What businesses can do to get customers? Why customer retention has become even more important

Here is the link to the recent story  http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/business/2013/09/23/exp-lead-intv-howard-bragman-crackdown-fake-reviews-yelp.cnn.html

I want to repeat one of the most repeated things in customer retention--staying in touch with your past, current and potential customers can increase retention by about 80%. That itself can make it amazingly inexpensive to run your business.

Internet is one place to get customers through affordable and long lasting marketing. It is very important for every business to build their presence online and take control of their online presence. There has to be one place where every business can login and see all their online assets (reviews, local listings, videos, asset sites, track their keywords, see their results over a period of time for keywords, store all their social media links and track their progress (and sometimes track the progress of the agency they have hired).

If businesses start with this, they will realize that they will build a long lasting source of customers they can rely on, which is always referrals from existing customers. Online reviews are a form of referrals. It is a public referral from a customer which makes other customers purchase from a business.

Google plus profiles offer more insight into customer reviews in Google plus local

How is that possible? Google plus streams give away a lot about customers. Including customers in circles can help businesses keep in touch with their customers. So businesses can now analyze the streams of their customers and see what they are up to. I do not mean that businesses should stalk their customers, but the stream can be used to increase word of mouth for their business since customer might share their experiences on Google plus.

Essentially, just like twitter, businesses can be in front of their customers through Google Plus. Google also lets you mark the location of the posts made, which makes the content more relevant for local searches. Al thought it may be seem boring, a good trail of conversations about your local business can lead to more exposure locally (appearing in search results).

Foursquare allows you to check-in in real time. Google plus stream can be a type of check-in. More and more people using plus will start posting information in real time, which will make their reviews of a business appear in their streams.

It is also very clear since last few months that websites and local profiles with more likes and recommendations are appearing more and more in the search results. Every business should take advantage of this. Even artists, politicians etc can take advantage of this to reach more people.

Enough about it, is your business actively promoting customers to post on Google?

Reviewer gets more importance in Google Plus Local reviews and ratings

Google merged Google Places into their social network Google Plus. Yes, it makes sense. It does make sense to involve people into the places since people are spending more and more time on social networks. As we read this, Google Chrome has already surpassed Internet Explorer as the world's most popular browser. With 97% of people already searching for local businesses, was Google after the remaining few percentages of people? No. This is just a move forward in how social networks are going to be in future--a single place for us to hang out, chat, call, shop, entertain ourselves--all from at the press of a button called Google on our desktops!

Back to the topic at hand--It is clear that word of mouth  A.K.A online reviews are becoming more and more important to make shopping easier for buyers. Local business reviews scene has exploded (with even fake posters and companies who sell such services). Google has taken this seriously and hence they bought Zagat to improve their overall reviews and ratings system. Yes, it has taken away some of the good's like 5 stars, which were easy to spot and pleasing to the eyes, but things change for better. 

Few reasons why the new reviews system is better:

1) New reviews and rating system gives user more insights into experience of other customers with the business, simply because their review system has more factors.

2) There is less chance of reviewer being fake since everybody needs to be on social network

3) Ratings are more important now. As pointed out in the summary in the pic, ratings are clearly indicated as bad, good or excellent.

4) Reviews by more frequent reviewers (or the top reviewers) will be given more value now. How much exactly ? We do not know, and what exactly does this mean in terms of direction of reviews and ratings remains to be seen.

5) Now the pricing info also shows up right next to the reviews for restaurants. For me, overall price is a big factor in purchase decision, and hence this new element to review is going to be very important.

Forming communities of customers is a way forward. Having customers connected to you is the best way to market your business. More customers who are ready to write good reviews for you, the more business you will get online. We will keep you posted on more about the new reviews and rating system.

Keeping customers through blogging--blogs are like reviews written by yourself

Blogs are underestimated, at least that is how it looks like. Most of the social media agencies who handle blogs for businesses fill the blog with repetitive and banal information. Rarely does the blog go beyond talking about services and coupons of their business. Worse, Google doesn't like such blogs with repetitive content. Blog is a important space for so many reasons, and I feel companies need to tap into the potential of blogs.

1) We can use blogs to announce meaningful updates related to the business.
2) We can use blogs to show knowledge and ability to educate people who are searching for information
3) Updated blogs builds trust with customers since they feel you are taking active interest in your company and that you care--hence you are a business who cares about their customers too.
4) Technology companies and persons can build brand and be known in certain niche once users know that you blog regularly about certain topics.
5) Blogs can be used for building meaningful links to the website giving more visibility to your site.
6) Blogs can be used to show examples of handling customer complaints or to thank the customers. Again everything contributes to how people think about your business and such information from you can only persuade more customers that you are reliable.

Still don't believe it? Am I just saying this? OK, imagine you have to pick a company between Keepcustomer and company ABCXYZ for your "Internet stuff", which company would you pick? Of course I know you will Google them. What after you find the below search result page for the search "Google Local reviews and ratings?"

Full screenshot to view other blogs on the same page:

That was our blog from last week, more analysis for the new Google local changes are coming in our next few blogs.

 Point made, blogs are important and we all should use them to our advantage. Since as a company our top focus is word of mouth and customer retention, we help customers disseminate customer experiences on their blogs and also use the blog to build brand (and hence get more customers).