Reviews are king when it comes to doing business and increasing visibility online. One of the top things people look for when deciding if they want to do business with you or not, are your customer reviews.
As a user myself, I trust what other users say about a business more than what the owner says about their business. Other users will share their experience, and that tells me what I can expect. They have no one to impress, and are intent on sharing their experience and opinions.
Tips to get customer reviews
This is why it’s crucial to get reviews from your customers. But how are going to do that? Here are some helpful tips:
Have a system in place
Build a system that reaches out to your customers, and asks them for a review. This can be via email, text message, or a phone call. Automate your system to reach out right after you deliver your product or service. Then you are most likely to get a review, because it’s fresh and they are still thinking about the experience.
Create a landing page
Make it simple for your customers to leave you a review. You can do that by creating a page on your website called “Leave a Review”. This can be a landing page that you send your customers as soon as you’re done doing business with them. Use an easy to remember URL for your review page, to make it easy for your customers to find the page and leave you a review.
Respond to reviews.
Responding to customer reviews adds to your credibility and reputation. It tells other users that you genuinely care about your customers and their opinion matters to you. It also shows them how much you value and take care of your customers. This is especially important for negative reviews. It’s ok, they are bound to happen from time to time, but HOW you respond will reveal more than the review itself.
Direct them to external review platforms
There are many places that your customers can leave you a review. Aside from your website, they can also leave you review on Google Maps, Facebook, Apple Maps, Yelp and many others. These external review platforms are helpful for search engine optimization. The external links increase your online credibility and reputation.
Leave clear instructions
Ask your customers to copy their review and paste it on other review sites. For example, you can suggest other external sites (like Google), where they can copy & paste their review. You can say, “Thanks so much for leaving a review. If you can, please copy your content below and paste it on Google. That would mean the world to us.”
Your target customers can read about your business anywhere. That’s why it’s important to have good reviews on external platforms, where your future customers are searching. All these sites tend to connect, so that when people are searching for you in Google, they’ll see a review from Yelp. Or when they’re on Google Maps, your Google reviews will also show up.
One of the best marketing action steps you can do for your business is increasing your positive customer reviews. So go out there and improve your online presence, one review at a time!
Remember that when it comes to doing business online, social proof content is king.
