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Did you know that a 5-star rating on Google My Business is not actually the best star rating for your business? It’s something we’ve been saying for a long time, but this time we’ve got a report to prove it! A study conducted by Uberall determined that businesses who had 5-star ratings on Google My Business suffered from less conversions than businesses with less than a 5-star average. For this study, Uberall compared data from 64,000 third-party managed business listings for the first half of 2018 with the first half of 2019. The Sweet Spot While we can understand why businesses would strive for a perfect 5-star review score, the sweet spot for Google My Business reviews seems to lie between 3.7 stars and 4.9 stars. Many businesses “freak out” when a bad review comes in, but as long as the business is not actively being review bombed, those business owners should take the lower rating in stride. One bad review, or some lower rated reviews, can actually be good for increasing business. What is this phenomenon? Why is the jump so signifcant? Perhaps consumers view anything below a 3.7-star rating as untrustworthy, which would position a 3.7-star rating as the moment where consumers decide that a brand may be worth the risk. Regardless of the reason, the fact remains that a 3.7 rating should be the minimum benchmark that all business locations strive for. Uberall There’s no telling exactly why this phenomenon occurs, but we can take an educated…

One of the biggest sticking points when it comes to small business is reviews. While we have guides on what to do with bad reviews, and guides on how to ask for reviews, we need to also talk about the importance of reviews, especially when it comes to running a small business. Why are reviews so important? Reviews can make or break a small business. Online reviews are now “word-of-mouth” advertising on the internet. When you Google a business, often times you will see an aggregate of Yelp, Facebook, and Google reviews, showing off blurbs from reviewers as well as a star review (up to five stars). The problem is that most people don’t think to review a business unless they have a problem. That means if they ran into an issue, or were dissatisfied with their service, then someone will go out of their way to leave a review — usually negative. One negative review — and it being the only review — can tank a small business quickly. The thing is that it doesn’t give us a clear picture of this business. One single star review can look really bad, but say the customer was in the wrong or the company usually gives perfect, polite service every other time. You wouldn’t know this just from judging off of the one-star review. Because of this, we need to tap into every available opportunity to ask for reviews and try to get our good customer service to outweigh our bad customer service. Do Ask for…

One thing small businesses struggle most with is brand reputation. Specifically, bad reviews. One bad review can really do a number on your reputation across the internet, depending on what it says and how it was received. While we do have guidelines on what to do with bad reviews and how to best handle them, we always advise our clients to let us respond rather than have the client respond themselves. Recently we had a couple of clients who did come down with bad response/bad review syndrome. The first case was a bad review that our client wanted to respond to themselves. While this is fine and we like when businesses can take control of their online presence, we often hope for the best, and not the best always comes out of it. In this particular instance, our client had taken some time to respond after telling us not to respond. Our client then sent in a response that gave us some insight into what had actually happened (as there are two sides to every story, and two sides to every bad review as well), but unfortunately felt a bit accusatory. While we did end up revising this review response for the client, we did have a discussion with the client as well in regards to how this can better be resolved in the future. We explained how we can best serve the client and the client’s reputation as a business and brand by following the steps of our review response funnel….

The more I work with clients online the more I realize that not a single business is immune from bad reviews online. Getting a bad review can certainly feel like the end of the world, especially if you’re a reputable business trying to keep up a good reputation online and you don’t have a whole lot of reviews to begin with. The good news is it’s not the end of the world — and often times not the end of your business, either — and handling a bad review in the right way can be super important. Step 1: Don’t freak A bad review can happen for lots of reasons. Maybe you had an off day, or there was a miscommunication between your business or someone in your business and your client. Maybe they were generally dissatisfied with the work done. Sometimes there are even just “bad” people who are unhappy no matter what you may do or say to resolve an issue. As a business, we need to take them all. Bad reviews can be looked at as showing that your business is genuine, existing, and operating. Step 2: Don’t try to get it removed Most places that invite reviews do not let you remove or hide bad reviews just because you want to. Showing a non-biased view of your business is important for customers to make an informed decision. Yelp and Google will not allow you to remove bad reviews just because they’re bad and you think it…

One question we often get asked if how to get better reviews on Yelp, Google, Facebook, or any other review site. The problem with “getting better reviews” is that you can’t just get 5 star reviews – you really have to earn them. Most of the time customers will not go out of their way to rate your business unless they felt they had a bad experience. Often times this means that Yelp or Google can be littered with poor reviews of a business that may not entirely be deserving of being rated 1 or 2 stars. The more people you invite to review your business, if you’ve got a really great business, then the more chances you’ll get for a 5 star review. Invite people to review your business You want people to review your business and how they felt about the services they received. Unless you’re a business where you’re expecting reviews, photos, and a lot of social media presence (i.e. an event or a restaurant would be one of these businesses), chances are most people will generally not look to go out of their way to review your business until they have a bad experience. The simplest way to mitigate this is just to ask! Ask former or current clients if they have a few moments to review your business on Yelp, Google, or elsewhere. Send them a link so they don’t have to fish through your website or the review website to look for it. Invite…