This content from: Small Business Marketing Blog - Strategies That Increase Sales

Online reviews continue to be an important part of your marketing mix. Online reviews not only influence your online Reputation, they can also affect your ranking in Google searches. In other words, online reviews affect your flow of customers and your bottom line.

If you are not proactively managing your online reputation, consider these 7 statistics.

#1 Buyers Read Online Reviews

54% of people have read online reviews before buying from a local business.

~ Source: ReviewJump

#2 Profitability Can Be Affected By ½ Star

Moving from 3 stars to 3.5 stars increases a restaurants chance of selling out from 13% to 34%. Moving from 3.5 stars to 4 stars increases the chances by another 19% .

~ Source: UC Berkeley

#3 Smartphone Users are Buyers

93% of people who use a mobile device for research go on to make a purchase.

~ Source: Google / Nielsen

#4 Online Reviews Build Trust

84% of people Trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.

~ Source: BrightLocal

#5 Online Reviews Should be Recent

73% of consumers think that reviews older than 3 months are no longer relevant.

~ Source: BrightLocal

#6 Reviews are Influential

90% of people who have seen positive you say it impacted the decision. 86% for negative reviews.

~ Source: Dimensional research

#7 Monitor and Respond to Your Social Media

46% of consumers expect a response within 6 hours of reaching out to a company on social media.

~ Source: ReviewJump

As you can see, online reviews are important to your business because they are important to your potential customers.

The first step to proactively managing your online reputation is to know what that reputation looks like. Find out by using our free Review Scan below. Simply fill out to generate an instant reputation report and see how your business appears on local review sites.

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