Hello, Peter Brissette here, and I have a new video for you here this month. In this video, I want to talk about a new survey that was just completed in September from a company called Bright Local.
It is a local consumer search survey, focused on how consumers are using reviews right now, and their thoughts about reviews. I’m going to share my screen here, so that I can point out to you some of the highlights of the survey results.
One of the first stats is that eighty-four percent of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Now I think this is significant because a personal recommendation, a referral, is the number one, most-trusted form of advertising; the most-trusted form of marketing that there is. Nothing is trusted more than that. Based on this question that was asked, and how the survey responders responded, they’re saying that most people, eighty-four percent, trust reviews just as much as that personal recommendation. That’s a big deal in my mind, because there is so much trust given to a personal recommendation. I think this is significant to the fact that reviews are very highly trusted in general. It’s one of the most important activities that you can do to help demonstrate to someone who doesn’t know your business; that’s not familiar with your business; on what kind of company you are; that you are a trustworthy business; that you can be trusted; and your reviews are a reflection and demonstration of that. This is a significant statistic.
The next one that I thought was interesting is that seven out of ten consumers will leave a review for a business if they are asked to. This is our mantra when we talk about our ReviewMeMarketing system to clients. There are really two things that you have to do: First, you must make it easy for them. So part of our tools and training that we do is to help you be able to do that; make it easy for your customers and clients to leave you reviews.
Secondly, you must ask (for reviews), and you have to systemize the way that you ask. This is pretty evident, and I totally concur with the stats that they’ve found. I’ve found this to be pretty similar, that most people will leave reviews if they’re asked, and if you make it easy for them to do that. Do you want more reviews for your business? You’ve just got to ask.
Next, we see that “Ninety percent of consumers read less than ten reviews before forming an opinion about business.” There are a couple of different ways you can look at this: You can look at like “Well, I’ve only got five reviews, so I don’t need anymore. Done. I don’t need any more than that.” But another stat we’re going to share here says that’s not the case, that, if you just have five, and never get any more, it’s not going to be as effective for you. It does mean that the reviews that they do see, the reviews that they do read, doesn’t require more than ten for them to form an opinion about your business. So if all you have is a few reviews, and a couple of those are bad, that’s going to be a challenge for people to trust your business. However, if you do have some bad reviews, but they’re from awhile back, then that’s not as big of an issue. We’re going to talk more about that.
Fifty-four percent of people will visit the website after reading positive reviews. You want to get more reviews (traffic) to your website to your website, have positive reviews. People are going to check out your website, because they want to learn more about your business. They’re obviously interested. They’ve trusted you enough to take the next step, to try to look more into your business to find out if you have the service or the product, whatever it is that they happen to be looking for.
Seventy-three percent of consumers think that reviews older than three months are no longer relevant. We were just talking about that, about the number of reviews that people look at, less than ten, typically, when making a decision about a business. But they also look at how old the reviews are. Are these reviews recent or not? If they’re recent, within the last ninety days, they’re going to have the most impact, be the most relevant. If you just got a negative review, it is a challenge. The best thing you can do? Get ten more positive reviews as quickly as you possibly can. Build up those positive reviews. As time goes by, and as the quantity goes by, it’s going to move that negative review down the spectrum and cause it to have less impact on how people are making decisions about your business.
Seventy-four percent of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more. Again, most people trust online reviews, and it helps people trust local businesses more for the most part.
Fifty-eight percent of consumers say that the star rating of a business is the most important. That overall average, that overall aggregated score that you have for your business, whether that’s three stars, three and a half, four, four and a half, five, that overall star rating is that quick glance, that zero moment of truth, “Z-mot”, as Google calls it, that zero moment of truth, where I have an instant to try to make a decision about your business, and one of the quick ways that people do that is looking at that overall star rating that your business has.
That’s what I wanted to share with you today. Just some quick stats from recent surveys on how people are interacting with reviews. It just tells me that reviews are continuing to be more and more relevant, that you need to be working on your online reviews, and we’re here to help you do that. If we can serve you in any way, please reach out to us and let us know. Thank you, and go Broncos!
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