The most effective way to attract, convert and retain high-value customers is to create a strong reputation that fosters trust. Over time, this solid principle has not changed. Your best prospects are those who have a high level of trust in your business. They make quicker decisions, are more willing to pay a premium price, have the higher levels of satisfaction and are the most likely to buy from you again. Conversely, customers who have a low level of trust take longer to make decisions, demand larger discounts, are more likely to be dissatisfied and are less likely to buy from you again.

Creating trust is clearly a very valuable asset to cultivate since even modest gains in prospect conversion rates, pricing levels and retention rates can have a major impact on profitability. For example, just a 5 percent improvement in retention can increase profits as much as 95 percent, according to Bain & Company.

With the explosive growth of social media we are seeing the emergence of a new class of internet sites dedicated to publishing consumer reviews on local businesses.  Yelp, CitiSearch, InsiderPages and Angieslist are just a few such firms that afford the creation of online reputations. After a decade of relying on consumer ratings and reviews for making online purchases, the majority of today’s consumers look for consumer ratings when seeking a local business.  Google, the industry’s leading search engine now combines local reviews with their search results for many types of local searches.

Here is an example of a Google search for Chiropractors in Scotch Plains, NJ. Notice that the listing for Leventhal Family Chiropractic, which I highlighted in yellow, has a consumer review linked to it. This is an organic result and requires no purchase of keywords or any other special fees.  It is totally FREE. Google combines social content to their organic search results in order to maximize the value of their results to consumers.  This is a great opportunity for quality local businesses to promote themselves in the most credible way and at no cost!

But before we get too excited, it is important to remember what makes word of mouth referrals so effective in the first place. People are influenced by personal referrals or word of mouth because they know and trust the person making the referral. They also trust the referral because they know that it is objective and the person is not being compensated for providing a favorable review.

Now here is where today’s crop of consumer rating and review sites have real issues.  Because anyone with an email address can rate any business there is a lot of abuse. Today’s ratings sites have little or no means of authenticating individual reviews. Their sites have literally created an open season for unscrupulous businesses to write fake reviews on competitors and their own businesses.  And of course you have a flood of fake reviews that are created by individuals who often are compensated by the review sites to create review content. The problem has risen to the attention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, (FTC)  who recently published new guidelines on this topic to address the growing concern of misleading endorsements.

The effectiveness of your online reputation is directly linked to the authenticity of the review and the transparency of the review site. If consumers have to question the authenticity of the reviews, then its influence is greatly diminished.

Trust FX recognizes that for natural online reputations to reach their full potential as an effective small business marketing strategy, consumers must trust the authenticity of our reviews and the transparency of our rating system. We achieve these goals with our patent pending system. A unique key is given to each customer by participating businesses at the time of sale. The key is required to give feedback

Andrew Ward
Chief Trust Officer
Trust FX