Nothing has made the world easier to understand quite as much as the good old-fashioned online review. We take the online review for granted today because they are so prevalent and easy to digest. Just 20 short years ago, you’d have to purchase a magazine subscription to a consumer review magazine just to get the slightest glimpse into your favorite businesses, much less their long line of products. Word of mouth reviews might come your way if you discussed a product, but your insight into the product would be only as good as the neighbor or two who mentioned it.
Today there are millions of ways to review specific services and products. Research has shown just how much these reviews impact businesses and their bottom line sales (I loved this). They must not be ignored if success is going to follow a business’s efforts online. It’s crucial to review even the reviews to ensure that they are accurate about a particular business.
As for how to use online reviews to select your own services, there is a lot of positive information about the impact of online reviews and how they can help businesses select their own services over the course of time. Marketing agency reviews are especially helpful. The reviews themselves – if accurate – can save you legions of time by helping you immediately eliminate businesses that simply don’t offer the kind of services you need. They might be great marketing services for others, but for your needs, the review overviews themselves will eliminate the businesses that don’t carry the services you need.
A general marketing agency overview can often help you rule out certain firms right off the bat so that you don’t waste your time interviewing them. Interviews and contacts with potential business partners can be time-consuming and counterproductive in the long run. Reviews have a menu of services listed for the marketing agencies and this menu of services will tell you pretty much everything the particular service offers. If you need social media marketing but the company listed at #5 doesn’t offer social media marketing services, then you immediately have a company to rule out as a potential partner to grow your business.
The reviews themselves need to provide more than just a general overview of the business, though. It helps to see customer testimonials and a portfolio of work that shows you the type of businesses the agency works with. For example, some agencies specialize in a particular kind of business. They might work only with law firms or only with healthcare professionals. You can rule these specific firms out, too, unless you operate a business in their specialty industry. As you narrow your list of potential partners out, you gain insight into just how useful online reviews have become and how much businesses and individuals alike depend on them for guidance before selecting services and products. The next time you begin a wild chase for a great marketing agency or other business, consider meta reviews.