Your reviews are online to reassure your customers; to provide them with the peace-of-mind they require to consider even picking up the phone and making contact but as a business owner, it’s imperative you ask your customers a few questions when they first get in touch. This will reassure you that your NoCowboys marketing is working.
Firstly – they’ve called. So, how did they find your phone number? It didn’t fall out of the sky or miraculously enter its digits into their phone. It was shining like a beacon somewhere. So ask, how did you find my phone number? It’s not forward. It’s not an imposition. And I can guarantee that the vast majority you ask will provide the same answer – “I saw it online.”
That’s not a shock to us because over 90% of consumers go online to find a business. That’s just a fact. So it makes absolute sense that’s where they saw you and that’s where they saw your phone number – as well as your email address, and your website, if you have one.
But the next question is just as important as the first and both questions need to be asked. “Did you see my reviews?” This is not an imposition and you will be pleasantly surprised by the replies. Again, the overwhelmingly majority will say the same thing. “Yes, I did, and that’s why I called you.”
How do I know that? Well, it’s simple – of the over 90% of consumers who go online to find a business, the vast majority of them are actively looking for online reviews. Why? To reassure themselves. Even if they have been recommended your business by a friend or family member, they are going to search you online. If they saw signage on your vehicle(s) when they were driving, or saw it parked on the road, they are going to search you online. If they saw an ad, or heard an ad, they are going to search you online because that is the overwhelmingly dominant consumer behaviour – going online for assurance, or, when you have online reviews, reassurance.
Making these two questions a consistent response to first time customers should be something business owners do every time. Consumers won’t mind at all. It will show that you’re savvy and up to speed with what drives them and more than that, it will affirm the absolute necessity of your online reviews.
Because here is what actually happens when a potential customer searches your business name online if you have reviews. They go to a search engine and enter your business name. Then up come results. If you have reviews they will be obvious and alluring and there are two things a customer will do next – both driven by sighting reviews. They will either click on the review platform after seeing the visible gold stars and read some reviews – they will then contact you, either by phone or email, as those details will be on the site. They may also click through to your website and find those details there.
Secondly, they will search your business name and the results create the impression that assures them – by seeing the gold star reviews in the body of the search and then feeling confident to call you based on the contact details in your Google My Business profile.
Either way, the result is the same, a new customer making contact, driven by seeing your reviews online. But you need to ask those two important questions so you can have the same reassurance about the power of your online reviews.
