What do your customers see when they Google your business?

I got a new client referral a few weeks ago for a prestigious corporate firm that wanted help with redoing their website copy.

So obviously, like any good Millennial, I immediately googled them.

And the very first thing I saw… they only have two stars from 10 reviews. Yikes.

The one-star reviews were specific, decently well-written, targeted, and biting. None of them had a response from the company. Double yikes.

I always think there are two sides to every story, so I went in to meet with the exec and talk about what they want for their site.

Of course talking about bad reviews can be delicate, but when I gently brought it up, it turned out THEY HAD NO IDEA.

Real talk now: based on ReviewTrackers data last year, 64% of potential customers check Google reviews before even visiting a website.

I would estimate it’s actually much higher than that, depending on the industry and the audience.

What this tells us is that (unless your customer somehow has never heard about the internet), you cannot afford to have a bad presence on review sites. Period.

You could have the most incredible, perfect website that has ever been created, and it would not matter, because at least SIXTY FOUR PERCENT are not even clicking in.

Luckily this time we caught the issue. Many of the reviews are very old and from a different administration.  

We are now working through a plan for reputation repair, as well as a full digital presence review, to make sure there are no other nasties lurking. Then we will tackle the website.

The moral of this story is, if you haven’t done so recently, please make like it’s 2002 and google yourself and your business.

And if you find something that might be turning off a potential client, let me help you fix it.