7 Clever Ways to Turn Nearby Now into a Supercharged Reputation Builder

People like local businesses – and in many cases, they need them.

When pipes burst, homeowners pick up their phone and search “plumber near me.” When their computer dies and they need emergency tech repair, they specifically request help desks in their city. Need a clinic? You want one down the street, not in the next state over.

Local search results are powerful. More than half of all searches on Google are seeking trusted local listings, as well as their ratings and reviews. 

If you want to draw in nearby customers to your local service business, you can’t ignore the importance of SEO. You need to be present online – but more than that, you need a stellar reputation that draws people in.

That’s where Nearby Now comes into play.

Nearby Now Bolsters Your Brand’s Online Image

Nearby Now is a powerful platform that has garnered more than 3.7 million reviews for local businesses. This tool doesn’t just build brand reputations. It encourages people to check-in with your business via interactive strategies.

If you’re a local business, and you’ve been struggling to appear in “near me” searches, this is your opportunity. Nearby Now gives you the building blocks for local SEO success – all you have to do is learn to use them.

This brings us to the main point of this article. You’ve downloaded Nearby Now, and you’re ready to start your journey toward better local search engine visibility. Now what?

Here are seven ways you can maximize your Nearby Now results with time-tested, proven strategies.

1. Garner Credible Reviews

First things first: Nearby Now helps people in the area to leave reviews. The tool brings the ratings and reviews in, but you still have a job to do if you want to reap the full reward.

You need to handle the reviews correctly – and that means establishing credibility by:

• Allowing both positive and negative reviews.
• Rarely editing/changing testimonials.
• Letting reviews trickle in naturally and gradually (not artificially).

As Nearby Now pulls in reviews, you might be tempted to delete any rating under four stars or nix feedback that’s less than glowing. That’s a bad idea.

You want a credible online reputation – and a “too good to be true” social presence scares people away. Customers want to know that your reviews and ratings are honest, and they’ll only believe that if they occasionally see a negative comment or two.

Research conducted by the Baymard Institute indicates that more than half (53 percent) of users specifically seek out negative reviews. Don’t sugarcoat things by deleting nasty comments. Instead, showcase your ability to respond to and handle negative feedback.

2. Tell People to let Others Know Where They Found Your Business Immediately After Service

Nearby Now increases your ability to have consumers engage with your business, but it’s still up to you to let them know where to find your business.

We’ve found that four out of 10 customers will engage with your Nearby Now page if you let them know where to find your business after completing a job. if you wait until 24 hours or more after the service, the rate of engagement drops to 20 percent.

When you ask people to engage with your Nearby Now page, remind them that they don’t need to create a login or sign up. They can interact with your page immediately – so they shouldn’t put it off.

3. Optimize Your GMB Listing ASAP

You’ve got a Nearby Now account – but that’s not enough if you haven’t claimed your Google My Business (GMB) listings. Optimizing these listings is an enormous aspect of building a strong social presence online.

You need Google to understand that the business belongs to you and that it’s accounted for. Additionally, they need to see that you’re maintaining consistent information across the internet, and that starts by managing each and every listing you have.

Once you have claimed your GMB listing and verified Citation consistency, you can integrate your location-based pages and profiles with Nearby Now. This allows for a more comprehensive integration, and therefore better results in terms of your search engine reputation, reviews, and ratings.

4. Create Service Pages for Profitable Locations

Another way to maximize your Nearby Now results is to ensure you’re properly integrating the most profitable, popular geo-targeted service pages. Let us explain.

You don’t necessarily want to create a service page on your brand’s website for each and every little town or city you serve. That would take forever – and it’s not really necessary. However, you do want to create location-specific service pages for the areas that bring in lots of money.

For example, let’s say your business serves all of Los Angeles County, but your revenue mostly streams from Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. You definitely want to have service pages for those two cities – and you want to compile reviews for those locations in one place.

Not sure where your most profitable locations are? Nearby Now automatically generates heat-maps that highlight our busiest (and therefore most profitable) areas. We suggest using the map as a starting point, then fully integrating Nearby Now with the location service pages you create.

5. Highlight Reviews on Landing Pages to Inspire Trust

People really don’t like taking leaps of faith – especially when it comes to hiring local businesses. They want to feel confident that they’re picking a well-reviewed, trusted company to work with.

This brings us to our fifth tip: use your location landing pages to inspire trust and establish credibility.

Mention your local knowledge. Remark on familiar landscapes. Include testimonials that could very well live down the street from prospective customers.

When customers engage with your page, you can share consumers feedback as a way to build relationships and increase business throughout your social network. That’s why we recommend pulling your Nearby Now reviews and consistently highlighting them on local landing pages.

At the end of the day, you’re not going for short-term persuasion tactics. You want to create a large-scale online presence that emphasizes trust, personability, and local awareness.

6. Don’t Leave Reviews Hanging

We told you to leave all of your reviews up – even if they’re negative. Don’t stop there.

Each and every review on Nearby Now deserves a response. When people find your brand online, they aren’t just looking for what other people have to say. They’re looking for what you have to say in response to compliments, gratitude, hate, and complaints.

As people leave secure reviews on Nearby Now, boost your reputation by responding quickly. Research has repeatedly indicated that doing so increases the lifetime value of your customers and can dramatically improve the way people view your brand.

7. Teach Your Team How to Build Brand Reputation

Our final tip has less to do with technology and more to do with people. You can use all the great tools out there and pay thousands of dollars for the best services, but if your team isn’t on board with the process, it won’t amount to much.

Talk to your employees about your goals with review building and reputation establishment. What are you trying to accomplish? How can you increase consumer engagement and establish credibility at their locations, as well as online?

Upon signing up for Nearby Now, it’s a good idea to schedule an interactive meeting with employees to explain why you need the service and what you hope to achieve. That way, they can respond to customers in real-time with more educated, purposeful answers.

Takeaway

Whether you’re already paying for Nearby Now, or you’re thinking of turning to the platform for help, understand that it is just one part of a much bigger strategy.

If you want to get the most out of this tool, you need to have your own tactics for building consumer engagement and building a reputation. Nearby Now won’t do it all for you, but it will certainly speed the process up substantially.

Do you have more questions about Nearby Now or review management? Talk to our experts at Foxxr Digital Marketing. We live and breathe SEO, and we’ll guide you in the right direction.

Call 727-379-2207 or send us a message online today. 

First Published: Dec 4, 2017