In the day of the internet, online customer reviews are more important than ever, especially for Small and Local Businesses like ourselves. These reviews help to tell future potential customers or clients about your positive, or negative, experience with a business, as well as why a person should, or should not, spend their hard earned money with that local business.
These reviews do more for a small business than what they would do with a big retailer, as this is one of the new ways of doing “Word of Mouth” advertising, which is invaluable for a small business. Large retailers instead are able to do very expensive commercials, social media campaigns, etc to generate a ‘word of mouth’ buzz that implies they are a worthwhile company to spend your money with. Often times, people do not check reviews of a large retailer before making a purchase or utilizing a service with them because of this. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be going there.
Using online reviews can be tricky at times. If you look at a small business’s website, they will often have reviews from their customers listed on there… though, usually with no way of actually verifying that those reviews are in fact from customers that have used their services. It is very important to also check 3rd party review sites like Google Places, YellowBot, Thumbtack,Yahoo! Local or even their Facebook Fan Page. The most valuable of all these review sites we think is the Google Places. Why? Because it quickly shows up in the Google search results for new potential customers or clients for that business to see.
Please take a moment to review some of your favorite businesses online. Supporting local and small businesses is a great way to help keep a local community strong, even a large local community like the Twin Cities metro area.
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*Pump ‘n Munch also has a nice selection of natural snacks for road trips, gluten-free pizzas and more!
