As people shop this holiday season, many people focus on “shopping small” and supporting local businesses. After all, local businesses help drive local economies, and many people enjoy supporting these small family-run operations over faceless large businesses. If you’re looking to support local businesses this holiday season, there is something you can do that is fast, free, and makes a huge difference for local businesses: leave them a review!
Leaving a positive review on any platform helps businesses, but perhaps the most effective platform to leave a review on is their Google Business Profile (GBP). It couldn’t be easier, just search for the business on Google and click “Write a Review” while logged into a Google account. Here’s how leaving a review can help a small business:
Improve their SEO
Many small businesses are always working to improve their search engine optimization. Better SEO helps businesses to be found when people search for their goods or services on Google. One factor that can really help SEO is to have a steady stream of positive reviews on Google.
Sidenote: At Kite Media, we LOVE helping small businesses with search engine optimization. If you’re a small business owner, give us a call at 435-753-7553 and let’s chat to see how we can help your business!
Influence Potential Customers
When you are looking for a business, you probably read the reviews to make an informed choice. By leaving a glowing review for your favorite local businesses, you can help influence potential customers. This is beneficial to both potential customers and the small business! Everyone wins when you share your experiences.
Provide Feedback
Leaving a review can help a business know what they are doing right and should be doing more of. Let the business and potential customers know why you chose that business over the other options out there!
When you are leaving a review, you should be aware that on Google, anything less than 5 stars is essentially negative. You can give a business four or five stars and still include feedback on ways that they can improve if needed. Anything less than that can really hurt a business and should be reserved for businesses with whom you truly had an awful experience and have been unable to resolve your issues through other means.
Encouragement
Running a small business can be a difficult job. If you’ve never done it, then you cannot imagine how encouraging it can be to get a great review from a customer. It only takes a minute out of your day to make a small business owner’s entire week!
As you are looking for ways to support small businesses this holiday season, please keep in mind how beneficial it can be to leave a review. In fact, we challenge you to think of your favorite small business and go leave them a review right now!
And hey, if that small business happens to be Kite Media, well we won’t stop you.