Business to Business User Generated Reviews

If you haven’t used user generated reviews to buy something on Amazon or to find a restaurant in a city you aren’t familiar with please tell me.

Is there anyone left in America that has not used user generated reviews? They have made us all much more informed buyers.

550 1 star reviews on the Android Marketplace for Plants vs. Zombies told me I should save my $2.99. I didn’t listen and now I’m out $2.99 on a game that didn’t even load.

User generated reviews are amazing.

However, they are sorely lacking in the business to business landscape. This has created a hidden marketplace that should no longer exist.

If there are any services and products that should be reviewed regularly it is B2B stuff.

Outspoken Media just did a blog post on How to Choose an SEO Company: Ignore Top SEO Lists.

The big push of the article was to not trust top SEO lists. Rhea, the blogger, goes into all the reasons these are terrible resources for finding a good SEO. I’d say that’s probably true. But the solutions she offered aren’t that ideal either:

Case studies
Testimonials
Talk to their current clients
Check the site’s own rankings, community engagement, backlink count and domain authority, etc.
Industry visibility

They have several other tips. You definitely should take them into account. But these are not ideal solutions because you are relying on the company to provide you with unbiased information.

The company is only going to tell you about the great case studies and will show you only the best testimonials.

Checking the site’s ranking has always been a bone of contention for me because the potential client typically picks the wrong key phrases to spot check. How do they know which key phrases I’ve optimized for? Optimization for a search engine optimization company is tricky. On top of that they might be looking at the wrong site. I have been known to optimize an article I’ve written on a stronger site than my own.

You would be setting yourself up for a long road of failure trying to break into the first page results for “Search Engine Optimization.” Bruce Clay is the only SEO company that has ever had any long-term luck with that.

Industry visibility isn’t a great one either. Our industry has always been a cliquey little group. I’m quite sure there are very good SEO’s that come to the big shows, sit quietly in the audience and go to bed early without staying out all night drinking. Some people aren’t into being publicly visible. But that doesn’t equate to them being low quality.

All that said, Rhea’s bullet points are currently the best solutions we have. I can’t think of a better set of tips on finding an SEO or any other B2B service provider.

However, it shouldn’t be that way.

There is no reason what-so-ever that B2B service companies should not be anonymously reviewed in the user generated review space. But yet, for the most part, they currently aren’t.

Maybe it’s because the people hiring B2B service companies don’t really care about the people they hire. Although I’d say that’s probably not the case. A bad service provider can definitely make you look bad to your boss.

Maybe it’s because they don’t feel it’s their place to review these companies. The company hired this service provider, not John Smith. So John Smith doesn’t think it would be right for him to post the comment.

And maybe small business owners don’t have the time to sit around writing reviews on their service providers.

But these reviews are critically needed in the SEO space and for all B2B services and products.

Ideally, every client that has spent more than a $1000 on a service company should take two minutes and write a review of the company somewhere. 293 people have take the time to review these Duracell Coppertop AA Batteries. You would think that people would be willing to take a minute to tell about their experience with a service that could easily have cost them $100,000 for the year.

I know it’s a little bit of a hassle. But the rest of the business community would benefit so greatly from your moment of time. Please review your service providers.

I’m talking about your:

Accountant
Lawyer
SEO
Office cleaning service
Dry cleaner
USPS person
Internet service provider
Your phone company

The more the better.

This is the only way I can think of that will truly shed some real light on all the B2B services and products we buy. Not doing this just gives all these companies (mine included) a free pass. They don’t deserve it.

B2B companies must be forced to be socialized.

I was just in a Digital Akron event where, once again, I heard from people in the B2B space about how they can’t see how social media is right for them.

Trust me. B2C companies didn’t feel it was right for them either. They just had no choice. The people socialized them. It is time for the people to socialize B2B companies.

So, please, take a moment right now and write a sentence or two about a service or product company you have used at your business.

Some good places to find these companies are:

citysearch.com

Insider Pages

Google Places

There are many other places but those are as good as any. You likely will find your service providers in those listings. If you have other places you like to rate companies please let us know in the comments below.

And if you have worked with SageRock, here are direct links to our listings on those places:

SageRock at Insider Pages: http://bit.ly/SageRock-In
SageRock at Citysearch: http://bit.ly/SageRock-City
SageRock at Google: http://bit.ly/SageRock-Google

Please take a moment review us there. You are helping the entire business community by doing so.

This post was written by

Sage Lewis – who has written 333 posts on SageRock Digital Marketing Blog.
My name is Sage Frederick Lewis. My kid's name is Indiana Sage Lewis. I am filled with love and passion for many things in life. The list of things I like about life is MUCH longer than the things I don't like about life. So, since you don't have all day reading about the mundane things I love (some of which, btw, include: Rocky, Indy, SageRock, movies, pizza, cheesecake, running, exploring.) here are the things I don't like: Driving Meetings Zucchini (I like it fine. I'm just allergic.) I think that's pretty much it. My Twitter account is: http://twitter.com/sagerock My YouTube Channel is: http://www.youtube.com/sagerock