Author Archives: BrandRevu

If you are looking for review software for contractors, you aren’t alone. Being a contractor comes with its own unique set of challenges – especially if you want to focus on marketing. Contracting businesses are brick and mortar companies. If you have no local presence then you are fighting an uphill battle. There are a lot of types of software out there for contractors but none of them have been optimized for the digital marketing needs of contractors. The problem usually lies in a lack of foresight by developers. They see the market as a global entity, which it is. But as a contractor, you have to think locally. You have to learn how to walk before you can run so to speak. That’s where things like local SEO come into play.

You need to be seen by as many people in your community as possible and digital marketing is the best and most efficient way to be seen. Here at DataPins, we take local SEO a step further with our innovative review software for contractors. Our review software was developed with a local focus to help contractors like you grow your business and leverage the reviews you already have, gain more, and turn them into powerful local marketing tools. 

The Importance of Contractor Reviews

Most people would say that leads are the lifeblood of a contracting business but many leads are created by reviews. Customer reviews are an important part of the sales funnel. They can provide you with important market data, help you improve your services, and be social proof signals to potential customers. 

Reviews can be a powerful asset to your business but only if they are managed correctly. For example, did you know that perfect aggregate review ratings are actually not ideal in today’s market? People are distrustful of perfect reviews. They tend to think that perfect reviews are a signal that the proprietor has manipulated the system in some way. It sounds counterintuitive but it’s true. In fact, the Spiegel Research Canter has statistical proof that businesses and products with 4.2-4.5 ratings influenced more sales. 

Customer reviews are important to the millennial market as well. The millennial generation is finally moving out of their parents’ homes and starting to buy houses of their own. In fact, one in three millennials under the age of 35 now owns a home. That number is down from previous generations but it still makes up a large portion of the market. And all those young homeowners will need work on their properties at some point. So it is important to note that 91% of millennials trust online customer reviews as much as they trust word of mouth referrals from friends and family. The millennial generation is likely the one over which customer reviews hold the most clout so it is imperative that you have plenty of reviews on your website to appeal to this surging generation.

Another reason why customer reviews are so important in today’s market is that more and more people are shying away from paid advertising. In a study conducted by Statuslabs, it was found that a whopping 83% of modern consumers don’t trust ads. What do they turn to in order to inform their purchasing decisions instead? You guessed it, customer reviews. When a person reads a review, they are seeking to find out what they can expect from your business by seeing it through the experience of someone who has used your services before. In essence, reviews are the new advertising.

The quantity of reviews also plays a role in conversion rates. For example, an estimated 70% of consumers will not make a purchasing decision before they have read at least 4 reviews. Most of those consumers will not even consider your business if you have less than 4 reviews. Much less if you have none. So garnering reviews becomes important in the first place. But how do you get reviews? Check out more reputation management stats.

Earning Reviews for Contractors

Do you have little to no reviews for your contracting business? Fear not. Just take a look at these helpful tips for generating reviews for your business:

• Ask – 70% of consumers will leave a review if asked. So don’t be afraid to ask your customers for a review once the job is done. Word of mouth requests are still very effective for earning reviews.
• Make it Easy – If you make the process of leaving a review easy for your customers, they will be more inclined to do so. Remember, not everyone is tech-savvy. Not everyone knows how to jump on Yelp or Angie’s List and leave a review. That’s why you should have a simple link ready for them when you request a review. Consider printing your review links on your business card or providing an email that walks your customers through the process.
• Tell your Crew – You will not always be around at the end of a job so make sure that your team knows that asking for reviews is a point of emphasis. 
• Google My Business – Having your business set up on Google My Business is a great way to earn more reviews. Google My Business is one of the most popular platforms right now and Google makes it easy for customers to leave reviews. Make sure you have a Google My Business profile with all your pertinent information listed on it.

What Review Software for Contractors can do

Now that you know just how important reviews are and know how you can start earning more, it’s time to talk about what advantages review software for contractors holds. Take a look at the most important benefits:

• It Saves Time – Review software like the kind we offer here at Brand Revu will help you focus on other important aspects of running your business. By automating many of the processes related to managing reviews on various platforms, our review software for contractors can take menial tasks out of your hands and the hands of your staff. We can help you allocate your most precious resource – time – to other endeavors.
• It Makes for A Happier Customer – Did you know that 89% of people seek out and read business’s replies to customer reviews? When you reply to a review, whether it be good or bad, it shows the customer and potential customers that you care about providing excellent service. Our software makes it easy for you to reply to reviews that have been posted across multiple platforms. We make it simple to provide a better overall customer experience to your clients.
• It Improves Local SEO – Our software focuses on turning your reviews into schema markup, geo-locating and optimizing reviews for local SEO. Your reviews can actually help other people in your area find your business but only if they are managed just so. We make sure that your reviews helped get you ranked on more local searches.
• Improve your Online Reputation – We already talked about how people don’t trust traditional advertising anymore. With our help, you can turn your customer reviews into extremely potent marketing tools. Your customer reviews can help build your brand and make more external platforms point to your company website. 

Innovative Review Software for Contractors

So what makes Brand Revu the most innovative review software for contractors? For starters, we help get your reviews broadcasted to the platforms that matter the most. We use schema markup and microdata to optimize your page for local searches. We turn your customer reviews into local SEO signals so that more people who are in need of your services can find you. We make sure that all geo-indicators that exist for your company online are accurate, streamlining the sales process and making sure that you aren’t inundated by customers outside of your service area.

With our Brand Revu widget, we also make it easy for people to see glowing reviews of your service from all platforms right on your website. We make it as easy as possible for busy contractors to manage and reply to customer reviews. We help you earn even more reviews. In short, we cater to the SEO and marketing needs of the modern contractor. 

There is much more we can do for you. But every service that our software provides is geared towards helping you expand and meet the goals you have for your business. We have worked with contractors of all kinds, and we have the experience to help you turn the vision you have for your company into a reality. Get in touch with us here at DataPins to learn more.

Looking for review software for HVAC contractors? DataPins is a great solution. This software provides jobsite pins that are populated onto your website based on the area served. When you combine this with DataPins‘s ability to help generate reviews from satisfied customers, you have the basis for the strongest local SEO campaign in your community. Reputation management for HVAC companies can change the game in 2020.

Taking your reputation into your own hands as an HVAC contractor is crucial. Reputation management is vital to growing your customer base and making sure that warm leads see your company when they perform local searches for HVAC contractors. Reviews are an integral part of reputation management. They can make or break your business. There is a host of stats to back up the assertion that customer reviews are integral to a company’s success such as 71% of consumers won’t make a purchasing decision until they have read some online reviews. 

Rest assured, there are plenty more but you probably get the picture by now. If you already have a robust review page on your HVAC company’s website then kudos to you. You have already tackled one of the most difficult parts of reputation management: procuring customer reviews. But how diversified are your reviews? Are you missing out on even more reviews? Are you able to reply to your negative reviews and your positive reviews?

Getting Reviews

Before you walk you have to learn how to crawl. If your business is in its infancy or you simply haven’t been able to pay much attention to review acquisition then pay close attention to this section. There are lots of ways you can procure reviews for your HVAC business. But the first and most effective way is still through word of mouth requests. In a study conducted by Bright Local, 70% of surveyed consumers said that they would leave reviews if they simply asked. So don’t be afraid to ask the people you service. After a routine air conditioner tune-up, ask your satisfied customer to leave a review on your website. After replacing a busted coil, tell your customer how much it would mean to your business if they left a review too. Here are a few more helpful tips for getting more customer reviews:

• Make Sure your Team is Asking – You probably aren’t able to be on every job your company gets. That’s why it’s important to train your team to ask for reviews when the job is done. Teach them the polite and non-intrusive ways to ask customers for reviews. You may even want to incentivize review acquisition for your team by starting a rewards program for your team (think gifts, gift cards, special recognition, etc.)
• Email Campaigns – Email drip campaigns that target reviews are another way to get the reviews flowing. HubSpot is a useful resource to help launch email campaigns for acquiring reviews as well. But of course, if you have your customers’ email addresses, you can have a templated email that you send out yourself in which you gently request a review. Make sure that your email has a link to where they can easily leave a review. Remember, if the process of leaving a review isn’t easy for your customers, they will be less likely to do so. 
• Keep the Conversation Going – If you have a few reviews on your website but want more, be sure to respond to the ones you have. Bright Local has another telling statistic that we can all learn from when they report that 89% of consumers actually seek out companies that reply to customer reviews. Replying to reviews (we will get into more detail about this a bit later) is a great way to show customers that you care about their experience. And new customers who use your business because they see that you reply to your reviews are much more inclined to leave a review themselves.

Why HVAC Companies Need Review Software

Garnering a good reputation is a dual-pronged effort. Of course, it takes quality service in the field. In fact, that is the most important part. If you offer unreliable or shoddy service, no amount of digital marketing will help your business succeed in the long-run. But the second part of establishing a strong reputation that will keep your business going strong for years to come is in the digital front. Strong digital marketing efforts are a crucial part of building and maintaining a good reputation as an HVAC contractor.

This is why review software for HVAC companies becomes so important – especially as your company grows. Take a look at what we mean:

• Review Software Saves Time – Review software can consolidate all the various platforms where you might have customer reviews. Trying to reply to, approve, and go over reviews across three, four, or five different platforms can be very time-consuming. It can also lead to bad customer experience. As an HVAC contractor, your time is precious. Solid review software will consolidate all your review data into one inbox, saving you a ton of time and making the customer experience better.
• Review Software Helps with Local SEO – There are a lot of online businesses that don’t have to worry about local SEO because they aren’t targeting a single specific area. But as an HVAC contractor, you run a local business and you need to show up on local searches. In a Smart Insights infographic, we see that the review signal accounts for 13% of organic local search engine results. That’s a big chunk of the SERP pie. Review software will help you manage your good reviews and prioritize ones that make mention of your locality which will then in turn help Google rank your website when someone does a local search.
• Review Software Helps with Reputation – It all ties back to building a solid reputation. Review software will help you gather reviews so that you have a strong base of customer feedback to springboard from. By making it easier for you to filter reviews and reply to them, review software can help you manage your reputation more efficiently.

What is the Best Review Software for HVAC Companies?

Here at Brand Revu, we have the best review software for HVAC companies. Our review software emphasizes local SEO because local SEO is the key to growing your local business. What makes us the best? Take a look:

• Diversifying your Review Platforms – It’s great to have your business profile on Google My Business, but that shouldn’t be your sole focus. When leads see that your company has reviews across a broad range of platforms like Angie’s List, the Better Business Bureau, Yelp, and others, it establishes your company as a trustworthy authority. Our software makes it easy to diversify your review platform and get reviews on more websites that will point potential customers right back to your own.
• Response to Reviews – Ideally, you want to be able to respond to all of your reviews both negative and positive. But as a full-time HVAC contractor, you likely don’t have the time for that. But our software makes it easy to leave a reply to reviews across all platforms, increasing customer interaction, and trust in your brand. Our response software will help you attract and convert more customers. 
• Review Widgets – It’s great to have reviews on a bunch of different websites but you should have a centralized location on your website where your visitors will be able to see all those reviews in one place. That’s where our Brand Revu Widget comes into play. We place a sleek, widget feed on your website that will display all your glowing reviews so potential customers can plainly see. The way the reviews are displayed is almost as important as what the reviews say so we make sure that our widget is smooth, attractive and professional-looking.
• Review Management – Believe it or not, 5-star reviews are no longer the ideal. When a customer sees that you have a perfect aggregate rating, it arouses suspicion of foul play in the mind of a consumer. Our review software will help you manage your aggregate review scores so that they stay in the perfect range of about 4.2-4.9.

DataPins software can help with all-around reputation management. We take your business very seriously and provide a customized package so you can overcome the challenges that your particular faces every day.  At the end of the day, HVAC contractors turn to us over other reputation management software developers because we put a special emphasis on local SEO. We know how important local SEO is to the growth of your company, and we optimize our software for it. To find out more, get in touch with us. 

SEO agencies understand the importance of meeting their clients’ needs. If you aren’t providing value in one aspect of digital marketing, another agency will, and they will take your clients in the process. Keeping your customers happy is a common-sense goal for agencies, but it’s unrealistic to expect that you’ll have every solution in-house. As local SEO becomes more competitive, the value of reputation management progressively increases. Agencies require scalable reputation solutions to optimize their SEO clients locally and help them generate leads.

Introduction: Why Reputation Management Matters in 2020

According to Bright Local, 82% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, including 94% of those between 35-54 years of age. For most of your clients, 9 in 10 of their target customers will check reviews prior to making a purchase decision. The quality and quantity of those reviews can be the difference between a qualified lead and no inquiry at all.

Part 1: Reviews Management

Reputation encompasses more than just reviews, but they are certainly the most prominent and important aspect of online reputation. As a digital marketing agency, you have likely seen this reflected in your customer data. A simple review of Google Analytics for clients should indicate that businesses with a collection of positive reviews are generating more clicks to their website. That data doesn’t even account for those who call straight from the business listing on GMB.

Google Reviews Management

Speaking of Google My Business (GMB), it is the most critical review portal for 99% of your clients. Not only is it one of the most trusted review sources on the web, but it plays an integral part in where the business ranks on Google search results within the Local Map 3-Pack. The first step is facilitating a process where it’s easy for customers to leave a review on Google. Managing them requires monitoring the listing activity and responding to them, when necessary. 

Facebook Reviews Management

Facebook reviews (aka recommendations) are considered by many as the 2nd most important testimonial (behind Google). The rationale is simple, Facebook is the largest social network in the world, and the one that hosts the most business accounts of any social networking platform. Customers with Facebook profiles can check in on a business page. If your client’s business doesn’t have a Facebook page, they are behind the curve. These reviews will be key in 2020.

Yelp Reviews Management

According to Review Trackers, 80% of Yelp users will backpedal on would-be purchases after reading through negative reviews. This statistic highlights two important factors in the world of reputation management: Yelp as a platform, and negative reviews as user-generated content. Managing Yelp reviews requires monitoring for negative reviews and generating a steady stream of positive reviews to limit the impact of a single bad review, and validate a business.

Niche Reviews Management

Every industry has certain directories that apply more appropriately to their niche. These directories will vary depending on the industry of your client. You should make sure your client’s NAP information is registered on their corresponding niche directories and monitor any reviews that come through those platforms. Although most users check general reviews like GMB, Yelp, or Facebook, there are specific industries like law firms, for example, that have special needs.

Part 2: Pins

Pins are the natural evolution of online reviews for small businesses. How can internet users ensure the reviewer actually used the service, rather than living with a suspicion that some reviews are fake? The answer comes in the form of online pins which are made possible with DataPins. Brick and Mortar companies can check in to their job sites and verify that they actually serviced the location they claimed to have, creating free UGC for the website.

Pins by Location

Agencies know that local SEO is complex because of service-area coverage. A plumber in Fort Worth, TX may also service Dallas, TX, and each of the mid-cities between. But how can such a contractor market themselves as the go-to plumber in areas outside their GMB address city? Pins by location allow for the contractor to prove their work throughout cities within their service area and publish social proof on their website that supports their credibility in a zip code. 

Pins by Service Type

Google My Business validates service types from the company website, which means it’s not enough to simply list your services on the GMB listing. By generating service-based pins, your site will display user-generated content that verifies your service types. By proving jobs for different service types you can begin to rank your client for both Local Maps listings and organic search results. Furthermore, you can increase conversions with the previously cited social proof.

Employee Pin Capability

As a business owner, you aren’t working every job you book. In some cases, you aren’t working any of them on-site. With DataPins, the employees booked for the job will have the ability to login and pin on the job site. You can create unique log-ins for each of your employees so that their accounts can be terminated if they leave, without disrupting your DataPins dashboard. Large businesses are going to benefit from sending contractors to multiple areas.

User-Generated Content

Writing city or location pages can be very redundant for agencies and their clients. In fact, writing very similar pages for thousands of cities can hurt your SEO performance and make your website look like spam. With pins from DataPins, user-generated content is always unique and always validated with social proof. Every review that mentions a specific location or service type can be added to the corresponding web page and organically rank for those keywords.

Part 3: Branding and Local SEO

Branding is already a major factor in SEO and will become even more important in the next few years. Google is moving towards entities as a way of discerning legitimate websites from spam. Local contractors can establish themselves as an entity through reviews management and local pins. The most effective way to create an entity is to prove to Google that you do real business for real customers. As you accumulate pins and reviews, you can rank better.

Branded SERP

Your clients who perform well online have people searching directly for their brand name rather than finding them only through keywords. Any company that generates branded searches has an optimized GMB listing that showcases their reviews and NAP information. Once your brand becomes large enough, the SERP will show a knowledge panel that integrates your GMB listing. The organic results will then show your website and your profile on other review platforms.

Social Proof

Agencies know from their own sales experience that social proof is critical to converting prospective customers. A contractor won’t sign-up for SEO if your agency doesn’t demonstrate value that can be validated by external sources, like reviews. Reputation management software like DataPins creates that social proof in the process of doing everything else your client needs for online success, which will ultimately drive prospective customers to their own website.

Local Ranking

Organic SEO and local SEO are based on separate algorithms but there are tools like DataPins that empower them to work together. With DataPins, your agency clients can rank on the Local Map Pack and organic search results, based on the results from their reputation campaign. In fact, our goal at DataPins was to create a reputation management tool for agencies that could be used to rank their local SEO clients locally, on Maps and organic.

Local SEO Automation

Small businesses need local SEO fundamentals from their agency. An optimized GMB account to go along with a locally optimized website (with DataPins) covers the basics of what every small business owner needs from your agency. Clients who perform well with only the basics are less likely to expect unrealistic results from their agency, and you will retain them for longer. In addition, the time saved allows your agency to focus on other aspects of their campaign.

Conclusion: Choose DataPins for Your SEO Agency

Running an SEO agency is not easy work and it requires large-scale practices to be applied to a group of clients. DataPins provides reputation management software for agencies, simplifying the process tenfold. By providing each client with local SEO fundamentals, the rest of your work can focus on what separates you from competitors… which is why agencies were created.