Your Local Search and Marketing Can Be Negatively Impacted by Customer Reviews

Consumers have started relying heavily on platforms that have feedback from other consumers. In fact, research shows that around 90 percent of consumers will rely on reviews to help them make a purchase, and 86 percent of consumers report that negative reviews strongly influence whether or not they will purchase a product. So, with that being said, it is obvious that your brand needs to be able to understand how consumers utilize reviews so that you can determine a process for how you are going to be able to manage, monitor, and also respond to customer reviews.

For the majority of consumers, they will look at several different sources of information on a number of different devices before they actually make a local purchase. Research shows that local search is the top-performing source by over double. When businesses are developing a strategy for reviews in their search marketing campaign, it is important that they understand all levels of reviews and how each level will impact consumers.

• Brand Reviews: Brand reviews are reviews of your brand or company and are primarily displayed on your social media page (such as Facebook) or on reputation sites (such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB) or Trustpilot). These types of reviews will impact your overall reputation.
• Product Reviews: Product reviews are reviews of a particular product that is displayed on an ecommerce website (such as Amazon.com) or your website. These types of reviews will impact your product demand.
• Location Reviews: Location reviews are reviews of a particular business location that is displayed in mapping apps, search results, or even local search websites (such as Yelp). These types of reviews will impact overall consumer behavior due to the fact that they drive can and will drive foot traffic to your business location.

Consumers are not the only thing that businesses have to worry about when it comes to reviews. Search engines also rely heavily on reviews and ratings. For that reason, reviews need to be a huge part of your search marketing strategy. The reviews that are displayed in search engine results can have two primary impacts on your business's brand, marketing efforts and overall success with reviews and local search:

• Location star ratings are now included in the search results as well as the map results. These star ratings, which are very important to a search user's overall experience, need to reflect how consumers really see your business. If star ratings are now showing up in search for your business, then you are missing a huge opportunity to get your name out there and more visible to local consumers.
• Once consumers look over a brand's star ratings, they will then dig deeper to find out more about your business. This is when they find review sites, such as Yelp. At sites like Yelp, they will find something more than star ratings: actual written reviews from real-life consumers.

As you can see, reviews can have a major impact on your overall brand. Without the right approach, reviews can negatively impact your marketing efforts. If you're unsure about how to move forward with your local search and marketing campaign, reach out to us at WebDetail so that we can explain things in detail and help get you on the right path to success!