a fairly long distance just to patronize a local business such as a salon or a restaurant during these difficult times solely based on customer reviews.

Hence, one of the primary factors that helped few local businesses get patronized more over their competitors was that they made it very easy for customers to leave reviews. These were businesses that either had a small QR code at the exit point of their shop or at checkout. They would request customers to scan and share their experience of doing business with them. Some businesses made it a lot more convenient by sending links to their customers via email or phone and asking them to share a review. And not surprisingly, a majority of the requests resulted in reviews. In fact, a few research studies that I looked at showed that at least 50% customers write a business review when asked provided the process is easy.

But the businesses that benefitted the most with more frequent and an increased number of customer reviews were the ones that sent an SMS to their customers requesting them to leave a Google Business Review for their latest interaction.

The power of customer reviews for small and medium local businesses

A clever thing that I have found certain local and small businesses do in recent times is leverage the power of customer reviews to identify their strengths and shortcomings. Their proactive asking for reviews by customers and their constant engagement with them has given them a wonderful outside-in perspective, which has helped them identify several customer purchase intents and change their inside-out strategies. Acknowledging their customers’ needs and providing them with tailored products and services has helped these organisations develop strong customer loyalty. This alone has helped them re-engage with detractors.

A hidden benefit that not many businesses know is that when a business increases the number of reviews by encouraging its customers via online review platforms such as Google’s business review solution and also responds to reviews both positive and negative, the brand’s online presence automatically begins to grow too, thus improving its SEO score. This translates into the business showing up more frequently during customer searches online not just as a suggested business, but also shows driving directions on Google Maps. Such comprehensive information about your business showing up organically just on the sheer power of your customers’ reviews becomes a strong and effective marketing tool.

Hence, if you want to increase your sales and gain an unfair advantage over competitors in your local market, you need to fully understand how your prospects find you and then make a decision to select you over your competitors. The secret is how effectively you manage your reviews and your online reputation, while simultaneously building your business offerings.

Article by Christopher Roberts

Managing Director, Engaged Strategy

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