The Importance Of Reviews To Small Businesses
It’s no lie that reputation matters for every business, no matter the size. However, reviews are more important for small scale businesses than larger-scale ones.
Companies that are big enough to be household names, like Apple, prefer positive reviews, but they’ve got a loyal fanbase already, so they can handle taking some bad reviews.
Smaller businesses, meanwhile, don’t have a large fanbase, nor do they get the same number of reviews bigger companies do. That means that every review they get is more valuable, which, in turn, makes every negative review they get hurt all the more. Unfortunately, customers are more likely to write up a review when they’ve had a bad experience than when they feel satisfied, so a smaller business that handles most of its customers well can still end up getting hurt badly by a few bad experiences.
There’s also another thing worth noting, and that is customer expectation. When the average person goes to Starbucks or KFC, they know these companies; they already know what to expect. They don’t really need to look up reviews before patronizing these chains, so they don’t.
The difference is that customers feel like they’re taking chances when going for smaller businesses, which is why they’re more likely to go look up small businesses online before trying anything. That means that they’re more likely to see online reviews.
If a king kong marketing review is only one of many, then its impact is diluted. But that’s not the case for small businesses, which is why it’s especially important for them to respond properly to reviews, particularly negative ones.