Why Online Accuracy Matters
Sometimes the tiniest things make a big difference. Business owners today are so busy thinking about their product, customer satisfaction, payroll, hiring or a host of other legitimate concerns, that they may overlook the most mundane of tasks. Simply assuming that your online contact information is correct may be one of those tasks and have disastrous results.
Your digital presence represents your virtual storefront, and it must be maintained. Whether on social media, your online citations (Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Yelp, Industry Directories, etc.) or on your website, we urge you to check to make sure that your contact information is accurate and up to date. While you are at it, this would be a good time to ensure all of your information is correct. The story that follows is not anecdotal, it just happened to us.
Recently, we began getting calls from people who weren’t interested in speaking to us. They were looking for another Sedalia business. It wasn’t just a call or two, it was a lot of calls. What happened was a business’s phone number had mistakenly been updated to ours on their Google Business Profile. This continued for approximately two months and equaled hundreds of phone calls, all from customers who were looking to spend money or had questions about a service or product.
So, all’s well that ends well, right? Luckily for that business, we passed along the correct phone number until the correct online information was updated. What if we had not been so accommodating? What if we had been competitors? In today’s do-everything-for-me-right-now society, many customers are not willing to wait for things to sort themselves out. They will simply move on – either to the next thing or towards the competition. Either pathway can signal the death knell of a company – and all because of an avoidable mistake.
We understand the ever-increasing time demands placed on business owners and managers. We recommend reviewing your information online and monitoring it to ensure that everything is up-to-date. It is a critical component of Search Engine Optimization and online reputation management. If you would like to visit about this subject or a related topic, please let us know.
