Take off your business owner hat for a second and think back to when you were on the fence about a company as a customer. How did you approach the uncertainty in your buying journey? If you’re like most customers, you scrolled to scour the review section for a genuine opinion from a person with prior experience.
Don’t your customers feel the same way on your site or online store? What will people find when they look for customer testimonials about your small business?
Build Brand Reputation With Customer Feedback
Larger, well-established companies might have spent decades strengthening branding and a following for themselves as they gained traction. Your startup or smaller business may not yet have this luxury, but it isn’t out of reach.
Is your small business unknown nationwide or even citywide? That’s a clean slate, which might be ripe for new engagement from people far and wide. Still, if your promises and products aren’t yet established, your current business prospects are only as good as your existing client testimonials claim!
As a small business owner, your trust and credibility depend on past products and services you’ve provided and how customers have responded to them. Are they satisfied? Are you seeing rave five-star reviews stating your services are prompt and professional, or that you have amazing products?
Boost Customer Loyalty By Showing Their Thoughts Matter
Real-life endorsements make your potential customers feel secure. However, it’s not just the new customers that benefit from your past customers’ feedback–it’s the reviewers, too. If these paying customers took their time writing down honest thoughts and feelings toward your company, they wanted to make an impact.
When you’ve left carefully crafted words on a wall or product page of your past purchases, wouldn’t you feel annoyed or even offended if those words disappeared into thin air? Customer testimonials are the key to happier clients–especially if they feel heard and seen by your small business in return for their efforts.
What if a customer sees their recommendation on your website? Feeling appreciated grows your customer’s emotional bond to your business to build brand loyalty, too. They’ll know their voice matters and is helpful for others to make purchase decisions (and that also goes for some negative messages that show you’re not hiding anything and are trustworthy).
Reap SEO Benefits by Appeasing the Algorithm’s Relentless Search For Customer Endorsements
Google and other search engines fully appreciate unique content. If you’d like to separate your business for better rankings, customer reviews are a priceless form of personalized content. The more your small business collects, the more likely you are to increase your ranking on search engine results pages, which is absolutely crucial if you’re going to pull in more organic traffic!
Search engines rank sites based on recency to guarantee searchers updated information, which is why third-party site reviews enhance domain authority and increase brand visibility. Since the first, second, and third results have 28%, 15%, and 11% click-through rates, respectively, according to Search Engine Journal, you want to be right up there. Use your customer testimonials to build real-life credibility so that you can grow.
