For all the online marketing strategies that web designers and business owners employ, it's the results that matter most. That's one reason why so many books, seminars, and web pages are big on the topic of maximizing website conversion ratios – everything you do to bring traffic to your business website is a waste if you can't convince some of those visitors to become customers.

With that in mind, here are seven quick ways to increase the conversion ratios on your website, and improve your online marketing ROI at the same time:

1. Improve your business web design. This is a simple notion, but an effective one. The more credible and professional your business website looks, the more trust people put in your company, and the more likely they are to buy from you. Hint: work with an organization that has professional training and certification in landing page design, such as what they offer in MECLABS/MarketingExperiments curriculum.

2. Opt for a cleaner navigation structure. Just as in a physical retail store, customers who can't find what they're looking for quickly, and can't find help when they need it, are very likely to become frustrated and take their money elsewhere. There’s a reason why minimalist design has become so popular. Use the old “KISS” rule (Keep It Simple)!

3. Start a relationship with the customer. No matter how great your business website is, not everyone is going to be ready to buy on the first visit. For that reason, you should be collecting e-mail addresses and using auto-responders. It's an easy tool to install, and a great way to start a relationship with future customers and to keep in touch.

4. Add strong call to actions on every page. What do you really want people to do while they're on your pages? Figure that out, and then ask them to do it, in a very straightforward way. Asking for what you want isn't exactly an advanced marketing technique, but it can do wonders for your business website.

5. Encourage customers to leave online reviews. How will this help you improve your conversion ratios? The more visitors to your website see that you have been able to make other customers happy – in the form of four- and five-star reviews – the easier it is for them to make the decision to do business with your company. A study has shown that over 88% of all online reviews in the U.S. are positive ones, and 70% of consumers trust the word of other consumers, while only 27% trust the experts.

6. Use click-to-call functionality. Now more than ever, customers will be visiting your website through smart phones and other web-ready devices. By letting them click to call you instantly, you make it faster and more convenient for them to contact you and place an order, schedule an appointment, etc. Remember that a website designed for the mobile platform is very different than the design of your regular website.

7. Put your contact info in places that are easy to find. In a perfect world, visitors to your business website will understand exactly what you want them to do and decide to do it. Should they need assistance, or have a question, however, make it easy for them to reach you quickly. Most people do not feel comfortable doing business with a company whose contact information is difficult to find.

Remember, finding customers online is the name of the game, so use these tips to increase your website conversion ratios.

WSI (We Simplify the Internet) has been providing all size businesses with results-oriented internet and digital marketing strategies since the mid-90's. So don't hesitate to call the best in the business (at least we think so!). 

If you're in the Madison and Mount Horeb Wisconsin area and have been thinking about freshening up your website and start turning more visitors into customers, you should contact WSI or give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!

Best Regards,

Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

In most cases, the biggest obstacle to winning the new customer for your company, once they have visited your website, is in your products, your prices, or even your competitors. It's the trust and confidence that your new potential customer doesn't have yet.

In other words, it's hard for them to know whether you are going to do everything your website promises you will, and whether or not they will still feel good about their decision to buy from you later. If there were some way that you could ease their minds and reduce these fears, your online leads and sales would dramatically go up.

Luckily, there is something you can do to give customers more confidence in your business – you can let other buyers post online reviews of their purchases.

Having reviews on your site works wonders because customers trust each other more than they do you or the manufacturers, at least when they are first deciding whether or not to place an order. And so, if they see lots of four and five star reviews all over your site, they feel confident that they are dealing with a reputable company and are much more likely to do business with you.

In addition, there are other benefits to having online reviews:

Adding online reviews to your website could help your search engine positioning. Google and the other major search engines love customer-generated content like online reviews, and tend to index quickly. That means that your great reviews help you show up on search engines more often, and may even appear in search results themselves, leading to more sales.

Online reviews are great for Facebook fan pages and other social media marketing. Since the essence of social media marketing is getting other people to tell their friends and colleagues about what you do, it only makes sense to integrate your online reviews into your Facebook business fan page and other profiles. If customers love you, why not let everyone see it?

Online reviews lead to more sales and faster sales. When a potential buyer sees that so many other people are happy with your work, or your products, they generally do less comparison-shopping, make quicker buying decisions, and decide to place larger orders. For that reason, encouraging satisfied buyers to leave their impressions on your website doesn't just build your credibility – it directly increases the profits you can make from your business website.

If you haven't tried a review system on your business website yet, get in touch with us today to find out how easy it is to use one to grow your sales.

Owners of all size businesses should have an internet marketing plan that takes advantage of the tremendous opportunities available in the digital marketing environment. If you would like to sit down and discuss these opportunities, you should contact WSI since we have been helping small and medium size businesses grow through professionally developed online strategies since the mid-90's.

If you're in the Madison Wisconsin area, give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!

Best Regards,

Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

 Following is a list of the hot trends going on in the digital marketing industry which business's are subscribing to today. WSI is a full-service provider of digital marketing tools and techniques, and can help businesses of all sizes with any of these opportunities: 

1. Mobile Websites. With the growth of the smart phone technology, all businesses should have a mobile version of their website and it needs to be optimized like a regular website so that it is highly visible to the search engines for your important keywords.


2. Mobile Advertising. Same as paid marketing or pay-per-click, only these textual ads are only displayed when the searcher is using a mobile device, and are linked to specific pages on your mobile website.


3. Mobile Text Messaging. Similar to sending out email newsletters, people are able to “opt-in” to your mobile text messaging campaign to receive information from you about special product promotions, event notifications, coupon downloads, and other opportunities that are only available via their mobile device. You have complete control of your campaigns through the broadcasting tool that we provide.
     
4. 5-star Online Customer Reviews. Putting these on a website and integrating them on to your business Facebook page is a great way to increase conversions. Site visitors are able to visually see how well a company is servicing their customers, and then more quickly make a decision to become a new customer. According to a study, 88% of all online reviews in the U.S. are positive ones, and 70% of consumers trust other consumers opinions, while only 27% trust what the experts have to say.
    
5. Blog posting, article and press release syndication. Integrating a blog with a business’s website does two things. First, it is a great way to communicate with existing or potential customers. Second, the search engines consider it fresh content, and will visit and index more areas of your website because of that. Many of my clients use our professional copywriting service, letting us write the blog posts, post them to the business blog, and then submit them to several online article or press release directories where they will also be picked up by other websites and search engines, and syndicated across the internet. We also hook up the business blog with your Facebook business page if one exists where the post can also syndicate across the social networks.
     
6. Search Engine Marketing. Paid search or pay-per-click advertising and organic search engine optimization is still the number one technique for drawing geo-targeted traffic to a business’s website:
   
   
   1. Organic search engine optimization includes on-page and off-page techniques. Detailed documents that explain what is all included will be provided upon request.
   
   
   2. Pay-per-click targeted search engine advertising is the largest advertising mechanism in the world. Advertising can be locally, regionally or nationally targeted.
             
   
   
7. Display Advertising & Remarketing – A “push” form of advertising also known as “banner” advertising. Your banner ad is displayed on other websites who have opted in to Google’s (or other search engine’s) affiliate program. You pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your website. Remarketing is a technique where your ads are displayed when people who have previously visited your website through your pay per click campaign visit an affiliate’s website. These ads can be static photo images, or include audio and video.


8. Microsites – small 2-3 page websites organically optimized for specific geographical areas. Great method for local targeting. For example, an auto repair shop may want to target people living in Madison, Fitchburg, Middleton, and Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. It is very difficult to optimize the main website for each of those locations, so the best method is to optimize the main site for the primary target area, and then create microsites and optimize those for the other locations.


9. Click to Call – Conversion tactic used successfully to convert website visitors into leads. Visitors simply click on an image displayed on your website, and the system then connects them to your business. Call lists can be set up so that calls follow the list, and then go to a recorded voice mail if nobody answers.


10. Groupon – Discount online selling to specific geographically targeted audiences, Groupon is the fastest growing company in the world. You negotiate a discounted price with Groupon who then sells your product via broadcast emails they send to their subscribers on a daily basis, and then they collect payment, keep their fee, and then write you a check for the balance.
    
    
11. Email Marketing – Monthly or quarterly newsletters, event notifications, special promotions, etc. This is a great way to stay in touch and nurture existing customers, as well as market to potential clients who subscribe to the newsletter through the business’s website. We offer a full-service option through WSI Integrated Ad Solutions (Inbox 360) as well as services through our partnership with Constant Contact.
    
    
12. Social Media Marketing. This is used in two ways. First, it is a great way to stay or get in touch with existing or potential customers, to monitor what they might be saying about your business, and be a part of that conversation. Second, the social media networks are a good place to market to potential customers without trying to sell them on your business. Use of Facebook and LinkedIn ads, additional pay-per-click advertising methods, are growing quickly. We offer social media services including the very basic setup to a fully managed social marketing strategy.
    

Owners of all size businesses should have an online marketing plan that takes advantage of the tremendous opportunities available in the online environment. If you would like to sit down and discuss these opportunities or have us review your existing online plan, you should contact WSI since we have been helping small and medium size businesses grow through professionally developed online strategies for many years. If you're in the Madison Wisconsin area, give us a call today at (608) 523-4255 and let's discuss these opportunities right away!
Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

Looking For A Turn-Key Solution To Manage Your Online Reputation & Leverage Social Media?

 

There are two things business owners and marketing managers need to know about promoting their companies over the Internet: First, that it's now the number one place that customers look for products, recommendations, and even business-to-business vendors. The second thing they have to understand is that there isn't any single way to reach those potential buyers.

For years, companies could find a steady source of new revenue simply by optimizing their sites for the major search engines, executing and refining a profitable pay per click advertising campaign, or circulating articles and press releases that brought attention to their websites. Those are all still good ideas, of course, but none of them is strong enough, on its own, to succeed anymore. The web has simply become too competitive.

That's easy enough to understand, but it doesn't make your job any simpler. There was hardly enough time to add regular posts to the company blog before, and now with trends like social media, online video marketing and  mobile marketing taking up more attention, the whole task of promoting your company online can seem like too much work to even attempt.

There are other alternatives to burying your head in the sand, however. With WSI's ReachCast service, it's becoming easier than ever for organizations of any size to add new, high-quality content every week, and in all the areas that matter most. By solidifying your marketing message and spreading it in a variety of ways, we have found a simple and efficient solution for the business that wants to do it all but doesn't have the time or budget.

Here are just a few of the things you get with WSI ReachCast:

• Submissions and updates to a specialized blog created just for your business, plus to all the major search engines, social media sites and local business directories. No more filling out forms or going through complicated verification checks. We will take care of all of that for you, ensuring that your company gets listed everywhere it needs to.

• Content that's more than keywords. Anyone can generate a set of boring articles, social updates, and online videos. ReachCast gives you access to top tier creative teams that devise the kind of content that puts your business in the right light to get spread around your industry on its own. In fact, our base package includes professional copy writing and syndication of 8 articles per month.

• Online reputation monitoring and management. What are customers, competitors, and vendors saying about you? Watching the web for any accurate and fraudulent information is important in this day and age when a single bad review, showing up in search engine results, can cost you hundreds of future sales. And guess what, with the WSI ReachCast service, we not only monitor your online customer reputation, we also make you aware of any negative comments, and we re-promote the positive ones!

• Comprehensive social media marketing. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube already have hundreds of millions of members, and they are gaining steam every day. There's never been a better time to start creating and strengthening relationships via social media sites. With WSI Reach Cast, we create and help you manage your presence on these social media sites.

If you're tired of watching opportunities to take advantage of Internet marketing go by, try WSI's ReachCast today. It's a great way to make sure that new customers can find you online, and that they hear the right things when they do find you.

Call us today at (866) 531-1686, or submit our request form.

Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

Internet marketing, also referred to as as  online marketing, digital marketing, i-marketing, web marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. Internet marketing is used by businesses to create leads, improve brand recognition, and increase sales. In today’s digital world, a complete and professionally developed Internet marketing strategy is a must.

Ever since the early to mid-60’s when the Internet first began, the global network known as the World Wide Web has brought various forms of online media to a global audience in light-speed fashion. Because of the ability to interact in real or near real-time, Internet marketing is very unique and different than traditional marketing channels such as print, direct mail, radio, TV and billboard advertising. In the Internet marketing environment, you are able to monitor your customers’ inquiries in real-time mode and respond to them with immediate responses that are customized for each of your customer’s online transactions.

Four Reasons Every Business Needs an Internet Marketing Strategy

1. Build an ongoing stream of profitable and targeted traffic to your website
2. Connect with customers at the very instant that they're making a buying decision
3. Maximize ad spending by targeting only relevant prospects through specific keyword phrases   
4. Expand your market more cost effectively compared to traditional marketing

Internet marketing is segmented to support various phases of your customer’s decision-making and buying lifecycle as well as after-the-fact customer service. Different Internet marketing programs are applied at the right times for you to acquire new leads, convert them into paying customers, and to nurture and to retain them as your long time customers. These Internet marketing programs allow you to listen to what your customers are saying about your products and services when they are talking about you, and to leverage or respond to their positive and sometimes negative feedback.

A Comprehensive Internet Marketing Program Is an On-Going Process

Your Internet marketing plan is not a one-time program, but rather a long-term strategy. To keep targeted traffic flowing to your website and new customers coming in to your front door through your online channels, your Internet Marketing program should consider the following:
    

1. Interactive Website Design based on conversion architecture principles that will keep your site visitors coming back and taking the necessary call-to-action that you want them to take, such as placing a phone call to your place of business, downloading a brochure or whitepaper, or submittinga form. A website that doesn't convert is basically a poor investment, so this part is essential.
2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) consists of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Marketing or pay-per-click ads (PPC) such as those delivered by Google Adwords or Microsoft's adCenter to bring extremely targeted traffic to your website. SEO provides the "organic" or "natural, un-paid listings you see in the search engine results pages, and involves on-page and inbound link building techniques. PPC campaigns can be targeted to specific geographic locations, so it is perfect for targeting people in the local vicinity of your business, and charges only occur when someone actually clicks on an ad and visits a specific landing page on your website.
   
   Online re-marketing is a PPC technique that allows you to display your ads to people who have previously visited your website but left without buying ... an opportunity where special offers such as free shipping might be in order, for example.
3. Social Media Marketing (SMM) involves leveraging the social networks for achieving word-of-mouth referrals and endorsements, keeping in touch with what your customers are saying about your brand, responding to negative comments, as well as being used as another channel to keep your existing customers and prospects aware of what is happening at your business through special promotions, event notifications and customer loyalty programs.
   
   Usually a good SMM strategy will include the setup of branded pages on the Social Networks, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and the creation of a blog that is integrated with your website, a process to get your customers and prospects to find you and become a fan or follower on those networks, and a process to syndicate your digital assets such as articles, press releases and blog posts across the internet and through each of these social networks. By properly syndicating your digital assets, your message can easily go viral and quickly grow your online presence through these new channels.
   
   Other methods for marketing through the social networks include integrating online videos with your website and syndicating the optimized videos through various online video directories, which provides both customer service and SEO benefits to the viewer. Also, by integrating online customer reviews into your overall online strategy, you can increase online sales conversions by 20% or more. 70% of consumers trust what other consumers are saying about a product or service, while only 27% trust what the experts have to say.
4. Targeted Lead Marketing, including opt-in Email Marketing for Lead Nurturing, Lead Generation and Customer Retention. eNewsletters, event notifications, special promotions, informative news briefs and customer loyalty programs are just a few techniques of leveraging this marketing strategy. Spam is not considered a proper email marketing technique, so this communication is only distributed to those who either asked to hear from you by "subscribing", or at the very least are given the chance to opt-out on every email message that you send.
5. Mobile Marketing is a good reason why "Internet Marketing" strategies are becoming known as "Digital Marketing" strategies. Rather than only leveraging the channels that the Internet provides, Mobile Marketing leverages cellular technology as well, usually through smartphone or tablet devices such as the iPhone or the iPad from Apple. With today's technology, we now have the ability to market your products and your brand to subscribers to your mobile marketing programs, similar to sending out eNewsletters or special promotions to email subscribers. Why should businesses consider moving into this environment? Here are a few reasons why:
   
   1. Currently 1/3 of the world has mobile internet access, which is twice as many internet-connected PCs.
   2. 60% of the world's population is expected to have access to the internet through a mobile device in 1 year.
   3. Mobile web technologies allow us to provide location-specific resources to users with the help of GPS technology.
   4. 2.1 billion people are actively text messaging today, and 2/3 of mobile phone users subscribe to "SMS text marketing".
   5. There are 2 times as many active SMS users as are active users of email.
   6. And the real kicker ... on average text messages are read within 4 minutes of receipt compared to 48 hours for email. While 65% of all email is SPAM, less than 10% of SMS is SPAM.
6. Display ads (banner advertising) or the equivalent of ads in newspapers and magazines.
7. Web Analytics will allow you to see your return on your marketing investment. Without web analytics, you'll never know what is working and what isn't. A good analytics program is essentail to your online success.

Experienced sellers know that reaching a potential customer during the right phase of their buying cycle is key to converting interest into a sale. Search engines have the unique ability to connect with prospective customers at the exact moment they're researching a product or service; they want to find your business ... so make sure they can or you will lose that business to your competition!

Success with these internet marketing programs, as with any advertising, lies in making sure your ads are being seen by the right group of people at the right time. This means knowing who you're targeting and where they can be found. It sounds simple, and thanks to the Internet it really is. Your WSI Internet Marketing Consultant can sho
Best Regards,




Thomas J. Holzkopf
Certified Internet & Digital Marketing Consultant
Tom@WSIPrositebuilder.com
www.WSIPrositebuilder.com
Office: 608-523-4255

Ready for results?

To discuss a customized internet marketing strategy for your business, contact your WSI Internet Marketing Consultant today!

Since we’re early into the new year, we thought it fitting to have our first free webinar of 2011 dedicated to starting the year off right. Coming up on Wednesday, February 2^nd 2011, you can join us for a free webinar entitled “Online Reputation Management: 3 Steps to Balance Risk and Reward!”

This particular webinar is specially geared to ensuring that your online brand is ready to effectively leverage the digital marketing realm this year. After all, expert planning and a strategically implemented social media strategy can drastically transform any company’s online presence.  It has the capacity to launch a local, small-scale business into an international brand name!

However, on the other hand, a company who chooses to ignore its online presence and what customers are saying about them online can be equally damaging. As many online advantages as there are for your brand, there are just as many disadvantages and risks as well!

So, on February 2^nd join us for a webinar, where we’re set to discuss:

• 3 steps to effective ORM
• What “ORM” really means – the ins and outs of online reputation management
• How to protect your brand against trademark / company name violations
• Crisis management strategies

There are 2 free sessions available!

Here are the registration details:

Morning

Date: Wednesday February 2^nd, 2011

Time: 7:00AM – 8:00AM CST

REGISTER NOW!

Afternoon

Date: Wednesday February 2^nd, 2011

Time: 12:00PM – 1:00PM CST

REGISTER NOW!

Unfortunately, with the emergence of Web 2.0 and the wide-open communication available through the social networks, most companies are going to experience a negative online review, whether it is warranted or not. In this open, online world, it is easy for a negative review to go viral and damage your company's brand reputation, and put a dent in your bottom-line figures. The good news is that with the right techniques, a business can effectively combat this negative publicity, and even turn it around into positive sales.

Nowadays internet surfers are able to post just about anything they would like to make a statement about for whatever topic is important to them. This user generated content is everywhere, and since search engines are constantly looking for fresh content to pick up, that information is much more likely to make its way to the search engine results pages. This can then impact your business exponentially because, if someone posts a negative review of your company, whether it be on a blog, your own website reviews, Google or Bing local listings, a social media site or one of the many customer review sites such as Yelp, the review itself can generate comments, which turn into more comments, and so on. This can take place over a period of days, so each time a user posts a new comment, search engine spiders see it as fresh content and pick it up to post on their results pages.

Other related sites and interested parties (including your competitors and consumer review sites) might pick up the negative review since it is already beginning to go viral and create a buzz on the web, and those other sites are also trying to increase their visibility with the major search engines. In fact some companies use programs that look for buzz-worthy content for them to add to their site since everyone wants to make the search engine spiders think they have new content so that they'll get ranked high on a search engine or social bookmarking site.

These are just a few examples showing how a negative review of your company can go viral and reach large numbers of people, possibly convincing those potential new clients to look at other alternatives rather than buying from your company, resulting in large sums of lost sales. However as mentioned earlier, there are effective ways of managing and reducing the impact of a negative review.

To begin with, a business can't ignore these reviews because they aren't going to go away by themselves. You must confront the review head on right on the site where it was posted. You should communicate your side of the story and send a clear message to anyone following the discussion that you stand by your product or service. In that message you should also invite the reviewer to call your company directly so that you have a chance to resolve the dispute, showing readers that your company puts a high level of importance on customer service and takes complaints very seriously.

The next step is to ask the website where the negative review is posted to remove it. Also perform a search using the same words in the headline of the review, looking for other locations which may have already picked up the review, allowing you to make a formal request to each one to remove it. Be clear and concise when making these requests, since many sites will not remove the content if they don't believe it was intended to be mean-spirited or it communicates incorrect information. You will need to explain why you feel the negative review is based on incorrect
information, and if mean spirited, why you believe that. Then, you should create new content addressing the complaint (but not necessarily directly) and syndicate it around the web in conspicuous places. This will enable you to control the terms and the tone of the dialogue, by making the correct information readily available to new viewers to be picked up as fresh content by search engines. In addition, this new positive  content will be ranked higher than the older negative review on the search engine result pages.

Finally, another very popular approach is to set up your own customer review program. There are services available such as the ones offered by WSI and our partners at Customer Lobby or LouderVoice. With these services you display your own review system on your website, as well as include links to them in all of your other online media channels such as your social media sites, your blog, your newsletter, etc. Historically you are going to get a much higher number of positive than negative reviews (over 80% of reviews in the U.S. are four or five stars). So the chance of a negative review showing on the front pages of the search engines is drastically minimized. Also, through our system your reviews are also submitted to and picked up by the search engines, increasing your overall visibility and ranking with the search engines.

Here are a few more reasons why your business should consider having your own review system:
       

• Sales - On-site reviews can increase sales conversions by 20% or more.
• SEO - Google loves reviews. All of your reviews are syndicated with links back to your site.
• Customer Feedback - Get direct feedback on your products and services. Deal quickly with customer service issues. Reduce returns by letting customers guide each other.
• Social Media Traffic - Qualified visitors from Facebook and Twitter, guided to you by their friends are the most valuable visitors of all.
•  Validated Reviews - Get reviews from your genuine customers not your competitors. Be in control of your own reviews.
• Best Practices - WSI can guide you on how to make reviews work best for your business.
• Low monthly fee - A low fee provides all of the above with a simple 30 day contract. And you own all of your content.
• Every Sector - All businesses can benefit from reviews. We have clients in hospitality, e-retail, e-commerce, local services and more.
• ROI - Customer reviews are a revenue driver, not a cost.
• Customers Positive - 88% of reviews in the U.S. are four or five stars.
• Customer Opinion - 32% of internet-using Americans have posted reviews.       
• Customers Offline - 51% use the Internet before making a purchase in shops.
• Customer Trust - 70% of consumers trust other users, 27% trust experts.
• Customer Sharing - 7 in 10 who read reviews share them with friends and family.

     
WSI can help you implement any of these strategies to help your business combat a negative review. Contact us today and let us show you how.

To be perfectly frank, your business is going to get reviewed by people online. It's the nature of the new Web 2.0 beast. Web 2.0 turned the buying decision process on its head, so now your prospective customers are in the driver's seat. Besides talking to family members and friends, customers can now go online and read reviews about the line of products and services that you offer and decide who they want to buy from. And unless you're unlike everybody else, there will probably be a negative review show up on occasion about your business.

Businesses can be proactive about these reviews though. They can have their own online review mechanism built right into their own websites. With this service, they can solicit reviews from their existing customers, and build up a foundation of reviews that would display in both search engine results pages as well as on their website. Experience has shown that unless a business really isn't doing a good job servicing their customer, most reviews are positive. So by having more positive reviews than negative, the negative reviews will most likely not appear on the first pages of those search engines.

Providing reviews to help customers make their buying decision can increase your new clients 10 - 20% (WebVideo Vision). At WSI, we partner with two companies, Customer Lobby and LouderVoice, to bring you online reviews that will appear on the search engine results pages as well as on your own website, or you can even include a link in the signature area of your email.      
    
It's no secret that satisfied customers are going to bring you more sales, and unhappy customers can prevent sales. People who feel strongly about a service they received or a product they purchased are likely to tell others about their experience. Before the internet, this effect was limited to word of mouth. A customer could tell his friends and family, co-workers and even strangers about his great or terrible experience with your company. Back then it took some effort on the customer's part to get the word out, and many people just didn't bother taking the time unless they were extremely displeased.

The growth of the internet and Web 2.0 has made it much easier for someone to praise or complain about a company in a public online environment. There are several online directories that allow anyone to post a comment about a business, including Google. This allows customers to make their opinion of your products and services heard by many more people with very little effort. Unfortunately, it also opens the door to abusers of the system. Business owners pretending to be customers can post positive reviews, and disgruntled employees can post negative reviews. There is no verification that the information posted is true.

With the recent changes made by Google to their Local Listings pages, all of those reviews are about to become many times more visible to potential customers who are looking for a local business. Google Places, formerly known as Google Local Business Listings, is now displaying reviews entered by users on their site and from a number of other directories. The new listing is a combination of your old organic listing, which you may have worked hard to get on to the first page of Google yourself or using professional services, and information from your local listing.  

So now, right next to the organic listing is a link to customer reviews which Google collected from these various directories. Immediately below your URL is your address and phone number from your Google Places listing. Often a small sampling of an existing review may be displayed there as well. If this happens to be a sampling from a negative review, your potential customer will most likely click on a different listing. It's the online equivalent of someone standing in front of your business with a sign telling people not to shop there.

So what can you do about it? Google won't remove a negative review just because you ask them to. And they won't take the time to find out whether the information is accurate. So you need to have a way to encourage positive reviews and address negative ones.

Encourage Good Reviews

As mentioned earlier, if there are more positive reviews than negative, there's a better chance that a review that shows within the body of your local Places listing will be good. Also, there is a better chance that the negative review is pushed to the second page or further back in your organic listings. One way to get positive reviews is to encourage all of your customers to write an online review, but that will result in more negative reviews as well as positive.

So how do you go about asking only your "good" customers to fill out an online review for your business? Since many businesses already have a system in place to solicit customer feedback, often in the form of a telephone follow-up or written questionnaire, you could sort out those who have responded favorably and send them a request for an online review. If your request is in the form of an email, you could provide links not only to your own integrated customer review system, but also to your business's listings on various sites that accept user reviews. You could offer something to your customer in exchange for them taking the time to post a review, such as a 10% discount off their next purchase from you, or some other prize that would entice them to make the effort and at the same time make them feel good about your business.

How to Address Damaging Reviews

If you can contact the unhappy customer and solve whatever problem he had, he may be willing to remove the negative review. Whether or not you think his complaint is valid, it's in your best interest to fix it. A negative review can cost you a lot of money, and the longer it sits out on display, the more money you may lose. If you think about how much you spend to bring in new customers, you probably will agree that it isn't prudent to let a relatively small amount of money to establish a review system get in your way, even if the customer is wrong and you know you are right.

Sometimes it will be impossible to get the customer to remove his negative post. You can still lessen the damage by responding to the complaint online. There is nothing stopping you from posting your own comment explaining the situation or apologizing to the reviewer and stating your offer to fix the problem. If a prospective customer takes the time to read the whole story, they'll see that you are taking the time and trying to make your customers happy.

Occasionally, a review will violate the terms established by the review site, for example using foul language. If this is the case, you can flag the review and it may be removed.

Other Tips

Don't enter multiple positive reviews yourself. Online directories try to prevent fraudulent reviews because they make their site less useful to their visitors. Google Places displays reviews from sites such as Insider Pages and Yelp, as well as reviews posted directly to Google and posted to your own review system such as those that we provide. If you ask your customers for positive reviews, give them links to a variety of review sites including your own. It will look more natural if reviews come from more than one site.

It has always been important for a business to cultivate a good reputation, but never before has a dissatisfied customer been able to reach the public right alongside your advertisement. More and more consumers are bypassing the yellow pages and turning to their favorite search engine to find a business instead. You can no longer afford not to know what reviews are out there or to ignore dissatisfied customers. They have more power than ever before.

Click here to read more about how online customer reviews can help your business, or to see examples of how it is done. Or call us today to set up an appointment at (608) 523-4255, or toll-free (866) 531-1686, or submit the "Free Consultation" form to the left of the page and we will get back to you shortly.