Why Google Reviews Are Your Business’s BFF

by

Getting the word out about your business requires a bit of internet savvy and an eye for new trends. If you haven't considered Google Reviews as a way to pull in new customers, you may be missing out on clients, even on a local level.

People are far more likely to trust the word of a peer than what you say about your own company. Surprisingly, even negative reviews may help boost conversion rates. In a study on social commerce, researchers found an 85% increase in conversion rates when customers spent time interacting with negative reviews rather than positive ones.

As the world turns ever more to an online shopping or omnichannel model, people expect fair reviews to help them determine if a product is right for them. There are many ways you can utilize reviews to boost sales and customer satisfaction, and this list shows a few of them:

1. Meet Customer Expectations

People shopping online expect access to reviews and customer testimonials. If you want an excellent customer experience (CX), make reviews of your products and services easy to find. The more detail the reviews allow, the more likely people will pay attention to what they say. Add a review section to your e-commerce store, embed a link to Google reviews of your business and highlight the best ones on your landing pages.

embedsocial

Embed Social grabs short snippets from Google reviews and uses them on their website as testimonials. They show the number of stars given, a snippet from the review and the person's name. The reviews scroll through different selections, highlighting some of the best features of the company's software.

2. Edge Out the Competition

Put yourself in the shoes of a first-time visitor to your site. They've never heard of your brand. The person may compare you to other companies in the area offering similar products or services. You can stand out and edge out the competition by utilizing Google reviews. Some searchers never hit the actual websites of brands in your niche.

Instead, they search for something like "tour companies in Little Rock" and see what pulls up. They then look over to the right side on the results page and see which businesses have the best reviews. They may even read through some of the comments, choose which site to visit and potentially book a tour while there.

3. Engage Current Customers

Invite those who already love you to leave a review of your business on Google. The more reviews you have, the more chances someone might give you an opportunity to meet their needs. Who better to leave positive reviews than already happy customers? You can invite your clients to provide their insights via email, by sending a text message or through a link on your website.

familydentistryofnj

Family Dentistry of New Jersey invites current clients to leave a Google review. They share a little of what they're about and then share the link to the reviews page for the search engine giant. By reaching out to those who already know them and what they're about, they encourage positive reviews. They also explain their mission as a brand, which guides the user on the type of feedback to leave.

4. Embrace Poor Reviews

The longer you're in business, the higher the chances that you'll have at least one unhappy customer. At some point, you'll encounter a negative review, whether it's fair or not. Think through how you'll handle nasty comments and establish a plan.

You should first respond on the platform where the user left the review, such as Google. Try to make amends. If the person is genuinely unreasonable and just wants to trash your name, leave a list of how you attempted to rectify the problem and let other consumers decide if it was a warranted complaint.

5. Gain Consumer Trust

Unless they've done business with you in the past, people have no reason to trust your company. There are a lot of brands out there who don't put customers first. You must add trust factors to your site to show leads you'll stand behind your product. One of the simplest ways is implementing a page filled with glowing reviews of your brand.

efgcompanies

EFG Companies includes a section on their site dedicated to embedded Google reviews. Site visitors can look through the latest comments and highest or lowest ratings. When you embed something like this on your site, it's essential to pay attention to the feedback you receive and work quickly to fix any damaging comments.

6. Gain a Feedback Loop

If you want to improve your business year after year, you must look for ways to better meet customers' needs. Keep track of both positive and negative feedback. Study your own Google ratings and see if there are any areas you can improve. If people regularly give you a four-star rating, how can you get to five?

7. Highlight Your UVP

What is your unique value proposition (UVP) as a brand? What do you do better than any of your competitors? You can use reviews to highlight the advantages you have over the competition. Show your users that you do the basics just as well as other businesses, but you also have a few tricks up your sleeve they'll love.

bergenbagels

Bergen Bagels does an excellent job of showing off their food quality and freshness by listing reviews stating how great they are. They mix the Google reviews with comments from TripAdvisor and Yelp, showing they meet customer standards no matter where they're mentioned.

Encourage Reading and Writing Reviews

The best way of encouraging your customers to write feedback about your company is by adding a link directly to your Google business page. However, you should also be upfront with sharing all reviews written about your brand. Embed the latest ones, link to the full list of comments and mix them in with your mission or value statements for a full picture of what you do and who you are as a company.

LixieLexie is a digital nomad and web designer. When she’s not traveling to various parts of the country, you can find her at the local flea markets or hiking with her Goldendoodle. Check out her design blog, Design Roast, and connect with her on Twitter @lexieludesigner.

How to Seasonal Brand the Right Way

by

Seasonal branding is a great way to take advantage of holidays and changing weather to market your company. Holidays drive a huge amount of traffic — and the bigger they are, the more customers you may get.

Doing seasonal branding well, however, can be a little tricky. Without the right prep and approach, it can fall flat, fail to encourage conversions or even disrupt the consistency of your company's tone.

When you're building your season branding plan this year, apply these strategies.

1. Build Some Drama

Most major holiday seasons have some major lead-up. There are a few different ways you can use this to your advantage.

hubspot brand

One of HubSpot's promotions for Cyber Monday used a countdown timer on a page filled with resources
on how brands could get the most out of the holiday season.

HubSpot's use of the timer is probably a bit of inversion of what your brand is likely to do as the holidays
approach — advertise gifts to customers, rather than other businesses.

The principle, however, is the same — and the idea behind the timer is universally applicable. The holiday
season requires a lot of planning and prep for people to get the best gifts possible for friends and family.
At the same time, it's also exciting and worth looking forward to. The timer is a simple way to take
advantage of this lead-up period and build some excitement and drama before the holiday season.

2. Change Things up With Daily Offers

During the lead-up to a major holiday, you can swap out old offers for new ones every day.

Like the countdown timer, daily deals add a little bit of drama and flair to your seasonal branding. If a customer knows you're revealing new specials every day, they have a reason to keep coming back — generating repeat engagement for your brand. This is more likely to create repeat customers, which are the foundation of just about every successful e-commerce business.

Planning several weeks' worth of daily deals will also ensure you're getting the most out of the build-up to a major holiday.

3. Promote Seasonal Products

Many holidays offer some great opportunities for specialty products and bundles related to the season.

ftd brand

These curated Mother's Day listings of highly-relevant products from FTD are a great example of how you can use the season to provide some extra value to consumers. They're looking for gift ideas and products — putting together a list of the best ones is a great way to deliver what they need.

Be sure to advertise these listings clearly. You can also go beyond creating lists of individual products. Holiday and seasonal bundles are effective at boosting sales because they encourage customers to consider items they may have overlooked by packaging them with more obvious options.

4. Go Beyond Holidays and the Four Seasons

Often, brands will limit their seasonal branding to major holidays. It's great to take advantage of these big-traffic events, but you can really use any part of the year with distinct characteristics to market your brand.

bank overhead doors

Rather than advertise using a typical seasonal or holiday event, Banko Garage Doors focuses on hurricane season. It reminds people that they can make their homes more ready for strong wind and rain with the right preparations.

If you want to convince people to shop with your brand, take advantage of the unique benefits your products may offer at certain times of the year.

5. Keep Seasonal Branding Aligned With Your Normal Style

There are some dangers to seasonal branding. If you let it drift too far from your typical style, you risk overshadowing or contradicting your usual voice. Ideally, seasonal branding will reinforce and underscore your year-round message. This consistency will ensure customers stick around once the season is over and still feel like they're working with the same company.

If your seasonal voice is too distinct from your brand during the rest of the year, the sudden shifts in tone may be confusing or even jarring.

6. Customize Guides and Product Lists

Simple changes to existing content can do a lot to drive holiday and seasonal traffic. If your website already hosts lists, bundles and product guides, you can subtly tweak them to fit the time of year.

These changes don't need to be substantial — just updating the copy on an existing list to add some seasonal flair, for example, can make your website a lot more relevant to visitors. This will help your website appear in holiday searches and draw the attention of customers looking for gift ideas.

7. Offer Special Packaging Options

For many of the big holidays, we're buying things for each other, not ourselves. Special packaging offers at checkout are a great option for people who plan on sending your items as gifts.

Even the little things — like customizable cards — can do a lot to add a personal touch to your holiday offerings.

These options will add a little extra labor on your end that you'll need to budget for — but the difference they make can be massive.

Best Strategies for Seasonal Branding

With the right seasonal branding plan, you can take advantage of the major traffic holidays drive. These techniques are a great place to start if you want to build an effective strategy. Just be sure it lines up with your usual brand voice — otherwise, you risk a jarring or confusing customer experience once the holiday is over.

Seasonal Brand

LixieLexie is a digital nomad and web designer. When she’s not traveling to various parts of the country, you can find her at the local flea markets or hiking with her Goldendoodle. Check out her design blog, Design Roast, and connect with her on Twitter @lexieludesigner.

How to Design Graphics With Corporate Branding in Mind

by

Brand post header

Creating an identity for a brand is a creative and fun process. Think of each corporation as a blank canvas, and the images you associate with it drive how others see the business. Most graphic design projects happen for firms already established. There are still a lot of things you can do to enhance their image and bring better recognition. 

Although there are a few big corporate players in the United States, most companies fall into the smaller category with fewer than 1,500 employees. According to the Small Business Administration, 30.7 million small businesses exist in the United States, employing around 59.9 million people. 

No matter what size organization a client falls into, stellar graphics create an opportunity for name recognition. Rather than focusing on a single product by the firm, corporate branding focuses on the entire entity. No matter what industry or size of the client, you should also employ excellent basic skills that stand the test of time. 

1. Tell a Story

Logos should tell the story of the brand, reflecting the values and mission of the company. Think about some of the famous ones you've seen. Amazon's arrow is a stellar example of a story within a logo. They want people to know they carry everything from A to Z. The arrow starts at the letter A and points to the letter Z to signify the principle. What story does the logo you designed tell?

2. Look at the Big Picture

Whether you're building a full package for the client or only creating a logo or webpage, take a step back and look at the scope of the project and how it fits into the overall brand image. A logo redesign should match the company's color palette and style guide while still looking fresh and remade. If creating a landing page, does it fit into the mission of the company?

3. Research the Competition

Before you put pen to paper or stylus to art pad, spend time looking at the images of the brand's nearest competition. Some elements make sense for a particular industry, such as the outline of a house for a construction company. The last thing you want to do is come up with a new logo that looks similar to someone else's.

4. Double-Check Style Guides

If the company has a style guide, check it over carefully. Is everything within the guide still consistent? As companies change their branding over time, there may be conflicting elements. Clean these up before you begin the project to be sure you're on the same page as the owner of the business. If you make any major changes, run it past your client and update the details for future project managers.

5. Think of the Brand as a Person

Whenever you take on a new customer, take a step back and look at their company and the image it portrays. Give the brand a personality. You can even create a persona for the brand if it helps you in the design process. If the brand is young and hip, then the element must reflect the same attitude. Just make sure your interpretation of the company's personality matches the way the owner wants their business seen.

6. Get Input Along the Way

One of the most critical elements in corporate branding design is ensuring your creations match what the company wants for its image. Make sure you're on the right wavelength by gathering input along the way. When you come up with the initial concept, wireframe the idea and pull the client into the conversation for input. Make any required changes and sketch out the element. Then, gather more feedback.

By involving corporate leadership along the way, you'll avoid any major errors. You also prevent frustrating your client.

7. Check for Consistency

Anytime you complete a stage in the design process, double-check for consistency. Does the new element match what's already in place? Look at the style guide again. A nice added perk for your clients is when you double-check all the mediums on which they appear and let them know if you see anything inconsistent. 

For example, does their Facebook page match up to the look and message on their website? If someone walks into the brick-and-mortar store, are the colors and signage the same as what they see online?

8. Add a Pop of Color

While you might be limited to a specific palette developed long before you came along, you have a lot of leeway in adding a bit of contrast, especially for web designs. A pop of color, such as a red against dark blue or yellow with green, can draw the user's eye and establish the immediacy of the brand. You don't want to change what the client already has, but you can enhance it and add to it to create an emotional reaction in the viewer.

Don't Be Afraid to Rebrand

Following a few of the rules above allows you to design for business and keep the image consistent. There may be times when you run into a situation where the style guide is hopelessly outdated, and the looks are all over the place. Don't be afraid to ask for a complete rebrand when that happens. Small businesses on a budget can take the rebrand in stages, first focusing on the logo and then the website and social media. 

Share your expertise in the area of branding and creating a unique image. Your clients will appreciate your attention to detail.

Corporate Branding

Lixie
Lexie is a digital nomad and web designer. When she’s not traveling to various parts of the country, you can find her at the local flea markets or hiking with her Goldendoodle. Check out her design blog, Design Roast, and connect with her on Twitter @lexieludesigner.