Getting online reviews for your business is always an ongoing process. But, once you’ve got a bunch of reviews, isn’t that enough?
Having a lot of online reviews is important but as research now shows it’s not enough to to just have a lot. Our customers are being even more discerning about their review reading each year.
The biggest eye-opener is how important the recency of reviews are for a small business. They want to see a good star rating, plenty of reviews, but they also want them to be written recently.
Customers View Online Reviews Older than 3 Months as NOT Relevant
Research from BrightLocal’s yearly consumer survey shows that 73% of consumers believe a review older than 3 months is not relevant to their decision making process.
As business owners, this becomes a double-edged sword for us. On the one hand, it is hard to swallow because we spend so much time acquiring reviews by either awkwardly asking our favorite customers or utilizing an online reputation marketing service.
It should be comforting knowing that your constant effort to acquire new online reviews is not in vain — your prospective customers demand them and you deliver! Keep doing what you have been doing or maybe even kick it up a notch by making it easier for your customers to leave you reviews.
The BIG Plus
The big plus here is easily overlooked by most business owners though. What this statistic should sing to you is that customers don’t care what your reputation was 3 months ago. All they care about is what has happened in the last 3 months.
How powerful is that? You can literally re-write the future of your business in 3 months if you work hard at getting new positive online reviews. The beauty of the internet is that things move so fast and change rapidly that consumers are more understanding. They want to try you out, you just need to give them enough of a reason to see that things have changed or improved.
So don’t delay. Get to work and change your business’ future.
If you’ve always had great reviews, keep up the great work. It’s contributing more to your success then you may have been previously aware!
