Wednesday, 11 December 2019

Local Consumer Review Survey 2019

Over the last decade, online reviews have been becoming an ever-more-common part of consumers’ purchasing decisions. But, with reviews now being a huge part of online search results, a poor star rating or the feedback of unhappy customers can be hard to miss.

The Local Consumer Review Survey provides an annual look into how consumers are using local business reviews – from the necessary star ratings, to how many reviews are needed, and how these impact the decisions of potential customers. The report highlights how 3 key age groups use and write online reviews – and how this has changed year-on-year.

2019: A Year in Review(s)

Online reviews for local businesses are rapidly becoming the norm for many consumers, but in 2019 we identified some very interesting trends.

In 2018, consumers aged 18-34 were leading the charge for reviews and consistently coming out on top in terms of their review-reading and activity. This year, this gap has narrowed, with this younger age group becoming less likely to search for local businesses online, and go on to read their reviews. But, all is not as it seems.

Across every age group, those that do read reviews are doing so far more regularly – with one-third of consumers searching for local businesses every single day. And, even more consumers told us they ‘always’ read online reviews – including a huge 93% of consumers aged 35-54. For the first time, we delved into how long consumers spend reading reviews (spoiler, it’s longer than you may think!)

Reviews can have a colossal impact on the behavior of local consumers, and it’s clear to see that a business’s online reputation strongly affects whether customers choose to use a company. Positive reviews make 91% of consumers more likely to use a business, while 82% will be put off by negative reviews. The average consumer reads 10 reviews before feeling able to trust a local business, so businesses with lower review counts or negative feedback within their top reviews risk losing a significant proportion of potential customers to competitors with better online reputations.

The report finds that trustworthiness is crucial to consumers – but how can this be the case when fake reviews are being spotted more than ever before? Consumers may be becoming a little more discerning when it comes to the authenticity of reviews –  though we’d far rather they felt able to trust that reviews were accurate and legitimate.

And it’s not just reading reviews that’s on the up. Among the consumers that read reviews, 97% read businesses’ responses to reviews – making it more important than ever for local businesses to ensure they are monitoring their reputation across every review site, and responding quickly and professionally to any feedback.

The number of consumers writing reviews is growing, with two-thirds of consumers now having written reviews for local businesses, and the average reviewer writing 9 reviews in 2019. While consumers report being more likely to write a review for a positive experience than a negative one, businesses can still make a real difference by remembering to ask consumers to leave feedback on the sites that matter.

But, against the guidelines of many review sites, it seems like some local businesses aren’t playing fair. Among the 67% of consumers that have been asked to leave reviews, a worrying 24% had been asked to do so in return for a discount, gift, or cash. These shady tactics could provoke the wrath of some of the stricter review sites – and we’d strongly recommend anyone using such incentives to tread very carefully and play by the rules instead.

Read on to find out which review factors consumers really pay attention to – and the star ratings, number of reviews, and review recency local businesses really need.


Contents

Local Business Review Habits

Trust and Influence

Responding to Customer Reviews

Posting Online Reviews

Find Out More


Local Business Review Habits

How frequently do consumers search for local businesses online?

How often did you use the internet to find a local business in 2019

How often did you use the internet to find a local business in 2019 - age split

Key Findings

  • 90% of consumers used the internet to find a local business in the last year
  • 33% of consumers look at local businesses online every day – up from 27% last year
  • 75% of 18-55-year-olds search for businesses online each week – compared to 35% of people aged 55+

Since the very first Local Consumer Review Survey back in 2011, we’ve seen a steadily growing proportion of consumers looking online for local businesses. This year, 33% of consumers searched for local businesses every day, while 60% looked at least once a week, and 70% looked monthly.

There are a multitude of ways for consumers to find information about local businesses online, and with so much information now at your fingertips, there’s no wonder that consumers are making local searches more and more.

But, it’s important to consider how behavior differs among different segments of consumers. 75% of 18-34 and 35-54-year-olds search for a local business on a weekly basis, with the younger age group a little more likely to look every day. Over 55s are far less likely to search for nearby businesses regularly.

However, it’s not as simple as saying that younger consumers search for local businesses more than over 55s. In fact, consumers aged 18-34 are less likely to have made a local search in the past year – with 15% saying they’d never searched. Could this indicate that some younger consumers are interacting with businesses in a different way – perhaps opting for online-only businesses, or finding nearby businesses through recommendations, and discoveries on platforms such as Instagram or Facebook?

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How many consumers read online reviews for local businesses?

Do you read online reviews for local businessesDo you read online reviews for local businesses age split

Key Findings

  • 82% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses
  • A growing number of consumers ‘always’ read reviews for local businesses
  • 52% of 18-54-year-olds ‘always’ read local business reviews, though 18-34s are less likely to read them than in 2018

Among this year’s cohort of respondents, 82% read online reviews for local businesses – a little down from 86% last year. It’s difficult to know if this is a quirk of the dataset, or whether this could be the beginning of a slowdown in review reading. We predict that online reviews will remain vital to local businesses and consumers alike – but we’ll continue to monitor this trend for next year’s report.

While review reading was a little less common in 2019, among those that do, it’s becoming notably more commonplace. 36% said they ‘always’ read online reviews, up from 27% in 2018.

Like with those searching online for local businesses, it’s actually within the 18-34 age group that the biggest difference is being felt. This year, 17% didn’t read reviews for local businesses at all, compared to just 5% last year. It’s interesting that so much could change among this diverse age group within just one year – and we’d love to hear your theories on the cause.

Among 35-54-year-olds, review reading has actually become far more common during the decision-making process. This year, 52% ‘always’ read reviews, compared to just 28% last year. This has led to a decline among those that ‘occasionally’ read reviews – dropping from 39% last year, to 21% in 2019. This growing demographic could unlock an abundance of new customers for highly-rated businesses.


Which devices are used to read reviews?

Which devices do you use for online reviews

Top Devices for Reading Reviews

  1. PC or Mac
  2. Mobile internet browser
  3. Tablet
  4. Mobile app

Checking online reviews is not confined to just one device. Searching on desktop, via mobile browsers, and using tablets has remained pretty static over the last year – further demonstrating how review reading is becoming normal no matter your search process.

Back in 2017, 80% of consumers read reviews using computers. While proportions have dropped over the last few years, this seems to represent consumers accessing reviews in a different way, rather than avoiding them altogether.

In our recent Google Analytics for Local Businesses Study, we found that 36% of local businesses’ website traffic came from mobile sources. Local businesses should expect many of their potential customers to be searching on mobile devices, with industries such as restaurants and tourist attractions getting more consumers looking on mobile than more typically B2B services.


Top Industries for Online Reviews

  1. Restaurants
  2. Grocery stores
  3. Medical
  4. Clothing stores
  5. Hotels
  6. Entertainment
  7. Automotive
  8. Hair and Beauty
  9. Pet services
  10. Car dealerships

It’s important to remember that local businesses consist of far more than just stores, restaurants, or bars. Less frequently used (but equally as local) industries such as accountants, funeral directors, and photographers all see consumers reading reviews.

In fact, from our long list of industries, there wasn’t one type of business that consumers among our respondents hadn’t read reviews for. Every type of local business should be ensuring they have a positive online reputation. Beyond the influence on consumers, reviews also have a significant impact on local search rankings, so these can have a far bigger impact than just on those who read them.


What do consumers do after reading positive reviews?

What do you do after reading a positive review

Consumers’ Next Steps After Reading Positive Reviews

  1. Visit the business’s website
  2. Search for more reviews
  3. Visit the business
  4. Continue searching for other businesses
  5. Contact the business

After reading a positive review, consumers are most likely to go on to visit local businesses’ websites. While this has declined compared to the 2018 report, local businesses’ websites remain a critical part of the journey for consumers.

In our Local Business Websites and Google My Business Comparison Report, we found that 92% of consumers look at businesses’ websites when deciding on a business, though just 22% do this every time they search.

For 27% of consumers, positive reviews are enough to lead them towards contacting a business – whether this is in-person, over the phone, or direct through another medium. Many consumers will have made their minds up about a provider long before ever getting in touch, so it’s vital that your reputation across review sites won’t put off any prospective customers.

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How long do consumers spend reading reviews before making a decision?

The average time consumers spend reading reviews

How much time do you spend reading reviews

How much time do you spend reading reviews - age split

Key Findings

  • 93% of consumers spend more than a minute reading reviews
  • The average consumer spends 13m45s reading reviews before making a decision
  • Consumers aged 18-34 spend 33% more time reading reviews than the average person

For the first time, we asked consumers how long they spend reading reviews before making a decision. 93% of consumers spend longer than a minute reading reviews, with 43% taking longer than 10 minutes. A very cautious minority (10%) spend longer than 30 minutes.

The average consumer reported spending 13 minutes and 45 seconds reading reviews before making their minds up. Consumers aged over 55 take almost 10 minutes reading reviews, while 18-34-year-olds spend nearly double this.

We were impressed at how long some consumers spend researching local businesses, but really, this isn’t a very long time to impress, so it’s important that they like what they read! Whether consumers are reading reviews in-depth or skimming for keywords, consumers can get through a lot of information in this time. This means a business’s online reputation management strategy should be far more robust than ensuring the top review is positive towards your brand.

Interestingly, 20% of people aged 18-34 spend longer than 30 minutes reading reviews. For consumers aged 35-54, this is 10%, and 3% of those aged 55+. While younger consumers may be a little less likely to read reviews, those that do are far more discerning – relying on plenty of reviews before choosing a business. While every local business should be ensuring they have a steady stream of positive reviews, if you have a significant proportion of customers in this demographic, you may have to be even more mindful of your reputation.

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Trust and Influence

How do reviews influence consumers?

Positive reviews make me more likely to use a business

91% of consumers say that positive reviews make them more likely to use a business.

The notion of what makes a review positive is subjective, as some consumers may see different star ratings as positive or not. They may instead be swayed by the sentiment of the review to decide whether they think it’s positive or not.

To be in with a chance of accessing this majority, businesses should ensure the reviews they are getting are broadly positive. Of course, this doesn’t mean they should only be targeting happy customers, or falsifying reviews so as to appear better than they are. Instead, they should be listening to the feedback given by customers and using this to build a better business.

Negative reviews make me less likely to use a business

Likewise, bad feedback has a strong impact on whether a customer chooses your business – with  82% of consumers less likely to use a business after seeing negative reviews.

But, with research finding that 39% of local businesses have a star rating of less than 4 stars on Google, many businesses could be putting off a significant chunk of potential customers.

Of course, negative reviews can happen to anyone. But, how you deal with them can help consumers understand what your business stands for, and what they should expect by choosing you. While you may receive a poor review for a customer that doesn’t like your service, always stay polite, and respond quickly to provide further details and a clear solution to anyone who may be reading. A bad review doesn’t need to be a disaster.

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Do consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations?

Do you trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations

Key Findings

  • 76% trust online reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends
  • 89% of 35-54-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
  • 18-34-year-olds are less likely to trust reviews as much as recommendations than they were in 2018

A stalwart of the Local Consumer Review Survey, we asked consumers to what extent they trust online reviews when compared to recommendations from friends, family, and colleagues.

76% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations – a slight slip from last year’s 78%.

89% of consumers aged 35-54 trust reviews as much as online recommendations. Among 18-34-year-olds, 81% reported trusting reviews, down from 89% last year. Consumers aged 55+ were the least likely to be trusting of online reviews – with 39% saying they didn’t trust reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Online reviews are undoubtedly a critical tool, but with the growth of recommendations on Facebook, as well as the growth of Nextdoor, and the normality of influencer recommendations, online reviews could be losing their place on the pedestal.


When judging a local business on reviews, what do consumers pay attention to?

What do you pay attention to in reviews

Most important factors in reviews

  1. How recent reviews are
  2. The business’s overall star rating
  3. How many reviews a business has
  4. How legitimate reviews appear to me
  5. The sentiment of the existing reviews

This question has evolved a little from previous years, allowing respondents to choose all of the factors that were important to them (previously just two), including the new options of legitimacy and the presence of photos. We made this change as we know that multiple factors affect customers’ decisions.

In last year’s report, star rating came out on top, followed by the number of reviews. This year, recency overtook these to become the factor of choice for consumers. It’s no longer enough to get a few reviews to get you to a 5-star rating, then stop. Ongoing reputation management is necessary to continue getting reviews to impress consumers and assure them that the experience they read about is still valid.

This year’s addition of photos in reviews felt needed due to the prominence of these across review sites. Reviewers on Google are encouraged to supply photos within reviews –  receiving an additional 5 Local Guide points for adding a review, compared to just 1 point for adding a no text review. For many industries, the inclusion of photos can be incredibly important to understanding a business – whether that’s ‘before and after’ shots for a tradesman, photos of meals for restaurants, or supplying samples of your work for photographers. In fact, our recent research into Google My Business found that businesses with higher numbers of photos tend to receive more clicks, calls, and direction requests.

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How recent does an online review need to be to impact consumers’ decisions?

How recent does an online review need to be

How recent does an online review need to be - age split

Key Findings

  • 48% of consumers only pay attention to reviews written within the past 2 weeks
  • 84% believe that reviews older than 3 months aren’t relevant
  • 61% of consumers aged 18-34 are only impacted by reviews within 2 weeks

Of course, while we know that recency is important to consumers, this can mean lots of different things to different people.

Now, 48% of consumers are only impacted by reviews from the last 2 weeks, up from 40% last year, and 18% in 2017. For 18-34-year-olds, this was 61%, and 60% of 35-54-year-olds. It is far less important for over 55s to see very up-to-date reviews – though 76% still expect these to be from the last 3 months.

84% of consumers believe that online reviews older than 3 months aren’t relevant. In fact, only 3% of consumers are influenced by reviews that are older than a year.


What’s the minimum star rating a business must have for consumers to use them?

What star rating does a business need to have

What star rating does a business need to have - age split

Key Findings

  • Businesses without 5 stars risk losing 12% of their customers
  • Only 53% of people would consider using a business with less than 4 stars
  • Consumers aged 55+ are least likely to forgive a low star rating

Star rating remains a critical way to impress potential customers. It’s highly likely that some customers will only look at an average star rating when making their mind up about a business – especially when seeing these in local pack results.

In our study on SERP clicks, we found that a business’s review rating was the biggest reason people clicked on local listings. Whether consumers are looking on Google My Business, Yelp, or HomeAdvisor, a low star rating could put off many potential customers well before they dig into the details of the reviews. Only 53% of consumers would use a business that has less than 4 stars – so this should be the bare minimum you aim for.

This is another area where we saw different expectations across the three age segments. 17% of 35-54-year-olds won’t use a business that has a less than perfect rating. And, only 7% of consumers older than 55 would use a business that has less than 3 stars – meaning lower-rated businesses could put off a significant proportion of possible customers.

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How many reviews do consumers read?

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The average consumer reads a whopping 10 reviews before feeling able to trust a business, which means it’s not good for businesses to have very few reviews.

On review sites such as Google, reviews aren’t initially ordered by the most recent. This means it’s important for every business to know which are the top reviews that appear for their business. Upvoting useful reviews can be one way to influence the order that reviews show. Additionally, encouraging reviewers to talk about the factors that other customers may be looking for, such as your service, your products, and attributes (such as being dog-friendly) can be useful.

When looking across the age groups, both the 18-34 age group and 35-54 now read more reviews before trusting a business than they did in 2018. The younger age group now need to read 13 reviews, compared to 11 last year, while 35-54s have jumped from 9 to 11. Over 55s have seen a dip from 8 to 7, though this is still a significant number of reviews.

But this doesn’t mean that you only need 1o reviews. Remember, a significant proportion are only impacted by very recent reviews. This means it’s more important than ever to build a reputation management strategy focused on generating a steady stream of reviews across 2020.

I look at multiple review sites when choosing local businesses

But remember, it’s not enough to focus your attention on just one review site. 70% of consumers look at multiple review sites when choosing a local business.

And there are plenty to choose from. While Yelp, Google, TripAdvisor, and Facebook are commonly known, there are dozens of niche review sites that allow consumers to easily compare similar services. Businesses should ensuring they are monitoring every review site, and pushing reviewers towards the review sites that their customers are finding them on. Ask new customers how they found you to ensure you have every angle covered.

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How many consumers read fake reviews in 2019?

Do you believe you've read a fake review in the past year

Over the past few years, fake reviews have become a huge problem, meaning many local marketers now spend a significant amount of time fighting these spammers. And, from the chart above, it seems like the fake reviews furore shows no sign of abating.

In 2019, 82% of consumers read a fake review – up from 74% last year. So does this mean that fake reviews are becoming more common, or could it be that increasingly savvy consumers are starting to suspect fakes could be around?

Again, there are differences across the age groupings. 92% of 18-34-year-olds spotted fake reviews, compared to 82% of 35-54-year-olds, and 71% of over 55s. Of course, this disparity doesn’t necessarily mean that these age groups are seeing different numbers of fake reviews (though, of course, those that read more reviews are more likely to). Instead, this could indicate that the older age group aren’t as likely to consider that reviews may be false.

I question the authenticity of reviews

It seems that not every consumer is as suspicious as us local marketers may be – with 68% of consumers questioning the authenticity of reviews. Just 9% said they don’t question the authenticity of reviews, and 23% are unsure.

Of course, while fake reviews can damage legitimate businesses’ chances, they can be difficult to spot, and aren’t as easy to see as they are on Amazon, for example. On many review sites, users can leave reviews with no text, and there’s no process to ensure these are consumers that have legitimately encountered the business.

We know how important reviews are for customers and local businesses alike, so we’d love to see more consumers feeling able to trust reviews by the time the next Local Consumer Review Survey rolls around. But first, review site owners need to step up and really start to tackle the fake reviews problem.

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Responding to Customer Reviews

Do consumers read businesses’ responses to their customers’ reviews?

Do you read businesses' responses to reviews

The above question was only asked to respondents that said they read reviews. 

A whopping 97% of review readers take in businesses’ responses to reviews. This has grown from 89% last year to include nearly every person that has read reviews for local businesses – making it a normal part of the reviews process.

The frequency of reading responses has also grown – with 46% saying they “always” read responses, up from 29% last year.

Responding to reviews is your chance to demonstrate what your business and customer service are really like. If you respond promptly, politely, and helpfully to less-than-glowing reviews, you have the opportunity to influence far more than the person who left the original review. This is your chance to tell your side of the story, as well as to help change the mind of the reviewer.

How do reviews responses impact consumers?

I'm more likely to use a business that has responded to their reviews

71% of consumers say they’re more likely to use a business that has responded to their existing reviews. This makes this a critical point of difference for your business.

Ignoring negative feedback could deter consumers from choosing your business, so it’s critical to keep on top of your online presence across the internet. It’s not enough to just respond to reviews on one platform – you must be watching every place customers may be talking about your business, including industry-specific review sites.

And remember, it’s not enough to only respond to negative reviews. If a customer is leaving a review for a business, they have spent their time providing feedback. Business owners should follow suit, and show that they are committed to listening to what their audience has to say.

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Posting Online Reviews

How many consumers write online reviews for local businesses?

Have you ever left a local business an online review

Have you ever left a local business an online review 2

Have you ever left a local business an online review - age split

Key Findings

  • 66% of consumers have written an online review for local businesses – including 80% of 35-54-year-olds
  • 60% have written reviews for positive experiences, while just 25% have written reviews for negative experiences
  • 85% of consumers are willing to leave reviews

Two out of three (66%) consumers have now written a review for a local business – up from 59% last year. And again, there seems to be a dramatic disparity between age groups. Just 48% of people aged 55+ have left online reviews, compared to 73% and 80% for the two other age groups.

Within this, it’s more common for consumers to leave reviews for positive experiences than for negative ones. This equates to 60% of consumers who have written reviews for positive experiences, and 25% who have for negative experiences.

This slightly subverts expectations, as you may expect a poor experience to be a bigger emotional driver for leaving public feedback than a positive one. But, with more businesses realizing the importance of proactive review management, we’d estimate that review writing is becoming more encouraged among happy shoppers.

The number of consumers leaving reviews is growing, but this doesn’t mean it’s peaked yet. Of the 34% of consumers that haven’t yet left an online review, more than half (56%) would be willing to leave one in the future. This means that 85% of consumers are willing to be open-minded to leaving reviews, so it’s critical to ensure every customer has an equally great experience – not just the ones that you think might complain!

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How many reviews did reviewers write for local businesses in 2019?

How many reviews have you written for local businesses in the last year

Average reviews written per reviewer

This question was only asked to people who have left reviews. 

Key Findings

  • Consumers that write reviews wrote an average of 9 in 2019
  • 18-34-year-olds write more than double the number of reviews that over 55s do
  • 9% of people have written more than 20 reviews

When looking at the 66% of people that have written reviews, the average number of reviews written per person in 2019 was 9.

But, this isn’t equally split across age groups. 18-34-year-olds wrote 11 reviews in 2019, while reviewers over 55 left far fewer.

Just 9% of reviewers wrote more than 20 reviews in 2019. While Local Guides and regular reviewers do account for many reviews, it’s absolutely not the case that they are the only ones to worry about. 47% of reviewers write less than 3 reviews per year, so may only be inspired to write one for exceptional (or exceptionally bad!) service.


How many consumers have been asked to write local business reviews?

Have you ever been asked to leave a review for a business

Of course, reviews aren’t necessarily always down to the consumer, as asking for reviews can have a significant impact.

Asking for reviews has remained broadly static over the past year, with 67% of consumers having been asked for reviews.

But, among those that have been asked, a growing amount went on to actually leave a review. 76% of those who are asked to leave reviews go on to do so, up from 70% last year.

In most cases, we strongly recommend asking for reviews – after all, if you don’t ask, you won’t get. However, please do be mindful that not every review site welcomes solicited reviews. Yelp frowns upon businesses that ask for reviews in any form, while Google will penalize businesses that opt to gate their reviews by only allowing those that lead positive feedback to write reviews.

The data also finds that younger consumers are more likely to recall being asked to leave a review than those aged over 55. 50% of the older age group said they hadn’t been asked, compared to 26% of 18-34-year-olds, and 31% of 35-54s. Are local businesses not asking consumers to leave reviews at an equal rate?

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How common are responses to reviews?

Have you received a response to your reviews

This year, we also wanted to know whether review writers were receiving responses to their reviews. At BrightLocal, we encourage our Reputation Manager customers to respond to their customers to ensure they feel that their feedback is being heard.

And it’s not enough to provide a standard copy-and-paste response. Instead, really listen to what the customer is saying. See if there you can take any learnings for your business from their feedback, and consider what you’d like the 97% of the outside world reading your replies to believe about your business following your response.

72% of people who have written reviews received a response to a review they have written. To these businesses that are keeping on top of their reviews, we applaud you. However, this does leave 22% who didn’t receive a response, as well as 6% who weren’t sure either way. It can be hard to keep track of responses to reviews, but rest assured, your responses are being read, even if not by the original reviewer.


How do businesses ask customers for reviews?

How have you been asked for reviews

The above question was only answered by those that had been asked to leave reviews. 

Top ways to ask for a review

  1. In person during the sale
  2. In an email
  3. Over the phone
  4. On a receipt
  5. In an SMS message

There are plenty of ways to ask for reviews. The most common ways consumers recall being asked are during the sale, via email, and over the phone.

In industries where you collect customers’ contact details, following up after the sale can be a great way to ensure your customer remains happy with the experience, and that you can tackle any issues head-on before the customer considers writing a bad public review. Of course, choose carefully – many consumers may feel uneasy if they receive an unexpected call following a minor purchase.

Plenty of consumers are being asked for reviews in various less common ways. Including a link to review on a receipt or business card can be a great way to get customers thinking about your services. To create a link to direct customers to feedback, try out our Reputation Manager.

A surprising number of consumers report being asked to leave a review in return for a discount, freebie, or in exchange for cash. When taking into account those that have been asked to leave a review in more than one of these ways, 24% have been asked to leave a review in exchange for cash, freebies, or discounts. For the vast majority of review sites, incentivizing reviews in this way this is a huge no-no. It’s also morally questionable as to whether these reviews can be trusted as being authentic to the real business experience.

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Methodology

The 2019 Local Consumer Review Survey explores trends in online reviews for local businesses over the past year. It includes new and modified questions based on the key SEO and local business reviews seen throughout the year to provide local marketers the information needed to maximize their online reputation management impact.

The statistics and findings are solely focused on local business reviews on sites such as Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor, Yelp etc), and not general product reviews (such as on Amazon).

Based on the views of a representative sample of 1,005 US-based consumers, the Local Consumer Review Survey was conducted in November 2019 with an independent consumer panel. Age-group breakdowns are representative of those in the US population.

Consumers that do not read online reviews were not asked questions around their review behavior, in order to provide a better understanding of those that do use reviews during a purchasing decision.

Publishers are welcome to use the charts and data, crediting BrightLocal and linking to this URL. If you have any questions about the report, please get in touch with the content team, or leave a comment below.

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Thank you for reading the 2019 Local Consumer Review Survey. How do you think online reviews will change in 2020? Let us know in the comments below! 

The post Local Consumer Review Survey 2019 appeared first on BrightLocal.



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/12/11/local-consumer-review-survey-2019/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=local-consumer-review-survey-2019

Monday, 2 December 2019

6 Content Marketing Strategies for Small Business Growth in 2020

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So, how do you feel when you’re keen on playing a YouTube video, but first there’s that video ad?  You really get into that ad, right?  Kidding.  You know the drill. You look to the bottom right, hoping against hope the old “Skip this ad” pops up, the faster the better.  Oh, by the way, how do you feel about the business that just made you wait?

How about when you’re getting to that climactic scene in “Silence of the Lambs“—screen goes dark and up comes an ad for dishwashing detergent—or trying to take in some breaking news and a popup ad for CRM software blasts across your computer screen?  You really love those companies, don’t you?  Hold that thought.

People Hate Ads. Period.

Remember “All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten?”  One of the things you learned is to treat people the way you want to be treated—and yet every day, marketers who hate the ads that take away their control and nag them with messages they don’t want to see (or don’t want to see until they’re done doing what they want to do) subject prospective customers to intrusive, mind-numbing ads that insult their intelligence, make them mad—and achieve a result the precise opposite of what they were trying to do—instead of engaging prospects, they turn them into staunch adversaries.

Inbound to The Rescue

Back in the ’70s, people saw on average about 500 ads a day.  That’s a lot—now multiply it by 10, because about 5,000 is the number of ads consumers are subjected to today, every day.

Like it or not, that’s the marketing landscape into which you’re placing your company’s messaging.

A world in which consumers get TiVo to fast forward through TV commercials and by the millions register on do not call lists to escape annoying telemarketers.

Savvy marketers understand this. This is why they’re taking another content marketing approach. One which attempts to break through the noise and build trust with helpful, relevant content before talking sales.

It’s called inbound marketing.

What is Inbound Marketing?

circle of hands holding smartphones over wooden slat table

Let’s say you’re searching for a new washing machine, so you type “buy washing machine” into Google.

The first result takes you to a professionally designed page with a whole bunch of glitzy dishwashers, plus the usual product descriptions, etc., etc.

The second takes you to an article, “Are You Paying Too Much for Your Dishwasher?  3 Features You Don’t Need and Will Never Use.”

Now that’s something that’s going to help you.  You want to read it.  You want to read it so much you have no problem giving the author your contact information in exchange for it.  And, one more thing—if that article does what it promises to do (i.e., saves you some dough), you’ll be happy.  You’ll be so happy you’ll want to thank whoever solved your problem (paying more than you need to).  You might even buy your new dishwasher from the company that told you what you needed to know on the QT.

And that’s the essence (though not the totality) of inbound marketing, an approach that connects with consumers by answering their most pressing questions and solving their most protracted problems as a means of building trust, not to mention generating leads, boosting conversions, and ramping up sales.

This is HubSpot’s take on the gist of the inbound marketing approach:

“Inbound marketing is a business methodology that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. While outbound marketing interrupts your audience with content they don’t want, inbound marketing forms connections they’re looking for and solves problems they already have.”

It’s Not About Content. It’s About The Right Content And The Right Mix

If you haven’t seen the stunning metrics the prove the effectiveness of content marketing (the heart of a solid inbound strategy for both B2B and B2C businesses), you should check out these 9 from Content Marketing Institute.  Suffice it to say that, effectively leveraged, content marketing will generate a dramatically larger number of quality leads and increase sales opportunities more—and do it less expensively—than traditional, outbound tactics.  The operative word, of course, is “effectively.”  To do content marketing “effectively,” you need to keep 2 thoughts in mind:

  1. You’re on a tightrope: on one side is your target audience; on the other side are profits.  Stray too far to one side or the other, and you’re going to fall.  Said differently, the content you create needs to give consumers the help they need—but it also needs to demonstrate (subtly) that your business is the one providing that help, and the one better equipped than your competitors to continue providing that help throughout your budding relationship.
  2. Different people like different kinds of contentpeople process information in different ways.  Some are “visual learners:” they like things like infographics and charts.  Then there are “auditory learners,” the ones who want to dive into a podcast, for example.  The point is, to optimize your content marketing, you need to push a smart content mix that accommodates the maximum number of consumers.

Getting Your Content Marketing Mix Right

So, how do you ensure your content is effective and resonates with all segments of your target audience?  You do it by creating multiple versions of your best content, each version appealing to a different buyer persona.  You should also combine content types for maximum impact—for example, whereas videos, blogs, and podcasts are effective on their own, in combination they can be dominant.

That said, of the several content types you can create, the following 6 are arguably the most effective:

1. Video marketing:

Video marketing is powerful not only because it can collapse the essence of your brand message to 2 minutes or less, but also because it’s perhaps the most effective channel to create an emotional bond with your audience.  That’s one of the reasons marketers who distribute video content increase revenues 50% faster than those who don’t.

2. Blogging:

Posting blogs on your website is perhaps the most effective way to generate and nurture quality leads.  In fact, for many marketers, “lead generation” and “blogging” are almost interchangeable.  To work, your blogs need to be more about your customers and less about your business—and they need to provide information consumers want and need.  Of course, effective blogging is about more than lead generation—for example, businesses that blog regularly are about 13X more likely to see a positive return on investment (ROI) than those who don’t.

3. Podcasts:

Although new to some marketers, podcasts—a group of audio files consumers can download and listen to—are rapidly gaining in popularity.  The right podcast can increase traffic to your website and help you solidify your relationship with your audience.  Since 27% of men and 24% of women now regularly listen to podcasts, including them in your content mix just makes good marketing sense.

4. White papers:

These are detailed, authoritative reports on topics about which your target audience cares.  To be effective, a white paper should solve a specific problem for the consumers who read it.  Said differently, white papers are problem-solving guides.  Like blogs, white papers are especially effective in boosting lead generation.

5. Infographics:

Not all consumers like infographics, but the ones who do, like them a lot. This is because they summarize key data in an easily accessible format, and without what those consumers view as unnecessary textual content.  To accommodate those consumers who want to see infographics—and those who don’t—it can be useful to deliver infographics alongside text which presents the same data with editorial commentary.

6. eBooks:

The fact that eBooks must be downloaded to consume makes them feel more authoritative and valuable (one might say “real”) to those who read them.  eBooks, like blogs and white papers, will boost lead generation—they can also reinforce your brand and establish you as a thought leader in your industry.

Content Marketing in 2020

The inbound mantra that “content is king” is no less true today than it was 5 years ago. If anything, a smart content marketing strategy is arguably more important now for your business than ever.

Designing and executing a sound strategy—one that effectively dovetails with other digital strategies, however, can be complicated and confusing.  That’s where an experienced, competent digital marketing agency can help, giving you the guidance and advice you need to succeed.

To learn more about our comprehensive menu of digital marketing solutions, and to see how they can help you generate more leads, boost conversions, increase profitability and grow, contact us today.

The post 6 Content Marketing Strategies for Small Business Growth in 2020 appeared first on LocalBizGuru.com.



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Wednesday, 27 November 2019

5 Innovative PPC Strategies to Streamline your Campaign

How to Get the Most out of your Pay Per Click Marketing

It’s tempting to overlook PPC when setting up your campaign.  After all, it’s a high competition area, and you want to have the best ROI, the best bang for your marketing buck.  But PPC is a powerful tool for outreach.  If done correctly, it can massively increase your site traffic and percentage of conversions.  So here are a few tips from your Sydney online marketing gurus to help you get the most out of your pay per click campaign:

1. Use Target Outranking Share to Outshine Competitors

Most SEO services focus on boosting your search ranking, on showing up higher in the search for basic keywords.  While this is important, sometimes it’s better to focus on beating out one or two key competitors, to show up higher in the search rankings than they do.  Target Outranking Share is a tool that helps you to analyse your key competitor’s approach and adjust your bids for ad space strategically.

Basically, with Target Outranking Share, you can modify your ad space bids based on your competitors domain name and the target, which is how often you want to beat out your competitors for ad space.  You can automate the process, so that your campaign automatically outbids your competitors for high value spaces, and set a maximum bid limit, so it doesn’t go too far.  Finally, you can look into low quality keywords and choose not to spend on them.  This helps to focus your investment where it gets the most results.

2. Focus on the Local Market with Google Search Ads Location Bids

If you have a brick and mortar store or a local audience, then location is a key factor to bridge traffic and conversions.  In fact, local SEO should be a central element to your site design and digital outreach.  But you might not have realised that it’s just as important for your PPC campaign.  By using location bid adjustments, your campaign will bid more on spaces that are seen in your location.  You focus your outreach on the target area that’s likely to result in conversions.

3. Look into Target CPA Bidding

CPA means cost per acquisition.  It basically looks into how much it costs you to get a conversion.  This is a great way to run analytics on your PPC campaign and find out how effective it has been.  Then, as you refine your strategy, you can look at the CPA impact.  Google Ads looks into your conversion rate and offers a Conversion Optimiser tool to adjust bids on spaces and keywords that have given you the best return.  CPA Bidding works best when you have been running your campaign for a few months and have at least 15 conversions in the last month.  The more historical data you provide, the more effective it will be at providing at optimising your bidding strategy.  Be careful with seasonal products or services, as this can skew the CPA results.

4. Focus on Remarketing

If you’ve been in business for a while, you know that it’s much easier to retain customers than to get new ones.  The great thing is that you can use Remarketing Lists to drive connect with existing customers and drive repeat purchases.  Remarketing Lists allow you to adjust bids higher for people who have visited your site and automatically bid on keywords used by site visitors.  You can increase bids for search users that have made purchases previously, or develop customer combination lists to customise ads based on website behaviour.

5. Consider Negative Keywords

If you’ve worked with an SEO consultant, you already know about keywords and how they work.  But another factor to keep in mind with your PPC campaign is negative keywords.  Here’s how it works.  Your keywords help to determine who will see your ads.  They point you to the interested parties, the users who are likely to move from traffic to conversions.  Negative keywords modify the search to show the users who are not likely to buy.  So, for instance, if a search includes words like “free” or “review”, it’s likely that the user is not ready to purchase the product or service.  You can adjust your bids based on these negative keywords, saving money by targeting the most interested customers.

These tips are great for getting you started, but they’re just the beginning.  A properly run PPC campaign can help to build brand recognition, boost search rankings, and significantly increase your profits.  If you want to know more about PPC or about any aspect of high quality SEO, feel free to contact us.  Local Web is your #1 local Sydney SEO services, and we can help you to get your local business on the map.

The post 5 Innovative PPC Strategies to Streamline your Campaign appeared first on Local Web.



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NEW FEATURE: Never Miss a Single Customer Review with Review Inbox

Today, we’re proud to announce a major update to Reputation Manager with the release of Review Inbox.

What is Review Inbox?

Review Inbox makes multi-location reputation management simpler. Now you can see every customer review, for every location you manage in BrightLocal, from the comfort of a single feed. 

With Review Inbox you can:

  • See all customer reviews across every location in one place 
  • Filter reviews by rating to react quickly to negative feedback
  • Respond to Facebook and Google reviews with a single click
  • Coordinate and manage review responses more effectively
  • Export your data via CSV to conduct deeper performance analysis

Fight fires, faster

Dealing with negative reviews can feel like fighting fires, and larger multi-location businesses are often more likely to get burnt.

Why? Because they’re dealing with scale. 

A business with hundreds of locations might be dealing with thousands of new customer reviews every week, and they can’t afford to get complacent – a single negative review can drive away 22% of people who see it. 

Let’s face it… negative reviews happen. It’s how you respond that can make the difference. 45% of people say they’re more likely to use a business that responds to their negative reviews.

Review Inbox is here to help you detect and put out potential fires faster.

Who is Review Inbox for?

Review Inbox is for multi-location businesses

For businesses, Review Inbox solves the problems inherent with managing reviews for hundreds of locations.

Sometimes it might fall to a small team or even a single person (!), to deal with hundreds or thousands of incoming customer reviews across dozens of review sites. 

Review Inbox is for agencies

Scale can also be an issue for agencies. If you’re working with dozens of small business clients, it can be hard to split your time effectively.

Review Inbox allows you to manage reviews across your entire client base from a single dashboard. That way, you can ensure your time is best spent dealing with issues that need your attention right away.

Need to focus on a particular client? You can use the search function to find their reviews across all their locations. 

How to manage reputation more effectively with Review Inbox

See all your customer feedback, at all times

Seeing all your reviews in one place will ensure feedback doesn’t get missed and certain locations don’t get neglected. It’s now possible to monitor up to 80 review sites from BrightLocal. And with Review Inbox, you’ll be able to monitor all those sites, for all your locations, at all times.

Prioritize what needs attention

All this feedback at your fingertips is great, but it can easily get overwhelming – especially if you’ve got hundreds of new reviews to deal with each week. While you should always aim to respond quickly, some issues are going to need to be jumped on first.

Sorting and filtering will allow you to focus on the high-priority issues such as a particularly negative review. 

Respond quickly

Speed of response is the first – and sometimes most important – step in dealing with a negative review effectively.

With Review Inbox, you can start responding to Google and Facebook reviews with just a single click. For other sites, we provide a direct link to the review – so you can simply log in to your account and craft your response.

Streamline your review management workflows

Review management at scale can get messy fast. That’s why we’ve designed workflow tools to help you stay organized, work efficiently, and get your whole team on the same page. 

You’ll be able to change the status of each review so everyone can see what’s awaiting a response and what’s already been responded to. You’ll also have easy-to-access folders that group reviews together by status. That way you can be confident that no review is neglected or responded to twice.

Never miss a single customer review with Review Inbox

Review Inbox is available now for all customers within Reputation Manager. 

This is the sixth major release to Reputation Manager in 2019 and we’re really excited to see how this can unlock more value for our customers who are dealing with online review management at scale.

If you’re not yet a customer, give Review Inbox and all other features of Reputation Manager a try, completely free for 14 days!

The post NEW FEATURE: Never Miss a Single Customer Review with Review Inbox appeared first on BrightLocal.



source https://thebtrade.com/2019/11/27/new-feature-never-miss-a-single-customer-review-with-review-inbox/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-feature-never-miss-a-single-customer-review-with-review-inbox

Tuesday, 26 November 2019

It’s Not About Length: SEO Content Trends to Stay Ahead of in 2020

Hard as it may be to believe, it’s that time of year again – and no, I’m not talking about making Christmas lists, planning how best to avoid the in-laws over the festive season, and having mild panic attacks about how you’re going to afford all the presents and festivities that the coming months have in store. No, it’s the end of another year, which means it’s time to speculate about content trends for the coming 12 months.

Here are four trends that I think will have a significant impact on SEO content in 2020:

It’s not about length – it’s what you do with it that counts

As digital marketers, we sometimes get a little obsessed with hard and fast rules. It’s inevitable. We work in an industry based on understanding and algorithms, on following best practices, using fool-proof formulae, getting the inputs just right to achieve a precise result. A lot of the time, I think that’s what makes what we do rewarding. But I think one of the mistakes we make is to look for a right answer when there isn’t one.

The question of how long a piece of content should be is divisive because there really is no right answer. Actually, it’s worse than that. There are a lot of right answers. People have short attention spans, so writing concise, 500-word blogs is the way to go, right? But if you look at the top result for just about any search, you’ll find the word count rarely dips below a thousand. So longer must be better, then. Well, you can’t argue with the fact that most readers only get about halfway through a piece of content, and that many don’t even scroll to begin with. The reality is that there’s no ideal length for content because length in itself doesn’t mean anything. What does matter is how well you’re answering the question, or addressing the needs of your reader.

In my experience, it’s safer to lean towards the longer side. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a great-sounding blog title, and opening the link to find 200 words of half-baked, keyword-stuffed content that doesn’t really say anything at all. It’s equally painful, though, when you start reading a long-form article and realise the writer is trying to draw out a 300-word idea into 3,000. Ultimately, longer content is good, but there are certainly diminishing returns.

Voice search will make you question everything

‘Always read your writing aloud.’ That might be the single best piece of advice I’ve ever heard as a writer. And, since voice search is expected to account for as much as half of all online search traffic by 2020, it takes on a new meaning: if you aren’t reading your own writing out loud, Google’s going to do it for you, and you’d better make sure the results are good enough to drive interaction or conversion.

The key thing to realise here is that voice search is fundamentally different from text search. The average text search phrase, for example, is around one to three words, while the average voice search phrase hovers more around three to six words. Voice searches are also far more likely to be phrased as questions. People talk to their voice assistants like they’re talking to a real person, so it follows that content should respond in kind if it hopes to meet the needs of the searcher.

For content to soak up the lion’s share of voice searches, it needs to be written more conversationally than you might be used to, and it needs to hone in on answering the questions that the user is asking. Content that answers questions head-on, shows a clear understanding of search intent and sheds as much of the unnecessary detail as possible is bound to perform better for voice search traffic, so expect this trend to become increasingly prevalent in the coming months and years.

Zero is greater than one

Another consequence of voice assistants becoming the go-to search channel is the importance of Position Zero: whenever a user inputs a voice search query, their assistant will read out the position zero result before delivering the rest. So, even if you’re dominating the search results for the entire first page, a competitor with the zero spot is going to soak up 100% of the voice search traffic and leave your hard-fought position one content starved for clicks.

Gartner estimates that around a third of searches will be done without a screen at all in 2020, which means that anything beyond the position zero result might as well not exist for voice search purposes. Expect blogging content and other written forms to include an increasing amount of structured data, rich data snippets, and content specifically designed to rank above position 1. This will be particularly important for content with a local element (since a large part of voice search queries centre around local search) and bottom-of-the-funnel searches.

This time, it’s personal

There’s no doubt that personalised marketing messaging works. We live in the age of the individual consumer: people are accustomed to their social media feeds, email inboxes and mobile experiences being tailored to their preferences and interests. So, it follows that expectations are the same for any content they engage with while searching or browsing.

For advertising the remedy is rather simple: serve ads that are targeted at specific factors and show an awareness of the individual customer’s context, preferences and their position in the sales funnel. But for ‘raw’ SEO content – that is, blogs, website copy, landing pages, etc. – it’s a little less straightforward. Depending on how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go, you could include forms, quizzes, and surveys to understand exactly who you’re talking to before serving them tailored content, or you could go the simpler route and profile your user base into different personas who are likely to respond to different messaging.

Expect increasingly tailored, topic-focused content to come to the fore even more so than it already has in recent years. Again, customers are increasingly engaging with content that makes real conversation with them and demonstrates an understanding of their context, preferences and what they’re looking for. The more granular you can get when it comes to understanding those factors, the better you’ll resonate with your readers.

 

This article was written by Paul Melis from The Drum and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

The post It’s Not About Length: SEO Content Trends to Stay Ahead of in 2020 appeared first on Insights.



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Monday, 25 November 2019

Evolving the Marketo Revvie Awards | 2020 Adobe Experience Makers

The extra mile is often a differentiator between great and phenomenal work. Striving for excellence and being thoughtful about the customer journey is great, but nowadays it has become a necessity in order to compete. What makes one’s work phenomenal is reimagining customer experiences by combining the best technology with game-changing ideas and flawless execution.

Marketo Revvies and Adobe Experience Makers merge

At Adobe, we want to celebrate these outstanding, fearless marketers and let the world know about the extra mile they took to innovate customer experience. The expanded 2020 Adobe Experience Maker Awards blend the best of the original Experience Maker Award program with the rich history of the Marketo Revvie and Magento Imagine Excellence Awards, into 13 new exciting award categories.

Award categories and application process

There has never been a better time to apply for the Adobe Experience Maker Awards. This year you or your team have an opportunity to stand out in one of 13 categories, including but not limited to The Closer, The Orchestrator, The Maverick, The Mastermind, and The Ambassador. Are you our customer that creates impactful digital experiences for your customers? If so, please apply for this award here to let us celebrate your success.

The application process is easy and consists of only four steps:

  • Create a profile
  • Select the award category you are applying for
  • Detail your achievements
  • Upload supporting content

Deadlines, guidelines – all the “fun” stuff

You have until January 31st, 2020 to submit your application. If you choose to apply for multiple awards, you must submit an application for each award. Clients may nominate themselves or be nominated by their solution or technology partner. There are a few guidelines you need to keep in mind, and you can find them here at the bottom of the page. Award winners will be announced at the Experience Maker Awards Ceremony in Las Vegas that will take place during Adobe Summit.

Winners of the 2019 Adobe Experience Maker Awards

Check out last year’s winners and read their inspiring case study snippets that show what made their digital experience transformation so special. This is a great starting point to decide which achievements you’d like to focus on in your entry, and remember that we always welcome innovation and challenging the status quo. One thing that all of the past winners have in common is reimagining the customer journey in an original way.

Start your application process today

Now that you are well equipped with knowledge about why you should apply and how to do it, go ahead and submit your entries for the 2020 Adobe Experience Maker Awards today – we can’t wait to hear about your success.

The post Evolving the Marketo Revvie Awards | 2020 Adobe Experience Makers appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog – Best Practices and Thought Leadership.



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