Google Reviews are the word of mouth on steroids

It’s difficult, especially for smaller businesses to compete with the bigger, more established brands, however, consumer attitude is changing, and more of us are choosing to support locally. Word of mouth referrals are essential to the growth of a small business – if you experience fantastic service, you’ll almost certainly be likely to recommend friends and family to visit too. 87% of consumers read online reviews for local business in 2020, this number is up from 81% in 2019. Here are the benefits of leaving both Google Reviews and the importance of word of mouth recommendations.

Trust
It’s a known fact – we’re far more likely to buy from a recommended business than one that we know nothing about. This is where trust plays a significant part in the customer buying journey. Businesses may want to reach as many customers as possible through the likes of traditional advertising, however, a high recommendation is more likely to result in a converted sale, and hopefully, even more recommendations. This brings us to the formula Visibility + Credibility = Profitability. Persuading people to try what you offer is one of the most difficult aspects of running a business, but once you have that trust established, you’ll be sure to reap the rewards. Jeff Bezos, the Founder and CEO of Amazon has stated “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” The opposite of this statement is also true, in that if a customer leaves you a positive review on Google, it has the potential to instil trust in 6000 new potential customers searching for your products and services. This is why we call it, word of mouth on steroids. 

Cost
One of the best things about word of mouth marketing is that it’s completely free! Enjoying a product, service, or even the customer service provided, all have the capability to produce more sales, without spending a penny on advertising. Go on, if you’ve really enjoyed a service provided by a small business, tell them, and tell everyone you know – it’ll save your favourite small business a fortune and will be likely to stick around for a lot longer.

Reputation
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffet. If you do experience a great level of service, why not tell the business directly? This can absolutely transform an organization, give them the confidence and funding needed to market themselves or improve their services, and gives a boost of happiness – running a business is no easy feat and receiving compliments and good feedback encourages business owners to keep going!

If you are a business owner, having customers who are willing to recommend you, makes it feel like they are part of your sales team. However, Joseph Mogale from award winning SWS Group Ltd who specialise in Google Reviews, states that there are two important elements required for customers to be able to recommend you. The first is that you have to be willing to ASK THEM and the second is that you have to implement a system that will make it easy for them to be able to leave you a Google review and recommend you.

SWS Group Ltd currently have an exclusive 30-day FREE trial on a Google Review pop up for your websites. One of the major benefits of this pop-up is that 100% of people visiting your website will be able to see your 5-star Google reviews on every single page. The pop up will include a powerful call to action which has been proven to significantly boost conversion rates. If you want to grab your spot on the 30-day FREE trial – email [email protected]