Marika Carter is the Director of Internet Marketing at Scorpion. She shares her wealth of 20 years marketing experience to help home services business owners create strong online reputations.

Why Your Online Reputation Matters

Your online reputation really matters, especially for home services businesses. Remember, your marketing funnel begins with the consumer looking in many different places for someone to fix their problem. So you want to make sure that you give a good first impression and show up where they are looking.

Marika highlights that according to the current data, the consumer typically has five touchpoints with your business before they take action. These touchpoints should be searchable, educational, and valuable. 

Apps home services businesses should consider creating a profile on (in addition to Google, service ads, and paper ads):

• Nextdoor
• HomeAdvisor
• Angie’s List
• Yelp 
• Porch

The final touch? Make sure your information is consistent across all platforms.

Consumers Have Options

In today’s market, consumers have a lot of options and places they can search for information. 

“Some studies show that the online reviews are basically 90% of what matters in somebody making a decision. So, in the past, somebody used to just call their neighbor or friends, family, whoever to recommend someone. But now, if you don’t have a good set of reviews, and it’s okay to have some not so good reviews too, but you have to show that you’re interacting with your client, so that online reputation really matters much more so than before.” 

Marika’s advice is to treat your Google My Business page as a little microsite. If your website is your house entryway, then consider Google My Business your front porch. Populate it with:

• Photos
• Coupons
• Website
• Hours
• Phone

Local service ads are also a helpful tool for promoting your business, and it is critical that your team on the other end of that phone number is responsive. You have to pick up the phone. With the high level of competition and low loyalty today, consumers will move right along to a competitor if you don’t answer immediately.

Responding to Reviews

Marika acknowledges that being a business owner and trying to keep track of all of your responsibilities and respond to reviews can be overwhelming. She recommends thinking of your online reputation like building your credit history. Do what you can to improve it and monitor it closely. 

Responding to both good and bad reviews as soon as you see them is important. What other people want to see is that you are willing to make things right and resolve any issues that the poster addresses. Be charitable, consistent, and follow up. If you need support, Marika recommends taking action:

1. Choose someone in-house to help you manage your online reputation.
2. Find a trusted, expert partner outside your company to help you. 

Marika’s Tip for Capturing Reviews

“I think people are happy to leave reviews but it has to be in that moment. So, the best way to handle it is to have the technician ask for a review before they leave the house and then follow up from there. But you have a very, very short window to even get that review and you have to ask for it. Some companies, they do friendly competition between the technicians, a little incentive program there to motivate the technicians to get more.”