For retail businesses and storefronts, many things go into a consumer’s decision to patronize your shop – location, style, how easy, and inviting it is. Certainly word-of-mouth from other satisfied customers can help drive new business.
But in the past 5 years, online reviews have become *the* path to drive business.
91% of 18-34 year olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Source: https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/online-review-stats/
Online reviews have become the viral ‘word-of-mouth’ for the digital age, and it’s not slowing down.
Do my customers even want to leave reviews?
While 40% of patrons will consider leaving a negative review for a poor experience, 67% will consider leaving one for a *positive* experience. Source: https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/
Customers who have had a really good experience are willing to share, and as a business owner you need to take advantage of that love – quickly. We all know, feelings fade fast, so getting a review request in front of a happy customer ASAP will increase the likelihood of them leaving a positive review.
Reviews aren’t important for my business type?
In a recent survey of the importance of reviews for local and retail businesses, eight separate business types were measured:
- care services,
- healthcare,
- service/tradespeople,
- automotive services,
- legal/financial,
- food/drink,
- entertainment,
- retail
Across all business types, reviews played an “important” or “very important” role in 50%-83% of a consumer’s decision to use these types of business (source: https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/).
Tops on the list, care services and healthcare, which makes sense, as these are extremely personal services and consumers are likely to go the extra mile to validate a decision to start using a provider.
The point is, regardless of the business you’re in, half or more of your prospective customers think reviews about your business are “important” or “very important” in a patronage decision.
I’m convinced, how do I get started?
At KnowMe, we realize it can be overwhelming to figure out where to start. That’s why we created the KnowMe IQ suite of services for small and retail businesses. Each application in KnowMe IQ enables a business to start small with minimal impact. All of our web apps are Pay-As-You-Grow – no cost to try and only pay if they are paying off for you.
KnowMe Reviews is a completely automated system for identifying customers and encouraging them to leave reviews on your preferred review site(s) – managed via text messaging (or email).
Want to learn more? Visit the website as www.www.knowmeiq.com/reviews or check out the post “KnowMe Reviews – how it works”.
