Get your review management up to speed before embarking on expensive advertising

 We see it more often than we should - and certainly more often than needs be. An advertisement like this...

That costs this...

Followed by this...

When we say 'followed by' what do we mean? We mean that many - most? - people who see an advertisement that catches their eye will immediately resort to Google to find out more. Even if they only need to find the company website or contact details, they will google the business, and then be served the business's Google score and the individual reviews underlying that score.

These days consumers are getting more and more review-savvy and that does not mean 'paying less attention to reviews'. Quite the opposite - surveys from the likes of Harvard Business Review and Forbes amonst many others show the numbers increasing steadily year by year. 

In 2017 eighty-four percent of consumers trusted online reviews as much as a personal recommendation from a friend. Now...

..it's 91 percent in the under thirty-four age group and a staggering 93 percent of all ages admit to 'being influenced by reviews'.

Now, we still meet sophisticated business people who say 'It doesn't matter - a Google score and reviews such as these...

...don't impact our business' and we - along with many respected marketing experts - would normally beg to differ...

But we find it so much easier to say 'Fine, but how much would you be prepared to do to see that score north of 4.5 and hundreds of glowing reviews*?'

Professional review management - it adds up, whichever way you look at it.

*Always assuming the business's current image conveyed by Google is as a result of a few disgruntled and far from representative customers.