Online reviews are worth their weight in gold for your company. Not only do they provide social validation for your services, but they are loved by search engines. Improving the amount of 5-star reviews on Google, Bing, Facebook, and other third-party review sites will help your business grow.
Sadly though, obtaining reviews is one of the most difficult marketing tactics for business owners and marketing professionals. How do you get your customers to leave you reviews?
Understanding Why Online Reviews are Important
It’s no use trying to get more online reviews for your business unless you first understand why they’re important. Here are a few reasons:
- Customers are willing to spend 31% more on businesses with good online reviews.
- Customers are more likely to purchase your products or services after reading positive reviews.
- Allowing people to give you feedback via online reviews makes them feel valued as consumers, and also gives you information to improve your business.
- The more reviews you receive, the more information search engines are able to use to attribute your business to local searches – meaning your search rankings can be positively impacted.
How to Get Online Reviews
The easiest way to get more online reviews for your business is to simply ask. Ask your customers to leave feedback or a rating after you’ve provided a service or after they’ve used your product. Here are some ways you can make that ask naturally:
- Post a sign in any physical location or office asking customers to leave a review. Bonus points if it has a QR code that lets them easily access whatever form or platform you’re using to collect reviews.
- Include a review request along with a link to your review form on any paper receipts.
- Set up automated emails or texts to send to customers after their purchase. Include a clickable link, button, or image that leads them quickly and easily to your review form.
- Make sure that any survey or questions you ask are short and sweet, and don’t take too long to answer – or you could risk customers leaving the form before completing their review.
Pro Tip: It doesn’t hurt to mention that you’re asking for online reviews because you value your customers’ input. Giving them a way to provide personal thoughts and feedback generally makes them feel like their opinions matter, and can lead to repeat business.
Tools to Use for More Online Reviews
Make sure you’re using the right tools to capture, respond to, and share the reviews your business receives – this can save you a lot of time and money. Here’s what we recommend:
1. Google My Business
Once you’re verified, you’ll be able to receive public reviews from customers. When you set up your reviews through Google, you’ll get a link that you can share with customers.
You can also set up notifications so that you get emails when someone leaves an online review – that way you can respond in a timely manner.
2. Review Management Software
Investing in a platform that can aggregate all of your reviews from all different parts of the internet could be worth your while. This is great for businesses that get reviews from multiple locations – a platform like this would allow you to see and respond to Google, Facebook, Amazon, and any other reviews all in one place. However, keep in mind that you’ll need someone to run it. Want more info on how this works? Shoot us a message.
3. Review Response Generator
Receiving online reviews is only half the battle – responding to them is just as important. It shows that you’re an active business, and you’re invested in what your customers and clients have to say.
Coming up with fresh responses can be tricky though, so we created this free, easy-to-use review response generator for the good, the bad, and the ugly reviews.
4. Social Media
Facebook is frequently used by customers leaving reviews of your business, but it’s also important to utilize it and other channels (like Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn) to showcase positive testimonials of your products or services. Come up with plans to share some of the best compliments you’ve received so you can reach even more potential customers and build up your credibility.
Getting customers to leave online reviews starts by first understanding why they’re so important. Once you have that information, you can use it to your advantage when coming up with ways to ask your clients and consumers to leave feedback. Don’t forget to utilize the tools out there to save time and money, and if you run into any issues, you know how to reach us!
