This article was originally written at foxxr.com

When a water pipe in your yard bursts and you need immediate help, where do you look for assistance?

Seven out of 10 times, the consumers will turn to Google and ask it to find “plumbers near me” or “plumbers Santa Cruz.”

Once they have found a business–either in the local pack or search results, 90 percent of prospects will read less than ten reviews before forming a distinct impression of your business.

If you are a local service business, it is crucial to put your best foot forward because 87 percent of Americans trust online reviews to help them choose which local businesses or services will receive their hard-earned dollars.

A strong brand inspires confidence and brings more business. Nearby Now is a tool to strengthen your brand.

Enhance Your Brand’s Reputation with Nearby Now

Nearby Now is a powerful platform and ideal for service area businesses to build their reputation. It increases visibility in search engines and gives you unprecedented control over presentation and content.

Here are some tips to use this tool for maximum mileage.

1. Create Keyword-Rich Job Descriptions

Nearby Now has great advice on how to create job descriptions that exude credibility and impress search engines.

The descriptions should be succinct, clear, and understandable. Here is the official advice from Nearby Now with some edits:

1. 10–25 words (no more than 500 characters)
2. Include a product brand when possible (like “Duncan”)
3. Keywords or phrases that describe the actual job performed (like “fixed sewer line” or “replaced the pipes”)
4. Avoid abbreviations or industry slang.

Those points are essential. But if your field worker is willing to spend a few more minutes at a client’s place, he or she can include these items, too:

1. A monthly or seasonal descriptor when possible like (Jan or January) or (Spring or Summer)
2. Whether it was a commercial or residential job.
3. The neighborhood or subdivision (unless doing so would identify the specific customer)

2. Ask for a Review Immediately After the Job Is Finished

Four out of 10 customers will write a Nearby Now review if you request one immediately after completing a job successfully. The rate drops to 20 percent after 24 hours and declines further with delay.

Educate your workers to prep customers while they are still fixing things and send a review request to the clients’ email address as soon as the job is finished. Unlike Yelp, Google, and other review websites, Nearby Now does not require customers to log in before they can write about their experiences with a business. This little feature increases the chances of positive feedback.

3. Consider Several Factors Before Asking for a Review

Although Nearby Now eliminates the technical difficulties preventing your customers from writing reviews, your employees need to be alert to the human side of things.

The skill of determining when a client is a good candidate for a review request is useful, and your employees will be better off acquiring it.

Here are some tips from Nearby Now:

1. 1. Ask “Did I provide 5-star service today?” or “Did my service meet your expectations” or “Did I solve your (type) problem well?” or something of that sort.
   2. Wait for the response.
      1. The response is “yes.” This is a good candidate for a review request.
      2. The response is “no.” Provide a little more customer service, find the issue, and resolve it.

4. Create Landing Pages for the Most Profitable Locations

Integrate Nearby Now with the top-most profitable location landing pages and club reviews from several smaller areas into a bigger one.

It is not worth creating a landing page for a sparsely populated town, county, or Census-Designated Place (CDP). Cover the most populous and profitable areas which can be 10, 20, 30, or more.

Nearby Now will generate a heat-map automatically and the areas that keep you busy will show up. Red is showing most recent activity and blue the oldest, while green falling somewhere between.

5. Always Click Photos, If Possible, Shoot Videos

The human brain process images 60,000 times faster than text. It takes us just 150 milliseconds to process an image and further 100 milliseconds to attach a meaning to it. That means, the first thing your customers will see on your landing page will be the photos.

Humans not only spot images more quickly, they remember them for longer durations than text. In fact, 90 percent of information transmitted to our brain is visual, and the human brain is capable of remembering over 2,000 images with an accuracy of 90 percent for a whole week; even when those images were presented for a very short period.

The rapid rise of Snapchat, Instagram, and other image-heavy social platforms confirms what researchers and intelligent marketers always knew. Why not make use of our natural disposition towards images to create more convincing landing pages?

Convince your employers to take photos when they are in the field. It can be a simple before-after image, the client’s home, or anything that fits into the context. Media will attract attention, amplify your clients’ reviews, and ensure that they are heard.

6. Make Reviews More Credible

When one in four reviews on Yelp is a potential fake, it should not be surprising that 90 percent of people do not trust landing page reviews. Luckily, you can fix that.

• Don’t edit your customers’ comments, unless there are obvious linguistic mistakes. Let them speak. Slang, localisms will sound more natural.
• Don’t eliminate four-star or three-star reviews. Recent research has shown that people are more likely to trust you if they see both negative and positive reviews. The researchers were able to put a number on the effect: Letting your prospects read bad reviews can increase your sales up to 67 percent.
• Although Nearby Now lets you check in for your past jobs, a recommended strategy is not to go overboard. One hundred reviews in a day can trigger Google’s spam alert, and your website can lose rank. Let Nearby Now collect reviews gradually.

7. Work on GMB and Citations Before Optimizing Nearby Now

Last but not the least.

Location pages with content from Nearby Now are great, only if have done your homework first.

Thankfully, it is not difficult if you know search engine optimization (SEO) or have a digital agency to assist for you. It’s a simple two-step process.

First, claim your Google My Business (GMB) listing by telling Google that a business listed in their directory belongs to you.

Second, ensure that Citations are consistent across the web. A Citation is your business name, phone number, and address. Consistency in Citations is important because it is one of the ways Google determines your authenticity. Checking Citations on your own can be time-consuming. Work with a digital marketing agency to authenticate Citations for you.

Once you have claimed your GMB listing and verified Citation consistency, you are ready to integrate your location pages with Nearby Now.

Takeaway

If you are paying for Nearby Now, get the most out the platform. If you are not using Nearby Now, give it a try and use some or all of the techniques mentioned in this article to gather more reviews and business.

The post 7 Clever Ways to Turn Nearby Now into a Supercharged Reputation Builder appeared first on Foxxr.