In years gone by word of mouth was one of the best ways to get new leads and customers. It’s still important, but it has now changed direction and headed to the online forum instead.
This makes it even more visible and therefore essential to your business.
Word of mouth was once limited to friends and family, in person or on the phone but now it has expanded to the entire internet. This means that good and bad reviews can now be spotted by people further afield, thanks to review sites. There are now more of these sites and outlets to review than ever, from Facebook to TripAdvisor.
Users now spend around 30 minutes browsing reviews before booking and 70% of users will look at up to 20 reviews before booking.
These become the building blocks of their trust with a company and this can influence their decision to book with your company.
Positive reviews can lead to higher conversion rates and more customers for your business. This can greatly improve your profit and overshadows the time spent setting up review outlets. Replying to these comments and curating the positive reviews may take some time but it brings back much more than it costs initially.
Businesses don’t always get a chance to hear what their customers think of their brand but reviews get to the root of many issues. In this way criticisms can become learning tools for your business and can influence the way that your business grows.
It provides free market research from those who have first-hand experience with your brand and can point out factors that you may have missed.
It’s one thing to have a site that extolls your virtues but when it comes to trusted advice people will generally search for the experiences of other travellers. They feel that these reviews are impartial and offer an insight into the service that they will receive, which will influence them far more than self-promotion.
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Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.
