Why Your Small Business Might Not Need Online Reviews

You may be thinking to yourself, What? A digital marketing agency that doesn’t think online reviews are important? In the past, we’ve always preached the importance of online reviews and how they can be a valuable asset for your marketing strategy. Well, the truth is, there are plenty of valid reasons to NOT utilize online reviews for your small business…if you don’t want to succeed, that is.

Ok, so we do, in fact, think your company needs online reviews. But if we didn’t, here are a few reasons why we would advise you to not utilize online customer reviews.

If you don’t want to expand your growing list of clients, then don’t waste your time with online reviews. However, most of us do want to continue increasing our client base, which means proving exactly what people are looking for: credible online reviews.

If people see that you don’t have a plethora of reviews on sites like Yelp, Google and Facebook, they’ll bypass your business and continue looking elsewhere. Grab their attention with 4- and 5-star reviews from your clients. You won’t believe how a handful of reviews can generate dozens of leads.

Why put all the time and effort into building your small business if you’re going to let the big corporate rivals do things better? Other businesses that are well-established have built up a series of online customer reviews. So when your business only has one or two fantastic reviews compared to their 94 great reviews, who is going to continue to grow? Probably not you.

You need to match their level of credibility, while still maintaining your local business charm. An excellent way to do this is to gather online reviews from your satisfied customers. This may sound like a difficult task, and it can be. That’s why we, at Locallogy, can do it for you with our Review Builder system.

According to a 2016 Local Consumer Review Surveyconducted by BrightLocal, 91 percent of consumers read online reviews for local businesses either regularly or occasionally. That means that most people are doing research on a product or service before committing to it. If your business lacks in customer reviews, people won’t be as trusting of your services and will instead choose a company with credible sources backing it up.

Take one of our clients, Kresge Contracting,for example. When searching for “kitchen remodel Columbus Ohio,” Kresge is the third option that shows up. However, the kitchen remodeling company has a 4.8-star rating, compared to the first two results, which do not have a star rating at all. Despite being in the third spot, the high rating due to reviews shows that Kresge is a reputable and reliable business.

Having a higher amount of positive reviews leads to 4- and 5-star ratings, which helps you stand out more against competition and results in more people coming to your website than those who have fewer reviews. And the more people click on your website, you’re likely to rank higher in search results. That means more people in your community will see your business’s name when searching for local services. So if you don’t want to get a higher CTR (click-through rate) and more consumers coming to your page, don’t bother utilizing online customer reviews.

If you don’t have any competitors—great! You won’t need any reviews if you’re the only business in your industry, because you won’t have a need to draw attention to your business over other similar companies. But, if you’re like most businesses out there, you definitely have some competition that you want to stand out against. Having more high-quality reviews than your competition will quickly set you apart and help attract more leads.

When it comes down to it, online customer reviews are crucial to getting your name out to your community. It builds a sense of establishment and credibility when people see that others like themselves are using your services—and, more importantly, are happy with your quality of service.

So why don’t you need online reviews? We can’t think of a single reason.