Today we’re going to talk about Five Tips to Getting More Customer Reviews. We help small businesses grow with our marketing and design, talent,technology through our number-one marketing platform Digital Crawls. We call Marketing, Engagement and Design as MED (Design that engage reader through marketing); we love MED, and hopefully this post will help you fall in love with MED too. So make sure to subscribe our newsletter to learn tips,tricks, and strategies to grow your business.
In 2017, there was a study that showed that 97% of people actually look for online reviews before they decide to make a business decision — to purchase from you, to work with you, or even really just to engage with you in a business relationship.Reviews are incredibly important and now, we’re going to talk about five tips to getting more positive ones.
Tip 1- Deliver exceptional service:
You know, this may seem like a no-brainer, and when we’re talking about getting reviews you may want to jump directly and asking for them and getting more.But really one of the most fundamental things that you can do is just provide great service. People that are happy with your business,they’re happy with the product or the services that you provided those are the people that you want giving you reviews.
So by providing great customer service and that exceptional experience, you automatically set yourself up to generate more reviews more positive reviews without really adding a whole lot of effort to yourself. If you focus on your business, and you focus on the deliverables and everything that you’re providing to the customer, that is really going to be the first step to generating more positive online reviews.
Tip 2- Ask for reviews:
You don’t have reviews because you didn’t ask for any and 68% of people will leave a review when they’re asked.Now you could start out by asking some customers you’ve done work for in the past.You can ask them face to face. You can send out an email you can just reach out to them in different ways like that.But eventually you’re going to want to offer an opportunity for people to leave reviews that you haven’t communicated with directly.
This is a great way that you can start to generate more reviews more volume more trust and people look for that as well If you’ve got two or three five-star reviews, honestly, that’s not really adding a whole lot of value People are going to look for that volume. They’re going to look for consistency People want to see how many other people agree with them this is a confirmation bias, right? People want to believe that they make good decisions. So, by seeing other reviews, they’re automatically going to believe that they’re making a good decision as well but you can’t get those reviews if you don’t ask for them.
Also Read: How to manage your online reputation effective?
You can use a myriad of different ways emails text ask on Facebook ask people face-to-face. I love it when service clients or people that that go to other Properties or locations take an iPad with you pull up your review platform whatever that is, whether it’s a Google+, Facebook, Top Rated Local you can just have that pulled up Thank you so much for the time. We know that you love the service that we provided would you mind leaving us a review?It’s a great way to get more reviews to get high-quality reviews and not have to worry about people not having the time later on you need the reviews. So you have to ask for them.
Tip 3- Incentivize your reviews:
Now generally speaking if people have a great experience with you. That’s kind of what they expected so if you haven’t asked for reviews. They’re probably not going to leave you one. On the other hand if people had a poor experience, they’re a lot more likely to leave a review. So if you find that just providing exceptional customer service and asking for reviews really isn’t getting you there.
Now you can start to incentivize and the goal obviously is to get reviews without needing to do this because you do have to watch out for-over Incentivizing and kind of breaking some of these Terms of Service. You don’t want to pay for reviews, you don’t want to incentivize too much to where people are just giving you reviews because they’re getting something free in return there’s no value there and honestly, people will understand that if they see that on your review platform you probably paid for it and that really hurts your trust.But you can do giveaways!
For every verified review that we get we’ll pull a name out of the hat and this person gets a service worth X dollars or Show us that you have to review on Facebook and get 10% off of your next purchase. Something like that by incentivizing at a base level you gives someone something back for them spending a time leaving a review. At the end of the day providing great customer service is your number one priority.But if you need to incentivize it’s okay as long as you’re strategic about it and you’re providing a great value.
Tip 4- Respond to your reviews:
What you don’t want to have happen is just create an echo chamber of different reviews positive or negative Respond to these. Your review platforms are a great way for you to engage your customers in conversation and when new customers and clients go and see that they can understand that if they see a review and they see a response from the Business that they can trust that you’re actually looking at these.
Now respond to your negative reviews as well. If you’ve got negative reviews but you’re able to turn that into a positive dialogue. This is a great way for you to grow your company to expand your reach and to really kind of showcase that you do really care about what your customers are experiencing. By responding to the reviews, you can just turn it into a dialogue between great experiences, poor experiences.
Also Read: Why branding is needed for business and its impacts on social media
You can acknowledge faults you can make amends, you make things right.And really what this does is it builds trust.You have to have this trust online because if you don’t have reviews or you just have an echo chamber of poor reviews People are going to decide that they don’t want to work with you without giving you a chance Take control of the conversation and take control of your online reputation Respond to your reviews and your business will grow.
Tip 5- Monitor your brand:
There’s a couple of different ways that you can do this. But really you don’t ever want to be surprised by reviews there’s nothing worse than going through all the energy and effort of creating a quote going out and visiting a client and then Realizing that you’ve lost the bid or you’ve lost the business because they found a review a negative review that you had no idea existed. If you did know it existed you would have been able to address it. Maybe even resolve the issue and have the review taken down or better yet change to a positive review so monitor your brand.
Monitor your review channels regardless of where they are whether it’s Facebook or Google+ or Top Rated Local These are all different places that you can keep an eye on your reviews additionally. I always recommend that you set up a Google Alert for your own brand name, that way you can set up this free service you can monitor for your own brand name and when you’re mentioned. That way you get an email from Google they let you know where it is, you can go and respond to that review.
You’re no longer surprised by a customer finding something that you didn’t know existed, you can also use Top Rated Local (topratedlocal.com) and you can monitor some reviews there. So, Top Rated Local is an aggregate it and pulls your reviews in.That type you can see them and it links over to your verified review sites another great way to use that as a Kind of meeting point for all of your reviews that you can then manage there.
That’s a free service as well so between Top Rated Local and Google Alerts, you’ve got a great opportunity to keep an eye on your reviews. So, you’re no longer surprised when a customer comes to you and says that they have an issue or they have a review and didn’t want to give you the Business. Keep an eye on it and you’ll see the results.
I want to thank you guys so much for reading! If there’s a tip that we’ve missed be sure to leave them in the comments below. Be sure to Like, Share, and Comment on this Post. Let us know if there are other details you’d like to cover or other posts you’d like us to write. We’re here to help. We love the fact that you took the time to read this. Thank you so much and happy marketing.
