Should Plumbing Company Care About Online Reviews? And Here Is How To Get More Reviews!
These days, it isn’t enough for plumbing businesses to be great at their job. To stand out in a crowd of plumbing companies, they must also have winning advertising strategies. Although, those strategies can only benefit a business like yours if you keep track of how well they are doing. This is even more crucial for small to medium size plumbing businesses. Since they are still growing and probably have a limited budget for advertising, they need to monitor what they spend on advertising and ROI they get.
Online reviews are a strategy for success that are slowly becoming necessary for businesses’ survival. Not only will more online reviews help your website rank higher in the search engines. They will also determine whether a customer will call you or not!
Think about it. What do you do before taking your business to any new company or brand? It is highly likely that you do an online search to find out their customer satisfaction scores. Only if they seem legit and have raving customer reviews do you think of giving them your hard-earned cash? It is also how your potential customers decide to trust your company. So, reviews are essential, and plumbing companies should care about them.
The next part of this article focuses on helping you get more reviews.
Claim the listings for your reviews
Local businesses gain a lot from online reviews. Bright Local, the consumer research group, reported that about 97% of consumers would base their purchase decisions on reviews in 2019. Use that to your advantage by visiting the major review sites, like Home Advisor, Yelp, and Angie’s List. Search for reviews about your business and claim the listings for it by verifying that you are the business owner.
Take it further
Make sure all the information on your review page is accurate. Flesh out your profile by adding a bunch of high-quality pictures to it. Then run a Google search to make sure you haven’t missed any sites where there are reviews of your plumbing company. Prepare to find a few negative reviews, but don’t panic when you do. Connect with your reviewers – we’ll explain how below. For the future, monitor reviews via Plumbing Company’s Review Management services.
Connect to appreciate the positive reviewers and engage the negative ones
The easiest way to maintain your review game is to check all the platforms every morning. When you find a review that needs a response—most of them do—get to interact! For instance, whether a customer has left you a positive review or a negative one, start with a thank you. Then focus on the negative reviews. Encourage them to contact you by providing your business contact information. This will let your potential customers see how much your business values customer satisfaction.
Treasure the negative reviews
No, we don’t mean that you should deliberately provide bad service. Instead, we are referring to using any negative reviews to prove that none of them are fake or bought! Instead of attracting customers, having only positive comments on your company profile may detract them. Would you trust something that sounds just too good? No, you will likely be wary of such a company. So will your customers!
Reviews are less about singing your praises and more about building trust. Be on the lookout for any fake reviews and get them removed when you find them. Remember though; it will take you some time to answer all your reviews. You will be dedicating a significant part of your work day to do that regularly. But it also must be done because it helps your clients realize you do listen to them. A good solution that plumbing businesses can use to be proactive is to hire a review management company. The company’s experts will do all that for you while you can focus on issues that really demand your attention.
Ask, and they shall review
Now before we get into this tip, here’s a secret. Consumers will more actively log on to review sites to complain about a negative experience than they would share a positive one. It might seem weird to you, but just think back to your own consumer experiences, and you will see it is true! The main reason for this behavioral quirk that most of us have is because we want validation for our bad experiences.
What does that mean for your plumbing business? It means you will be leaving the expression of positive reviews to chance. What you should do is ask your plumbing clients is to leave a review. That way the number of positive reviews from satisfied clients will cover any odd negative ones. Create a system that sends trigger messages or nurtures emails to ensure your customers do review your services. When you have done your best to ensure positive customer experience, why not let others know about it too? However, make sure that you don’t begin pestering your customers every other day or you may do more damage instead of gaining a positive review.
Know your review websites
Yelp
For most businesses, Yelp is one important review website. By the end of 2018, more than 170 million reviews that expressed customer feedback had made it over there. The good thing about Yelp is that it can get you noticed. It is also free to use for both businesses and customers alike. Just remember that the website faithfully lists both positive and negative reviews as soon as they are submitted. So, while you are out there making sure your service is exemplary, let a review management company hold the fort down on Yelp!
Another useful platform where your business profile awaits you is Google My Business. Claim it and then use it to gather reviews for your plumbing business. Again, the important thing to remember about Google is that it displays reviews prominently. So, you’d better get cracking on managing them!
To conclude, yes, plumbing companies should care about online reviews. They should also invest in strategies that will get them more customer feedback!
