People don’t care how long you’ve been a family-run business, that you’ve won an award (awards are less trusted than ever), how you’ve been established since 1842, or how amazing your logo is. In fact, they don’t care at all about what you say about your business.

They care what other people say about your business, specifically, your past and present customers, clients and service users.

What to do about it.

There are three things I think you must do:

1) If your business model requires people to find you, make sure that your business is correctly listed on Google, Bing, and on Facebook. (“Bing?” I hear you ask. Yes. There is a demographic who still uses Bing and they are a demographic that will buy things.) And, once listed, get reviews up. You need at least 30 ‘5 Star’ reviews just to hit the baseline level of reputability, and this comes from a 2015 survey, so 3 years later we probably need more. Get your reviews on Google, Facebook, and Bing. Because it is here that people are looking for your business.

People aren’t just looking for you on Trustcaptain, check-a-biz, paidpages-dot-now, or whatever the current on-trend reputation platform is. They are looking on Google foremost, then Facebook, and on Bing. And, more often now people would rather see your Facebook page or your Google listing than your website. This is because they are easy to navigate and the information they want is always in the same place, whatever they are looking at. And the reviews, which over 80% of buyers want to see, are easy to find on Google and Facebook and are always in the same place.

And, most importantly, they are highly trusted.

And just in case you aren’t aware, do not offer clients anything to leave you a review. Apart from a 5 Star deserving service.  It’s not allowed and it’s not even beneficial – on the whole people will leave better reviews when simply asked for some feedback online than they will if they are bribed or coerced for a good review.

2) Respond to reviews. It’s free marketing after all. Everyone looks for something different; I look for a business‘s responses to the lowest reviews, some look for the reasons for the highest reviews, some look for a mix, and some look for the most recent. Reply to them all. This is your chance to show people who are actively ‘checking out’ your business, what a pleasure you are to do business with. This is especially important with bad reviews.

People can be pessimistic by nature, and so will often look for a time when you have ‘messed up’ to see how you handle it. Handle it well and you will be seen in a positive light. In fact, 4.7-4.9 as a score will get you the most attention, as long as you handle the low-scoring reviews well.

3) Lead with reputation. There’s evidence to suggest that people care more about your online reputation than they do about your ‘price point’ or your ‘branding’. In fact for most businesses, their reputation is their brand. And, If people care more about what others say about you than about what you say yourself, clear the space your slogan takes up and start telling people what others think of you. In all of your promotional efforts, lead with reputation. Even the Argos catalog is doing this now and I truly believe you should too.

Everywhere.