About a week ago, my wife called me and said, hey, we need a water softener because her skin is very dry. I went to Google, and I found a lot of different companies. And here we are, one week later, and the water softener is being installed right now.
The Process Of Making A Buying Decision
This is a $7,000 product, and I wanted to document how I made my buying decision. The reason that I’m filming this video is that I want to show you how people think when they’re faced with a decision where they’re going to spend a lot of money.
They’re not exactly sure who to turn to, so they’re just going to Google. They don’t know one company from another. I ended up going with Culligan, but Culligan was not my first choice. But, I want to show you the actual search results that led me to have Culligan install my water softener.
The Google Search Process
When I first did my search, I did a search for water softener. Because I’m located in Lakeland, this brought up companies that were close to me.
The first page results included Atlantic Filter of Polk County. They had 60 reviews and 3.1 stars. They were not going to get a phone call from me, not for a product that’s expensive. I kind of had an idea of how much it was going to be, but I didn’t know it exactly. But, 3.1 is automatically a disqualifier.
Reviews Make A Big Difference
The second one I checked out was a Kinetico. These guys looked pretty good. I saw they have 4.6 stars based on 25 reviews. I started reading their reviews, and I scrolled down, and then something else caught my eye…
How I Found The Winner
I looked at a company in Tampa with 284 reviews. Now, these guys are not on the first page of Google, but they’ve got 284 reviews, and that made me click over to them. I started looking at their reviews, I read the reviews, I called them, and they got the purchase.
By the way, I did this completely organically. I wasn’t trying to film a video. I wasn’t even really thinking about any of this. Basically, this is just the natural progression of how my search went.
The Highest Number Of Good Reviews Wins
What happened was that my almost $7,000 worth of business went to a company that was not on the first page of Google when I searched for a water softener. It also was not the closest one to me. In fact, I was actually looking at another one, and the only thing that changed my decision was that they had 284 reviews versus the 25 reviews of the other company.
I didn’t know who Kinetico was, I’ve heard of Culligan, but I don’t really know anything about them. It could have been the other way round, but it was the number of good reviews that made the difference.
The lesson for lawyers…
This is why I tell lawyers all the time.., you’ve got to get not only a lot of reviews, but you’ve got to get the most reviews in your market. This is so important because people when they don’t know who you are, will go with the most amount of good reviews.
If they knew who you were, they would search for you by name, but they don’t know who you are. What they do is they search for a personal injury lawyer, estate planning attorney, bankruptcy attorney, or DUI lawyer, and then, they look at what other people have to say.
How To Win More Business As A Lawyer
The lawyers that have the highest number of good reviews typically will get the phone call even in a situation where they’re not number one. They’ll get the call even when they’re not on the first page, and you are. There’s a good chance that they are going to get phone calls. Just keep that in mind.
I just wanted to show you that this is what happened when I was searching for a service, and I figured it was an excellent example to show how reviews are a pivotal part in today’s marketing world.