Do you know what people say about your organization online? Why not?
Someone searches Google for marketing in Lancaster and your company doesn’t show up. Not good. Another person searches for your fitness center, and you appear right at the top. Great! But wait, your 6 reviews have an average of two stars. “Service is terrible…” or “the place stinks.” …oops, maybe not so great after all.
A recent study from TMP Directional Marketing estimated that a whopping 70% of people turn to the internet, via computer or phone, to find a local business or service. That’s huge, and being found on local search platforms is incredibly important. But what will they find when they get there?
What do people see when they search for your business or service? The great days, or the not so great days?
There’s really no excuse for not knowing this. So go ahead, Google your business, find it in the maps listings, and see what you discover. The next thing you should do is understand a little about how the system works. Lets talk about Google…
Google crawls the internet looking for data about local businesses and organizations. When it discovers enough information about an organization, it will create a maps listing or “place page”. Your company is probably there already, even if you didn’t sign up. Once Google creates a listing, it starts pulling all of the data it has on that organization together, and combines it. This includes address, phone numbers, website information, social media accounts, even photos.
Perhaps more importantly, it also collects reviews.
Check out this listing for a local diner. Unfortunately what Google has collected isn’t positive. (names removed)
Here’s the important bit – most of these reviews weren’t left via Google. The restaurant industry is particularly lucky (or vulnerable) in that Google pulls from a huge variety of sources. But this also happens to the rest of us, no matter what industry we’re in.
Major sources of reviews include:
There are literally hundreds of others.
As long as these reviews exist on other platforms, they will keep showing up on Google – even if you could somehow delete Google’s copy.
Knowing what’s going on is the first step to addressing reputation issues, or cultivating a positive image. We’ll continue to discuss the subject here, but if you’re itching to learn more…
…please come to our class at HACC Lancaster on October 26th at 6:30pm. You can find more about it here (search for “kiwi”) and registration information is here. It’s pretty inexpensive and we know you will walk away with detailed info and tools on this important subject.
