How Can Small Businesses Encourage Online Reviews

How Can Small Businesses Encourage Online Reviews?

As a small business owner, you may recognize that the most powerful tool for marketing your business is word of mouth. That is, it is one person telling another person about your product or service. This type of advertising as long been one of the most important forms because it is the most likely to create a positive outcome. Yet, many times, small business owners, don’t translate that often thought of as off-line type of marketing online. That’s a mistake. In short, you need reviews from customers online to showcase your business and to encourage others to interact with you.

But, How Do You Get Them?

Online reviews are powerful and very important. You may seem them occur on your social media pages, on review websites, and on third party websites and blogs. When they are good things, you’ll really want to ramp up the number of them you have. But, how can you encourage people to leave reviews for you online? These tips can help you to do just that:

• Ask for them. The most important and most effective way to get reviews from your customers is to ask for them. You can do this when you provide the product or service, for example. Ask them to leave you a review on your website or blog, for example.

• Use email marketing to help you to get them. When you send your customer an email, perhaps as a result of a purchase, you can leave a link in it to leave a review for your business online. Make it easy with a one click format.

• Ask on your social media pages directly. If you’ve worked to build a presence online like this, you just need to ask for your customer’s to voice their opinions of what you have to offer. And, listen to the feedback you get. Good or bad, it can help you to make big decisions going forward.

When it comes down to it, you need online reviews to help your business to stand out from all of the rest. They may not always be easy to get, though. When you work with a third party marketing team, there is the benefit of being able to attract more business, a bigger social presence, and better online reviews for your company. Good or bad, these help to get people talking about your company.

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We can help you develop a strategy for boosting your search engine rankings and increasing your website potential with customer reviews. As a top NYC marketing firm we have the experience and expertise you need, just get in touch today by calling us at 212-686-0806.

What Are the Benefits of Email Marketing

What Are the Benefits of Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a form of interacting with customers through email. It is much like other types of online marketing in that your goal is to encourage people to interact with your company through less sales like techniques and with more of a focus on building a relationship with them. Yet, email marketing is highly competitive. How many emails do you get in your inbox on a daily basis and how many of them do you open and read? As a small business, it is important to utilize email marketing because it can be very impactful on your company, but you’ll want to work closely with a marketing company to ensure you get it right.

What Will Happen When You Apply Email Marketing to Your Business?

There are various benefits of email marketing campaigns. If they are done well, your business will get a variety of benefits including:

• You’ll get more customers to come back to your website to have a second look at what you have to offer. Here’s something that’s important. Most people need to visit the same site and look at the same product three, four or more times before buying. Email marketing helps ensure they get back.

• You’ll build brand awareness through email marketing. Remember, this is not just about selling or sending promotional materials. You’ll also send educational information and other resources to your email signups. That helps to build your brand and it builds a customer’s confidence in your company.

• You’ll see more sharing and interaction of your social media pages, blog posts, and your company yourself when you use email marketing. As customers get to know your brand and product through emails, they are more likely to tell their friends about you. This can help to increase your customer base and help to build your company well beyond the internet.

Email marketing does not have to be complex, but it should be something that your business uses. Without it, you’ll find your company struggling to keep in touch with customers that already know about the products and services you offer, including those who already have purchased from you. With email marketing, more people learn about your company, think about your company when they see your email, and interact with your business on a regular basis. You’ll want to do this to build up your business especially with so much competition today in most industries.

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Importance Of Social Media Marketing For Local Business

As a local business of any size, getting your name out there is always a priority in continuing to grow your market share. Unfortunately, many small businesses, start-ups, and entrepreneurs fail to tap into the power of social media marketing for their local business. It isn’t hard to understand why this can happen. One of the biggest issues is the uncertainty of online social media campaigns, and how you can target a local audience and group of potential new customers.

The good news for a smaller or larger local business not yet dipping their toes into the social media pool is that it is always a good time to get started. There is no one best time to launch a campaign, but there are some best practices to use once you make the decision to go forward.

Immediate Information about Your Local Business

If you want to generate interest about your local business on social media platforms, particularly Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, you have to have something interesting and engaging to get people to take notice.
This can be highlighting a unique project, getting involved in a community charity or event, or focusing in on a sale or promotion. The information is immediately available, allowing customers to visit your business, go to your website, or give you a call to find out more.

Making Meaningful Connections

There is a significant grassroots movement with consumers, particularly the Millenials, to buy from local businesses and businesses that have their same philosophy and interests.
Through social media, you can share your policies on going “green”, revitalizing the city center, supporting a charity or being involved in the community in a special event or an ongoing project. When potential new customers see this human side of the business, connections are made that create customers.

This also means relying to comments and generating posts on your social media sites on a regular basis. You don’t have to post every day, but you do need to provide quality comments and information that is relevant to your followers and those they will forward it to.

Integrate with Websites and Marketing Campaigns

For a local business, using social media platforms as a way to coordinate your other marketing programs such as radio, newspaper, direct mail and other promotions with your website and your retail venue is a big bonus.
This allows you to highlight just what you want to your customers and then have them turn to website or come to you for more information. It isn’t about hard sell marketing, and that approach can actually hurt all your marketing campaigns.

Rather, building your social media presence as a resource, at trusted authority, a community-minded business, and as a part of the town, city or neighborhood is really the critical aspect. Social media allows you to share this, plus brand across all marketing campaigns to increase brand recognition.
It isn’t always easy to know how to use social media effectively a local business. In New York City, our expert marketing team is here to help you to get started and to develop a strategy to increase your local profile. Just give us a call at 212-686-0806 and we can start working on your improved social media presence today.

Tag Archives: Social Media