Before the internet
Before the internet; a business placed an ad in the local paper, put balloons outside their front door for sales, and received free and easy word of mouth recommendations to drum up business.
Today, a lot more is required. In addition to being good at your job, whatever that is; a business needs to be able to juggle online marketing, and how their business is being represented online. While claiming your business on a review site, and adding your businesses’ information doesn’t take a lot of time, managing them certainly does. Having your business on a site that gets a lot of traffic seems like free advertising, but you don’t have control over how your business is being represented. You’re at the mercy of their ulterior motives and terms and conditions, not to mention relentless sharks calling you from their advertising department.
Several different sites exist requiring your attention and sometimes money; like a tax for simply having a business. They all claim to be doing you a favor, then turn around and not only give little assistance to the business but create more hoops for you to jump through just to stay alive on their site. Forcing you to feel as though you need to pay the site, and hire someone to manage it all for you. You wind up scratching your head saying “this isn’t a good representation of my business, shouldn’t this be easier?” But you have to play the game… It’s as though the review sites are dictating what your business is about and what it’s worth, to you! They’ve got you by the proverbial… huevos.
For example, Yelp’s algorithm decides that your new customer’s review; that they were so happy with their service, isn’t worth seeing, but the negative review is. Home Advisor is making money by charging for leads and advertising, but they still have contractors who are scammers and have not been looked into. Costing their customers thousands of dollars. Porch charges an arm and a leg for their leads, and you’re still not guaranteed to get the job. Facebook doesn’t have a way to dispute negative reviews that appear on your business’s page… Check out this Irish business owner that had his account hacked, and received over 100 negative one-star reviews. Plummeting his score from 4.9 to 1.8 and has no recourse.
These review and lead sites should not have this kind of dominance. Most business owners are hard working and genuinely want to take care of their customers. They deserve to be assisted based on their needs, not to make success harder to achieve. Shouldn’t there be a site that actually helps the business and the client? Showcasing the great businesses, and exposing the poorly run business in a fair way? Allowing all of your positive reviews to be seen, let the negative reviews fall off after one year, and, giving you the business owner; the ability to expose those bad clients that have harmed your business?!
At Rating Bee the business is able to do all of the above and then some! Creating a fair site for fair reviews for the client and the business. Online review sites have been biased and unethical for too long. It’s time balance, and justice was instilled on a review site. Go to Rating Bee to begin by claiming your business and cleaning up those bad reviews.