We’ve done posts before on how ratings and reviews are second only to word-of-mouth from a trusted friend.  For the most part, the logic behind it was that everyone is so used to looking up customer opinions before buying anything in their consumer lives, that it’s inevitable to use the same powerful concepts in our professional lives for our businesses.

Then the recession hit.

Now everyone has to make the most of their time and budgets out of pure necessity.  Small to Mid-Size businesses can’t afford to pay a high-end analyst firm for research and they definitely can’t afford to pick the wrong vendor.  Ratings and reviews of business applications and products are being done more and more out of necessity and it’s paying off for both the buyers and the solution providers.

With marketing budgets slashed, solution providers are doing everything they can to take advantage of social media and word-of-mouth campaigns at costs that are a fraction of the old-school methods.  Part of that is getting key customers to provide online references and reviews for them to help them stand out among the competition.  Expect this trend to grow in 2009 and 2010.

As people start to feel optimistic about the economy improving, smart companies are not going to jump back in to habits.  They are going to seriously look at what helps the bottom line and what doesn’t for the foreseeable future and taking advantage of ratings and reviews for business applications and services will be a key tactic for those wanting to beat the competition.

Last week MarketingSherpa posted a chart showing how the most effective social media tactics are currently the most difficult to measure in terms of ROI.  In the survey, participating marketers said “Inability to measure ROI” ranks as the second most significant barrier to social media adoption. 

There are a few things in the survey worth pointing out:

1. User reviews and ratings were noted as the most effective form of social media (We agree!)
2. Advertising on blogs or social networks, while most measurable, was the least effective
3. The key word to measuring some of these tactics is “currently”. 

It’s no secret that we here at FYIndOut believe very much in the impact of word of mouth and using the same ratings and reviews practices that we do in our consumer lives for business. 

It’s also no big surprise that while tracking advertising on blog or social networks, like any other internet web page, is very easy to track and metric.  The case in point though is, how many people are going to said blogs or social networks looking for anything other then the blog post or people they want to connect with. 

In regards to being able to metric social media, I would argue that it can be done; it’s just that most marketers aren’t looking at it that way.  Is there any reason you can’t create special landing pages just as you would for a TV or radio spot for your various social media interactions and create goals and conversion rules in your analytics tool of choice to monitor that?  The difference is that when you’re engaging in most of these tactics, it’s building a relationship and presence of mind with prospects who may not be looking for what you’re selling immediately.  You’re not posting an ad on a website before the holidays where someone clicks and buys.  You’re participating in various activities online and contributing information that people care about so that when they are looking for what you offer or one of their friends/peers asks them, your company comes to mind. 

Long story, short; just because you can’t put a chart with short term gains together for your CMO or CEO, don’t throw your social media strategy out with the bathwater.

Today, ReadWriteWeb, had did a post titled, “Corporate Blogs Not Trusted”, which was based on information from a Forrester Research report.  While I could do an entire post on how you can find poor bloggers in small companies just as much as large companies.  The key thing that struck me was the chart. 

Two things stood out:
1. “Consumer product ratings/reviews” was the second most trusted source of information.
2. The word “Consumer” in that title.

In regards to the first point, “Email from people you know” was at the top of the list and it always will be.  We will always trust information and experience from people we know more then anything else. 

The second point is more subtle.  The reason you see the word “Consumer” in so many charts and reports when it comes to ratings and reviews is that for some magical reason, we don’t use that same common sense mentality in our business lives.  This is one of the driving factors as to why we created FYIndOut and are looking forward to our launch in January.

In today’s economy, small businesses, and even large corporations, need to share experiences with each other when buying applications or services for our business just as we do for ourselves.  Think of the last time you didn’t look for a customer review before buying a book, camera, or when going to a new restaurant?  So why would you blindly try three or four lawyers or business applications before finding the right one?  Did the ones that paid for the biggest ads in the phone book or highest ranking in a search engine work out for you?  Can your business afford to lose time and money finding the right solution?

Think of how much time you put into finding the right camera for yourself and then realize how little that amount is to the solutions your business needs.  Ratings and reviews are coming to the business world with FYIndOut.