The Review Sites That Matter Most for Your Dispensary

The Importance of Customer Reviews

Customer reviews can significantly influence the buying decisions of other customers. Keeping a clean online reputation is crucial to building a strong, reputable brand that is attractive to customers.

Leaving bad customer reviews unchecked could seriously harm a brand’s reputation. Fortunately, there are several strategies for dealing with them.

Remember that bad customer reviews inevitably happen; what matters most is how they are managed. According to recent research, 95% of online shoppers read customer reviews before purchasing, and 92% are more likely to purchase a product after reading a positive review.

Customer reviews can also provide valuable feedback for businesses. Negative reviews can highlight specific customer pain points, allowing the business to learn from its mistakes and better prepare for specific situations in the future. They are especially useful for training customer service agents and front-facing staff.

Which Review Sites Matter Most for Dispensaries?

It is important to know which review sites matter most for your business. Keeping track of all online reviews can be excruciatingly difficult so it is necessary to prioritize. Check out these 3 review sites that we think you should prioritize when managing your dispensary’s customer reviews.

GMB

GMB, otherwise known as Google My Business, is an extension of Google’s search engine that allows businesses to create their own profiles featuring everything from business hours to reviews.

GMB profiles are prominently displayed next to search results, making them an extremely important factor in managing a brand’s online reputation. This is especially true when you consider Google’s search volume. In January of 2019, Google was recorded as processing over 9.6 billion search queries in the United States alone.

GMB reviews are especially important because they are displayed locally to potential customers that may actually visit your storefront. Google uses distance and location ranking signals to decide when to display GMB profiles. This means that GMB reviews have the potential to immediately affect the purchasing decisions of local customers.

ultivating a good GMB reputation is critical to performing well against local competition. Google even pulls GMB reviews into its Google Maps app, making it possible for local customers to view a dispensary’s reputation within a matter of seconds. According to a recent study, over 154 million US users accessed Google Maps in just one month last year, making it by far the most popular navigation app in the US.

Yelp

Yelp is a free customer review site that allows its users to rate businesses on a 5-star scale. Yelp is important due to its sheer popularity, and also because, like GMB, it has the potential to seriously affect the purchasing decisions of local customers.

Businesses are welcome to respond to any reviews on their Yelp profile, making Yelp reviews somewhat easier to manage than some other platforms. Since Yelp is usually near the top of search results, it is important to keep as many positive reviews as possible near the top of your profile.

Facebook

It is important to effectively manage Facebook reviews because anybody visiting your businesses' Facebook page can see them. And unlike other features on your Facebook page, they can’t be removed.

Anybody with a Facebook account can leave a rating or review through Facebook’s Ratings and Reviews feature. While these reviews won’t affect local customers as much as those left on your GMB or Yelp profiles, they can still seriously affect your brand’s online reputation.

When Should You Check Review Sites?

Businesses should do their best to always stay on top of customer reviews. Checking customer reviews should become a regular practice done weekly, if not bi-weekly. Letting negative customer reviews build up without response will negatively affect your brand and business.

Plus, don’t forget that ignoring negative customer reviews means ignoring opportunities for improvement. Regularly checking reviews can provide you with accurate and up-to-date information about the technical aspects of your dispensary, and the way it does business.