In 2021 one of the most powerful marketing assets a home improvement business can have is a positive online reputation. The importance of this continues to rise as more and more people are using the internet to help them decide who to hire.

Therefore ensuring you retain a positive online reputation should be an integral part of your overall business strategy, to ensure it’s constantly nurtured and protected.

The trouble is, and I say this with the greatest respect, hiring a trusted, reliable home improvement business or tradesman isn’t always so easy. A 2018 Which? survey found that tradesmen (some trades more than others) for many reasons, are often untrusted. Apparently 60% of people perceive tradesmen as cowboys or rogue traders, a label which can make it difficult at least initially, to earn trust.

I don’t need to tell you that trust is an imperative. 

People buy from businesses they trust, so as you’ll already appreciate, a positive reputation is probably the most important thing in business. New customers, if they’re going to hire you, need to believe they’ll get a level of quality and service they want. 

The thing is nowadays, word of mouth as we know it is dying out as online reviews have become one of the most important tools a customer uses to decide who to trust. A 2019 survey found that 90% of customers used the internet to find a local business last year and 82% of people read reviews for local businesses (93% of people aged 34-54 always read reviews) before hiring anyone. 

It also found that positive customer reviews make 91% of customers more likely to use a business and 82% are less likely if there are negative reviews. So ensuring your website and your online reviews are in good shape is paramount, because these are a potential customers first port of call.

So if you want to retain and/or improve your reputation, you don’t really have any other choice, than to make ensuring your customers have a great experience of your operation from start to finish is at the heart of your business strategy. 

As you may have discovered unhappy customers don’t hold back in telling the world about their displeasure. Apparently the average “wronged customer” will tell 8-l6 people about it. Over 20% will tell more than 20. Nowadays it’s not what you say about your business that counts, it’s what your customers say about you that really matters.

In many ways this makes getting more leads and developing customer trust simple ensure the core of your business philosophy is about providing a great experience from start to finish and that people can see that in your online
presence.

Of course it’s easier said than done.