In this article, we are going to cover in detail, how a local business can become successful in less than 3 months, taking full advantage of the Google’s ecosystem for free.
And by ‘successful,’ we do not mean an instant overnight success with millions of profit every year. If you are more focused about these type of success, we advise that this article is not for you.
This is a genuine article that deeply guides through (1) the realistic building process of (2) “self-sustainable” local businesses that (3) autonomously grows and (4) generates good amount of profit with (5) great business stability.
If you own or manage a local business (restaurants, cafe, shops, clinics, contracts, maintenance, home services, pool cleaning, lawn mowing, massage, etc.), and is willing to put some effort in for the next 2~3 month to achieve a long-term and sustainable success, then we welcome you to this article.
We will cover the secret recipe in great scientific details, and we promise that you will not be disappointed.
As this can be a long article, let us break down the big agenda first.
1. How many Google Reviews lead to a stable success?
2. How and why is Google Review so important?
3. What are the major challenges in the Google’s Ecosystem?
4. Easiest way to collect hundreds of 5-Star Google Reviews in 3 months.
Before explaining HOW and WHY Google Reviews are critical to your local business success, let us discuss the most interesting findings first.
As simple as these questions sound, there’s actually a whole complex cognitive science behind this.
We (Tappty) have conducted a nationwide study with over 1,500 randomized survey participants, to accurately answer the two questions above.
And below is the heatmap to visually represent the findings to the study:
Simply put, you want to make sure that your business is not in the ■A or ■B-Zone.
These are the state where Google’s ecosystem is negatively impacting your business performance, and it’s critical to do everything in your power to get yourself out of this zone, as fast as possible.
Do not think about making good profit in this state. Temporary loss is okay, as long as you have the fund to survive for a while. Give tons of free & bonus products/services to your customers in exchange for good reviews.
This is the stage where you start to balance between “staying profitable” and “giving away to customers”. You can’t continue to operate your business at a loss, and at the end of the day, your business needs to be able to sustain itself.
You got yourself out of the ■A & ■B-Zone by taking temporary loss. Now you still don’t want to force your customers to give you tons of profit, but you’re at a stage where you no longer have to take huge losses to collect Google Reviews.
Slow down with the unsustainable discounts and promotions that were causing you losses, but continue on with the efforts to bring in as many Google Reviews as possible.
Assuming that the quality of the products and services you were providing was consistently adequate, you should be able to grow yourself into the ■D-Zone within the next 3~4 months.
The ■D-Zone signifies that you have established yourself a reputable local business.
Although you won’t be having a long line of waiting customers outside of your door, you are still enjoying a decent amount of daily customers. You won’t be taking home the best level of profit yet, but maintaining your business (rent, payroll, etc.) is something doable. Your stress and frustration primarily stems from wanting to earn more, not from survival threats.
This is the stage where your business starts to scale, and it can either be a blessing or a curse, depending on how well-prepared you are.
The increase in the customer volume starts to put stress on your operational capacity, and you may start to overlook some customers’ experience during the peak hours. You need to keep a constant eye out to optimize your business in the interest of the best customer experience, or your review may start to suffer.
You also want to continue putting efforts into collecting more Google Reviews, as you are not in the “Safe” zone to guarantee your stable success yet.
Continue this phase for about 6 to 12 months, and you should see yourself positioning in the ■E-Zone.
Congratulations, you have now entered the ■E-Zone, where you have established a stable & successful local business.
Your business is probably operating at its optimal max-capacity, and dealing with reservations and walk-ins is a pleasurable headache. Customers are constantly coming to you after discovering you on Google, and you don’t have to worry about special marketing strategy to do this. All of your staff is also very well-trained, so the operation generally runs very smoothly, like a daily routine.
At this point, failure is not something that you have to worry about, but you must stay vigilant about the consistent quality that you are providing to your customers. If your customers start to feel like your business is not delivering proper value, your Google Review ratings may suffer, and this can have a permanent, detrimental impact to your business.
If there are big enough competitors in your town, by all means, you should also continue putting effort into collecting as many Google Review as possible. But if you are the only “Big Player” in your town, it’s about time that you can start to loosen up the Google Review maintenance.
So if you are at this level, enjoy your success and stress-free life, but always stay vigilant about the consistent quality you bring to your customers!
From the first part of this article, you learned how your Google Review count and average Star-rating may impact your local business performance. You now understand the “Goal” you have to set, to get closer to your business success.
And it’s a common knowledge that Google Review has massive impact on your business growth, but you may still be thinking, “I sort of get it, but I don’t see how this is so important.”
So let’s dive deeper into this topic.
People are always actively searching for local businesses to solve their daily demands.
When someone’s hungry and lazy, they search for nearby restaurants. When someone’s drowsy, they search for nearby cafe. When someone’s pipe is leaking, they search for nearby plumber. When someone’s car needs to be fixed, they search for nearby mechanics shop.
And where do you think these people search for the local businesses to meet their demands?
If you haven’t guessed already, it’s Google.
Over 95% of the entire world’s population utilizes Google to search for anything. That means at least 95% (if not 100%) of your customers are looking for you in Google or Google Map before showing up to the door of your shop.
With this in mind, to say that “Your online presence in Google is critical for your local business’ success” would be a great understatement. Your survival literally depends on Google’s ecosystem, and it’s up to you to either TAKE advantage of this, or GET taken advantage of.
And if you can choose, why not take advantage of this Google’s ecosystem for your own benefit?
We’ve just established how scary and powerful Google can be, when it comes to ‘survive & thrive’ of your local business.
Now let’s dive deeper into HOW Google Reviews either (1) help or (2) hurt your business, and the consumer’s psychology behind this.
Let’s start this off by analyzing people’s general behavior, when they are looking for local businesses to fulfill their demands (i.e. hungry, need sugar, need coffee, need to fix my car, etc.).
By default, people naturally turn on their smartphone and go to Google, following the 4-steps below:
People generally search for ‘keywords + location’ like “XXX near me”, “Best XXX in YYY city” in Google or Google Maps.
As the search result, over 100+ list of competing local businesses are shown on the Google Map, with the Star-ratings and the Review counts.
As a customer, you don’t need or want to try all of the places. They just need to find only one place, that will both (1) provide the best experience/value and (2) be located in an accessible distance.
How do these customers ‘predict’ which local business is going to be the best one?
Simple. They look at the number of Google Reviews and the average Star-ratings.
They immediately filter out the places that have either (1) low number of Google Reviews, or/and (2) low average star-ratings.
Repeating the filtering process and looking at reviews, the customers finally choose the business that they want, and decide to take a visit to the place.
Looking at this behavioral pattern, it’s very clear that the “Number of Google Reviews” and the “Average Star-Ratings” of a local business are being treated as the ONLY indication of a “Good Business” that’s worthy of a customer’s time and money.
And sadly, those other businesses with less than ideal reviews and ratings don’t even get the chance to serve these new customers to prove themselves, because the customers automatically dismiss them due to the prejudice developed by the visible online numbers.
Now let’s look more closely on the enormously positive upsides of the Google Review ecosystem.
Having a good Google Review status has a massive advertising impact on your business.
Compared to the traditional paid-advertisements (i.e. Facebook/Instagram Ads, Google Ads, etc.), you do not need to pay a single dime to keep enjoying the advertising benefit of Google Reviews.
Literally, the reviews your business collected is a permanent asset, and they do not require additional payment or maintenance to keep your reviews. With this in mind, Google Reviews are probably the biggest, free asset that a business can hold, and businesses should put major emphasis on growing this asset.
The bigger and better your Google Review asset is, the more customers will be showing up at your shop, and this cycle continues ETERNALLY.
With all of the positive impacts that Google Reviews bring to your business, we have to talk about the Growth Automation aspect.
Quite literally, a good Google Review status will (1) automate bringing in more customers at your door, thus (2) resulting in constant growth of your business.
You as a business owner will only have to worry about providing good services/products to the customers, when they come visit you. No more headache about “How can I get more customers to come in? How can I increase the revenue? Do I need to advertise?”
Just focus on what you are good at, and let Google take care of your marketing and growth, for FREE.
You may have heard of the term “SEO” before.
SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s basically a “technical optimization process” to get YOUR business page to show up as the top, first search result in Google.
As your business shows up in the top, first result of Google, SEO produces a massive, unquestionable advertising impact for your business. But as great as SEO can be, it’s also worth mentioning that SEO processes are generally very complicated and tedious, especially if you are competing for popular keywords.
This is when the Google Review & Local Businesses really shines.
By default, when a customer is searching for a local business (i.e. Best restaurant near me, Plumber in NYC, etc.), Google displays the Google Map search results in the top 2~3 place (screenshot below).
So just by having a local business information registered in Google Map, your business page is already getting placed in the top search result area without having to go through the complicated process of a traditional SEO.
And you may notice from the screenshot below, that only the businesses with the highest Google Review count & average star-rating shows up in the “Place” search result.
That means, if your business has a high review count with a good average star-rating, you will get to enjoy the powerful algorithm benefits of SEO.
Can you imagine your business page showing up as the first result, when someone searches for “Best XXX near me”? You will absolutely crush your competitors and dominate the local demands around your town.
But you also have to remember, during the time while you are not placing in the top position, another “better Google Review” competitor of yours is stealing away the potential customers that may have been yours, on a DAILY basis.
All it takes, is having (1) a high review count and (2) good average star-rating, so let’s take advantage of this game rule to your benefit!
Imagine the constant flow of customers that 1,000+ review businesses are enjoying right now.
These businesses are taking good advantage of the Google’s ecosystem and people’s behavior, thus effectively taking away customers from their competitors. And the best part is, they don’t have to spend a single dime on advertisement. The customers are the ones actively looking for them, and the businesses don’t have to beg these customers to come.
Remember, one single review may not seem too significant. But a hundred reviews can drastically change your competitive edge. A thousand reviews change the entire game dynamics and your life.
By now, we have a profound understanding of how massively impactful Google Reviews are, to the success of your local business.
It seems simple enough, but why is every other businesses not doing this?
As beneficial as Google Reviews are to your business, they come with an obvious challenge.
It is simply hard to collect Google Reviews.
If you look at the consumer review statistics, less than 1~2% of customers actually end up writing reviews voluntarily. That means only 1 or 2 out of 100 customers will be writing Google Reviews for your business, and that’s a painstaking process.
It’s not that people are strongly against leaving a review, but process-wise, it becomes a lot of work to leave a review for your business.
The process that is required to leave a Google Review is as follows:
It requires about 8 different steps to submit a review, and of that, 7 steps are wholly dedicated to even get to the review writing page.
Depending on people, the time it takes to get to the review writing page can range from 30 seconds to more than 1 minute.
This is without a doubt, a huge barrier that is keeping away from people to write reviews for you.
Due to this, it is very hard to motivate people to jump through the hoops, and your review collection progress can be painstakingly slow.
With these in mind, we advise you to overcome this challenge in the following angle:
You might be wondering “how can I do this?”
But don’t worry. We have a perfect solution for you. Just keep reading this article.
This is quite simple, but can be a little costly.
You can provide free add-on products/services as a bonus for writing the review (i.e. Get free soda or appetizer if you write a review), or offering discounts are also a common method you can see a lot.
But at the end of the day, this is not the most sustainable way to collect your reviews, so implementing this strategy for a long-term is something you may want to think twice about.
To recap what we learned so far, we have covered:
1. The step-by-step, Google Review status goals that your business should achieve.
2. The massive impact that Google Review has on your local business success.
3. The challenges you may face with collecting Google Reviews.
With your blessing, we would like to briefly promote our quick, easy, and affordable solution to the challenge mentioned above.
Tappty ( https://tappty.com ) allows your customers to leave Google Reviews in less than 3 seconds.
We provide specially programmed, physical cards that sends “review request” directly to your smartphone. You just have to tap the smartphone near the card, and it automatically opens up the Google Review writing page in less than 3 seconds. (It works great with both iPhone and Android)
Before Tappty, it took over 8 steps & 30~60 seconds just to write a Google Review for your business. But with Tappty, the required steps decrease to only 3 steps, and now it only takes 3 seconds to start writing Google Reviews.
By removing the friction & effort that goes into writing a review, your customers are more easily motivated to leave good 5-Star Google Reviews. With Tappty, over 10,000+ of our client businesses are more easily and effectively collecting Google Reviews, and some have even collected over 1,000+ reviews in less than 3 months of using our product.
With only $6.99 of starting price, it’s worth checking out our product if you would like to transform your local business into an auto-growing empire.
Tappty cares about your success, and we hope that you can give us a chance to partner up with you to achieve your success together 🙂
TAPPTY – The easiest way to boost your 5-Star Google Reviews & Ranking.
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Disclaimer
TAPPTY (or Tappty) is independent and has no affiliation with Google, Trustpilot, Tripadvisor, Yelp, TikTok, Instagram and/or other 3rd party platforms.
Our products are tools that are designed to optimize the growth metrics on these platforms.