This presentation was delivered by Myles Anderson at BrightonSEO in September 2017.
The 1st part of this presentation looks at the impact that a positive reputation has on key areas of the marketing funnel and on consumer trust in local businesses.
The 2nd part outlines how to build & leverage reputation through an effective review strategy.
13. @Bright_loca@BrightonSEO
Majestic Trust Flow
# of Backlinks with City in Anchor Text
Photos
Majestic Citation Flow
Referring Subnets
Referring IPs
Referring Domains
Majestic AC rank
Profile views
Google reviews
Source: LocalSEOGuide.com - 2016 Local SEO Ranking Factors
Highest correlation - reviews & local
ranking
17. @Bright_loca@BrightonSEO
Positive reviews increase CTR by 22%
Source: BrightLocal Search Click Through Rate Study, August 2016
63%
66%
61%
43% 42%
37%
Plumber Florist Realtors
With Reviews
Without Reviews
18. @Bright_loca@BrightonSEO
Star rating has huge impact on CTR%
Source: BrightLocal Search Click Through Rate Study, August 2016
41%
30%
35%
44%
59%
69%
No star 1 star 2 stars 3 stars 4 stars 5 stars
21. @Bright_loca@BrightonSEO
Reviews increased trust by 11%
83%
6%
11%
72%
15% 13%
Trustworthy Not Trustworthy Don't know / Not sure
With Reviews
Without Reviews
Source: BrightLocal Landing Page Performance Study, August 2016
22. @Bright_loca@BrightonSEO
Positive ratings increased ‘contact’ by
12%
Source: BrightLocal Landing Page Performance Study, August 2016
74%
18%
8%
62%
30%
7%
Would contact Would not contact Unsure
With Reviews
Without Reviews
27. @Bright_loca@BrightonSEO
Reviews influence who they buy from
30%
7%
63%
Select a local business on other
factors
Read reviews but don't
influence purchase
Reviews influence whether I
use or don't use a local business
Source: Local Consumer Review Survey 2015
32. @Bright_loca@BrightonSEO
6 Pillars of an Effective Review
Strategy
How to manage bad
reviewsClear targets
Process to get reviews
Target review sites
Training & Incentivizing
Staff
Leverage Reputation
80. @Bright_loca@BrightonSEO
Why Manage Locally
• Share workload among many people
• Better knowledge of local services/products
• Personalise & localise responses
• Direct feedback for managers & staff
• Managers in touch with customer issues
• Able to take action quickly to resolve
problems
SEO platform with a focus on aggregating & analysing local data points – things like google maps rankings, local business listings listings & funnily enough ‘Reviews’ which is what I’m talking to you about today.
As I mentioned before our area of specialization is on local search.
So a lot of the data I’ll share & the ideas related directly to businesses which have physical locations or provide a service at customer’s location.
As opposed to pure online businesses or ecommerce businesses.
These could be small, independent retailers or businesses.
Or large businesses that have many locations/outlets
I love reputation.
In fact what I really mean is that I love the benefits that having a positive reputation brings to a business.
A good reputation is a brand asset & a powerful marketing tool
It provides valuable social proof to potential customers & even business partners etc…
Consumers use social proof to short cut their research & decision making on everything from electrical products & home furnishings to flights to educational courses & - of course - local businesses.
If we see that 50 other people have used a business and given it good feedback, then we can feel confident that our experience will be similar to their experience.
This means that we don’t need to explore every option open to us, but can narrow down our selection faster & make a decision with greater confidence.
Ok so we’ve established that consumers use reviews & reviews influence their attitudes & also their behaviors.
Powerful stuff.
Now we want to quantify that a little and see the tangible impact of reviews in search results & when used on landing pages.
Ok so we’ve established that consumers use reviews & reviews influence their attitudes & also their behaviors.
Powerful stuff.
Now we want to quantify that a little and see the tangible impact of reviews in search results & when used on landing pages.
Earlier on this year my team conducted some detailed research into CTR from search when positive reviews a present.
Ok so we’ve established that consumers use reviews & reviews influence their attitudes & also their behaviors.
Powerful stuff.
Now we want to quantify that a little and see the tangible impact of reviews in search results & when used on landing pages.
Here are some screen shots of the SERP pages that we showed to our test groups.
ON the left we have a standard 3 pack with no reviews
On the right we have a 3 pack but with star rating added.
We varied the star rating and the position throughout the test.
And what we found is that CTR only goes up if a business has more than a 3 star rating.
At 3 stars or below the CTR goes down. And if a business has only 1 star then it goes down by 20%!
The results are as we’d expect when we think about our own use of reviews and how we interpret them. But this gives us some concrete data to inform our conversations with clients or internal stake holders about the importance of managing our online reputations.
Firstly we found that +ve reviews increased trust in a business by 11%.
And secondly that 6% more consumers would go on to contact a business.
Without reviews 34% more would keep researching other businesses
Further evidence of the impact that reviews have on trust – and how that influences their decisions to purchase – are clear in the results of a 3rd survey.
Reading reviews more frequently and for a wider set of business types
And this influences who they use.
63% of consumers say reviews make them more likely to use a local business
(Ross updated to 2016 figures)
So yeah reviews are good. In fact they’re great. And they impact all areas of the marketing funnel and have a big impact on consumer trust, attitudes and behaviors.
These stats provide us with some varied, independent data to support the investment in reputation management by your business or by your clients if you work in an agency.
Now I want to look at how a business can generate & manage their reputation. How they leverage that solid reputation to win new customers.
And to do that a business needs an effective review strategy.
And by effective I mean one that is tried, tested & delivers results in an easy, repeatable way.
This approach & best practices can be applied to businesses with just 1 location or businesses with many locations.
Multi-location businesses have more complexity and require some extra decisions to be made. But the strategy is fundamentally the same.
Having a target is important because it allows us to measure the success or shortfall of the review strategy.
And this allows us to modify or extend what we’re doing.
But what target for reviews do we set?
This is 1 of the most common questions that business owners ask.
How many reviews do I need?
And I loved to be able to stand here and tell you that it’s 16.
But sadly it’s not.
The number differs for every business depending on their industry, location and competitors.
So you need to achieve a quantity of reviews that convinces consumers to trust/ believe the star rating.
More reviews = more social proof
More social proof, the more they’re likely they are to trust your business and to use your business.
Really you can never have too many reviews
But the law of diminishing returns applies.
Going from 0 reviews to 50 will provide a huge amount of additional social proof.
But going from 500 to 550 reviews will add less weight to your reputation and therefore less impact on consumer attitudes/behavior
But freshness or ‘recency’ of reviews is also important
In our local consumer review survey we asked consumers about freshness of reviews.
We found that 73% of consumers think reviews older than 3 months aren’t relevant
You don’t want to set a target of 50 reviews and then stop.
You want to set a monthly target of 5,10, 15 reviews. Whatever level you think is achievable but stretching, that will deliver fresh reviews to convince consumers to trust you.
And so over time you’ll see your review count grow to become a significant, powerful brand asset.
Implement a process into business practices that continuously generates reviews
It’s not rocket science. It all starts with asking customers to review you.
Well actually it starts with delivering a great service & then asking customers to review you.
Customers are familiar with reviews – 91% of consumers read reviews.
So it’s highly likely that read reviews about you before they contacted you or visited your business. Not going to be an alien concept to them.
Make this part of your standard sales process. It’s something that is done as part of delivering a service to customers.
It shouldn’t be an afterthought.
Don’t make it 1 person’s job.
It should be something that every customer facing employee is aware of and involved in.
. Timing is key to success
When they are a red hot fan of yours and they’re basking in the warm the glow of your amazing service.
Don’t let their happiness cool off
But don’t wait for the customer to forget about you or how happy they were with your service.
If you ask verbally and they agree, then follow up with an email.
They’ve made a commitment to you and most will follow that through by writing a review.
Different review sites are better for different business types
Selecting the right ones for a business is crucial to maximizing the impact of the reviews.
Determine which sites Google cares about.
These are sites that google will rank for category searches on page 1.
And if Google is choosing to show these sites it gives you a reading on their relevance & significance for your industry.
And if their on page 1 then they’ll be getting some traffic from google which gives them a better than average chance of survival and being around long term.
Google recently started including 3rd party review sites with Knowledge Panel for local businesses.
And again this gives you a good indication of the significance & value of a site for your industry.
And any star ratings you develop on these sites will appear on your KP.
Look at the type of audience a site has.
A site with large audience – like facebook or Google – offers chance to reach customers at scale.
A site with loyal audience – yelp or tripadvisor – means ….
And in both their cases that have both & larger & loyal audience which is ideal.
Also the relevance of a site is very important.
Most industries have a cluster of review sites that focus on their niche.
These sites have deeper content about that industry & also better listing information on businesses.
For example a site like checkatrade for builders & tradesmen.
And Hitched for wedding related businesses.
These sites attract higher intent consumers. Consumers who are further down the buying process.
Consumers who are likely to be better prospects with higher conversion to sale.
So great sources of engaged and high converting customers for relevant businesses.
This is an area that many businesses fall short on. They don’t spend enough time training staff about how to get and manage reviews, and also of the value of reviews.
And they don’t offer enough incentives to staff.
But if done correctly these 2 factors will make all the difference to the success of your reputation management.
Just telling staff we need more reviews, go get them, doesn’t work.
They need to understand why. What the significance of a positive reputation & reviews means.
You can distill it down into some clear benefits – for the business and for them.
More reviews delivers more customers = which means more revenue – a stronger business – job security
But more crucially and more powerfully, if a business makes a big deal out of reviews and ensures all team members hear about good reviews it adds value to their working life.
They can see that they’re work is appreciated and the impact they have. Everyone wants to feel that the work they do matters and it’s appreciated.
Reviews are a great way to make them feel appreciated and empower them to keep going.
It can generate greater job satisfaction.
And for the business that means better staff retention. So it serves many purposes.
It’s wrong to incentivise customers to leave reviews.
But it’s not wrong to incentivise team members to go after them.
The businesses with the most effective review strategies use staff incentives.
Bonuses or commission have a review element to them.
Improving rating & getting reviews is used in managers targets & appraisals.
Some businesses even use it as a factor when determining which managers get promoted. So it has an impact on their career progression.
And this really hits home how important the business considers it reputation to be.
Once you built up those reviews and established a solid & public reputation you need to make work as hard for you as possible.
This is what I really love about reputation.
We saw the research about reviews boosting search ranking & increasing conversion.
But they can be used in so many more places.
Reputation is portable, and flexible.
Before I end I want to take a quick look at review strategies for Multi-Location businesses.
All the previous strategy pieces apply equally to big enterprises with many locations as they do to smaller, independent, single location operations.
But there is added complexity and 1 big decision that multi-location businesses need to make.
And that is to determine who in the organization is given responsibility for managing their online reputation?
Do you manage it centrally and assign the task to the marketing or customer support teams?
Or do you push the responsibility on to each location to manage their own reviews and reputation?
For me managing reputation locally wins.
The biggest positive of managing reputation at the location level is that customers are served locally, by the staff in each store or branch.
These are the people providing the service. They are the ones interacting with customers. The reviews they get are about them and their store or branch.
They know the products, the customers and what goes on in the branch.
This means they’re best placed to understand the issues, personalise the responses they give and take action to deal with the negative feedback they get and resolve issues.
The central marketing or customer success team can still monitor performance through tracking/monitoring tools so they can see which stores perform well & which don’t.
They can still have that oversight. But they don’t have to do the leg work.