Cancel all your marketing spend until you are scoring 4.5 on Google

We see it all the time - an advertisement, followed by a damaging Google score (and the attendant reviews).

Let's look at the simple route the consumer takes these days...

1. Sees the advertisement for product or service
2. Looks up business on phone (over 80%)

So let's take a couple of real-world examples. Here are estate agents Marsh & Parsons spending considerable sums advertising on London underground (rates start well into the £tens of thousands for campaigns such as these)...

And here's what they look like when you search online...

Here is Irwin Mitchell, a national firm of solicitors, advertising on Instagram...

Instagram ads are difficult to price (because of their bidding system) but AdEspresso’s 2016 analysis on tens of thousands of Facebook ads showed that Instagram is often the most expensive ad placement. here they are on Google...

Containing reviews such as these...

And Specsavers - in today's Times?

About £13,000 - and their score...

Leading to these...

The first point we must stress here is that this article is in no way intended as criticism of these businesses. We should also state that we have no reason to believe that the individual reviews and reviewers are anything but genuine.

So what point are we making?

Reviews - both scores and the individual negative reviews themselves - do influence consumers. This is backed up by a mountain of evidence from both sides of the Atlantic. Businesses that score 4.5 or more on Google get more calls an clicks and they pass the crucial Google filter every time.

What has happened with each of the three businesses above is that their unhappy customers have found a way - almost certainly unwittingly - to punch well above their weight, and, in doing so, drag the impression created of these businesses in any given Google search towards the negative end of the spectrum.

What do all three of these businesses - and so many others - need to do?

Two things: they need to mobilise the voices of the silent majority of their happy customers by getting them to post reviews, then they need to find a CMA compliant way of moderating those reviews pre-publication to ensure that the absolute minimum of factually inaccurate or potentially misleading reviews are published.

Then they will be doing themselves and their potential customers a power of good. They will be looking great and their potential customers will have the confidence to do business with them.

A challenge from HelpHound...

You know your own business's ROI on every advertising pound you spend; join HelpHound and get your review management onto a professional footing and then check your ROI again. No improvement? Goodbye HelpHound.

Is your business's marketing and review management joined up?

Let's see what we mean by joined up. Here are two advertisements run in the Times this weekend. One is a single page (rate card £27,000) and the other a double page spread (rate card £42,000)...

Now, suppose you were attracted by one of these advertisements, what do we suppose might be your next action*. Perhaps one of these...

• call the business? 
• email the business? 
• visit the business's website?

* as readers will know, there are two kinds of advertising: 'above the line' (often known as 'brand' advertising) designed to enhance the reader's 'feel' for the brand in question and 'below the line' designed specifically to generate a hard - quantifiable - response (leads). Both of the above advertisements might reasonably be considered to fulfil both functions, but as they both include 'calls to action' in the form of web-links we feel justified in judging them on a below-the-line basis.

So - in order to either call, email or visit the business's website their potential customers have two options...

1. follow the url in the advertisement
2. google the business

For the purpose of this article we will assume it's about half-and-half. So let's see what happens when we google these two businesses (on our phone, because that's what most people have to hand when they are reading a paper). First Irwin Mitchell...

...with 'Reviews' front-and-centre, one click away...

And now Invesco...

We are not going to comment at this stage. We will now simply show you a HelpHound client's brand advertising...

...and in print...

...and then show you what happens if a potential customer googles their local branch...

...and - as an added bonus - if the potential customer were to go direct to their website...

...or even search for them on desktop...

So: Our message...

Get your review management sorted and the response to all your other advertising and marketing must rise*, it's as simple as that.

Note re: Irwin Mitchell and reviews sites

The more eagle-eyed of you may notice that Irwin Mitchell have employed both Feefo and Trustpilot. Their experience with these sites is one of the most pronounced cases of deflection that we have ever seen ('deflection': the negative impact on a business's Google score of inviting customers to write reviews to reviews sites - more here).

*Must rise? 

Here are some numbers - from Google My Business - for a single location for one of our clients...

...for more read this.