If you run a small business today, the single most important thing you can do to attract new customers is to take control of your online review score on sites like Yelp, Google My Business, FourSquare and Yellow Pages. First, let’s take a quick look at how technology has transported the classic small business storefront onto the internet. Mobile Is Driving Small Business The busiest business owner must realize that access to real time information has burst. Internet use from the U.S. has doubled since 2001 to almost 300 million consumers, and smartphone popularity has climbed from 20% in 2010 to 69% in 2017 among American customers. Everybody has the internet in their pocket all the time, and this changes everything for smaller business owners. This dramatic shift in technology has resulted in dramatic changes in customer behaviour. Approximately 80% of global sales still occur in physical shops, but 97% of customers Internet to find local businesses and three in four individuals use their smartphones to hunt for local businesses end-up visiting the needed business within a day. For small companies, this implies that the traditional physical storefront was replaced by many digital shops. Consumers are utilizing the Web to figure out where they wish to spend money until they go there. Online Review Sites Are Important For Customers In the past, small companies needed to rely on ineffective “push” approaches to attract new clients. If you get a radio advertisement, for example, the message has to achieve two challenging tasks: persuade the client to spend money with you and build urgency to do it today, before distractions carry over. When a customer uses a review platform such as Yelp or Google My Business, the urgency and the need to purchase are precisely what prompted his search. If traditional advertisements are some form of a megaphone that permits companies to shout and see who is listening, review websites are tractor beams that attract customers toward local businesses precisely when they are actively seeking to spend money. That is a priceless opportunity for smaller companies with tight or small advertising budgets. Think about it. When you are looking to try a brand-new restaurant or find a mechanic, what can you do? You may ask for a recommendation from friends or family, however you probably do a “near me” search on Yelp or Google. Here is the new normal: 97% of customers use the Internet to find local businesses, and one in eight make an online search for a nearby business every day. Reviews websites are in the center of “near me” searches. Small companies have more control of the star ratings than they know. For a start, they could proactively stimulate their clients to post reviews about their experience – 68% of clients will leave an overview if requested. This activates the company’ happiest clients, buries any dishonest negative reviews and ensures the organization’s “reviews ratio” is healthy. Secondly, small companies can turn negative reviews into another opportunity. Everybody has a bad experience, and business owners must know when something is wrong. In the past, disappointed customers may not even leave a comment they’d just punish the business via word of mouth, and the owner may never know about it. Small businesses can utilize online reviews to discover any legitimate blind spots and reveal acts of good faith for all the public to see. Engaging with unhappy customers in online review forums may actually result in repeat business, and 60 % of complaining customers will provide the company another opportunity if their concerns have been solved. If you run a small business, it is time to adopt online review websites and utilize them to your benefit. Word of mouth happens online today, and little businesses eventually get to add their voices into the dialogue. Even better, leaning to the world of online reviews may be the single advertising strategy a small company requires nowadays. These days there are good companies out there that allow users to track down reviews, receive notifications when someone comments on their business listing pages and gives them the opportunity to address the issue immediately. One such platform is PRBrics, which recently made a statement on the local leads generation marketing scene. With PRBrics, clients can get their business submitted to over 70 world leading indexes, including Facebook, Booking, Trustpilot, Yelp, and more and get noted whenever someone leaves a review. Find out more about your online reviews opportunities by registering: https://prbrics.com/pricing/ .