MSNBC’s JJ Ramberg got it right – “customer reviews and referrals are a huge generator of potential growth.” As Ms. Ramberg said, “If you are looking to turn your biggest fans into a marketing asset, check out our web site of the week: Customer Lobby.”

Couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Thanks JJ and thanks MSNBC!

Search Engines, Internet Yellow Pages, Directories and even Pay-Per-click ads form top of the sales funnel, wherein prospective consumers are looking for businesses. The Bottom of the Sales Funnel can be anything from a lead capture form or option to request a quote.

The homepage of a local business is typically accessed somewhere in the middle of this sales funnel, and besides branding, local business homepages should be designed to drive visitors to call, submit a request for a quote, or schedule an appointment. To that end, content such as third-party verified customer reviews and, to a lesser extent, social proofs increase conversion; i.e., they make it more likely someone will call you instead of a competitor.

It is no wonder that so many web designers are keen to add buttons linking to review sites such as Yelp! Especially Yelp! because it’s well known in the tech world. But, there is one problem: That Yelp! button is driving web traffic off your site to a directory filled with your competitors’ listings. Maybe they are running promotion that day? What if they are geographically closer to your prospective customer? What if they have more reviews?

When a prospective customer lands on a hits a homepage, the sale is not done. It is important not to drive the client away from your homepage (out of your sales funnel) and onto a reviews site with your competitor’s ads and reviews (their sales funnel).

Button links to third-party reviews are one of the best performing elements on any local business website, but before you add one to your site, take a close look at where you are sending your web traffic.

Penguin 2.0 Coming Soon

Get ready folks! When Google says this is going to be bigger than Penguin and Panda, that means that search is about to change big time.

By the way, check out the tee shirt Matt has on in the video…Firefox in grey-scale!  (geek humor at its best)  Also, extra points if you know where Fes is in the map behind Matt without having to look it up.

Google Local: How to Compete from the Suburbs

This is a question I have been asked countless times over the years.  It goes something like this:

my business address is located in [insert suburb name] but I do most of my business in [insert city name].  How can I rank well in Google local results for that search term?

By definition, the person asking this question is running a “Service Area Business” or SAB.  Mike Blumenthal, the undisputed king of all things Google local related, published a great blog on how a local business can compete in a city from a suburban office location.  This is a fundamental tactic that should be employed by all SABs.

The Stars are Back

Google has seen the error of its ways and has repented!  They are getting rid of that crazy 30 point rating scale and bringing back the 5-Star rating system that we are all familiar with.

And to think, I was just figuring out what a “19″ out of “30″ actually meant.

Call Tracking: Don’t Do It

Another winner from Mike Blumenthal on the use of call tracking phone numbers.  If this doesn’t get you to STOP USING CALL TRACKING NUMBERS, nothing will.

Whether they like it or not, businesses everywhere are coming to terms with the fact that their prospective clients are consuming customer reviews as part of the purchasing decision. Thus, it is crucial that business owners invest in the management of their online reviews as a way to differentiate their business from top competitors.

So, how can this be done? First, integrate a process for capturing customer reviews into your everyday business functions, and keep at it. A page with reviews posted on a consistent basis will be more trusted by your prospects as well as the major search engines. Your prospects want to see a solid track record.

Compiling a large number of reviews will give your potential clients more confidence in your average star rating, so focus on getting more reviews. Your large compilation of reviews will give the reader more assurance in the handful of reviews they choose to read.

Make sure to always request reviews from your recent customers, as they are more likely to leave a thorough report of their experience. The more detailed your reviews are, the more believable they will be when read.

Negative reviews add validity to your reviews page. Always post a comment on negative reviews to show that you are engaged and willing to make the extra effort to resolve any client’s issue. Have negative reviews? We can help you formulate an impactful comment.

Lastly, reviews are more impactful when they are on multiple 3rd party sites (Google, Customer Lobby, Bing Local, Citysearch, Mapquest….). To learn more about how we help businesses generate reviews and syndicate them around the web check out our new website……

A Google Example

Local business often want to build their review count on Google Plus.  Some local businesses ask many of their customers to write a review for them on Google.  But the experience for the vast majority of  those customers is terrible.

The vast majority of the internet-using population does not have a Google Plus account.  So if they get all the way to the point of being willing to write you a review and actually go to your Google Plus page and click here:

This is what they get:

Would you complete the form?  Very few customers are willing to go through the hassle of creating a new Google/Yelp/etc. account simply to write a review of your business.

Create a 100% Solution

Inviting all of your customers to write a review on Google is like saying you want to direct the majority of your customers to have a failed experience.  Create a solution to enable 100% of your customers to write a review for you.

Customer Lobby also makes it easy to enable 100% of a business’ customers to leave a review.  When you use our review invitation tool, we already know who your customer is and they do not need to create an account.

The result: more reviews in more places more often.

It bears repeating that Internet marketing, at its most basic, consists of generating web traffic and converting that web traffic into leads or, better yet, customers. This process is probably best exemplified by online ads and their corresponding landing pages.

Landing pages are basically single pages dedicated to converting web traffic delivered from pay-per-click ads or search engine results. The content is incredibly focused on getting visitors to take one particular action, which is typically embodied by a button with a clear call-to-action (CTA).

If you are a local business owner, one way to think of your website is as a landing page, and search engine results, including Google+ Local listings, are the ads. With that in mind, your homepage should be designed to convert leads similarly to landing pages.

As always, the Internet marketing experts at HubSpot have provided an excellent resource on landing page design tips: 7 Design Best Practices for High-Converting Landing Pages

2 of the takeaways I found especially compelling for local business homepages are as follows:

1. Use a button with contrasting colors on the CTA button.
If the primary goal is to get prospective customers to click a button to fill out an appointment request, that button must standout from other content on the site.

2. Add Social Proof
This can mean anything from featuring social media plugins to snippets of recent blog posts, but for local businesses especially, it is important to have third-party verified customer reviews featured prominently. After all, prospective customers need a reason to follow through with that CTA.

Here is a link to the video directly: http://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/m7kuh7itbe

• The maximum you can profitably spend on all of your sales, marketing and advertising efforts.
• How important customer retention is, particularly for the first few visits.

Simple Calculation – Wrong Answer?

A simple way to calculate this is:

(Average Value of a Sale) X (Number of Repeat Transactions per Year) X (Average Retention Time in Years for a Typical Customer)

However, this formula can lead to dramatic over-/under-estimates for many local service businesses.  Why?  The average value of a sale and average retention time is often skewed for local businesses.  More specifically, customers who come back for a 2nd, 3rd, 4th visit often spend more than on their first visit.  In addition, many businesses see a significant drop off in retention between the first and second visits and subsequent visits.  The results skew the averages resulting in wrong answers that could lead to very expensive mistakes for your company.

Detailed Calculation

Lets assume a business identifies a group of 1,000 customers who first used their company many years ago.   They then determined how many of these customers came back a 2nd, 3rd, … time.  Using the chart below, 350 came back a 2nd time and 175 came back a 3rd time.  They tracked the total sales from these visits and generated the following chart:

Using the simple formula above, the average customer visits the business 2 times and spends $215 each time resulting in a LVC of $421.  However, the weighted average sale is actually $140 per visit ($243,798/1,745) resulting in a true LVC of $273.

Why does this difference matter?  This business needs to spend less than $273 to acquire and service a customer (this example assumes a $0 cost of good sold) rather than $421.  Sales and marketing expenses based on the $421 LVC are expensive mistakes.

Key Take Aways

Most businesses do not know the LVC for their business. These are 2 very common mistakes:

• Over-spending to acquire new customers.
• Under-spending to generate and keep repeat customers.

Using the math above, a modest improvement in the customer repeat rates from the 1st visit to 2nd visit from 35% to 45% increases LVC to over $300 and total value by over $40,000.

For small business owners, there is nothing like getting a new five-star review. Long, detailed reviews are especially gratifying because they’re packed full of details attesting to those extra efforts that too often go unrecognized.

That kind of public recognition obviously helps small businesses to differentiate themselves from competitors, but at a more basic level, the reviews just feel good. For that reason, many business owners I speak with read each new review they get. Positive reviews fuel their motivation.

However, I have come across many business owners who are dismayed by typos, spelling, and grammar errors in their reviews. I have even seen reviewers asked to take down or edit their reviews for containing innocuous grammar mistakes, even though the reviews were readily understandable.

My advice is don’t sweat the typos. In fact, learn to love them.

Reviews are not supposed to read like polished marketing copy because they are not. Reviews are the natural sentiments of everyday people, not writers and marketers. That’s the difference between a review and a testimonial — testimonials are ads and reviews are a valued resource for consumers.

Consumers seek out reviews, not ads. So when savvy review readers encounter a reviews page filled with perfectly-written testimonials, they may second-guess the validity of the content. Surprisingly, those typos actually add value because the more apparent it is that your reviews were written by real customers, the more likely it is that your prospective customers will continue reading.

So while it is natural to want your best marketing asset to be perfect, it’s important to remember that reviews are only an asset because they are not perfect.