Encourage Online Reviews

 

Reputation and trust go along way online for businesses and there are many ways in which you gain this.

Online peer reviews are becoming increasingly more important to your potential customers decision making with 92% of people reading online reviews before they use a local business.

In many ways online reviews are the new word-of-mouth.

Why are online reviews so important?

Online reviews have a great impact on your business with 73% of consumers creating impressions and making decisions on what others have said about you.

Not only do online reviews give you a positive image, they also are a make or break factor in a competitive market. With online advertising on the rise and SEO for the top phrases becoming tougher and tougher, these reviews really do have the ability to make you outshine the competition and draw in more business.  

Are you encouraging your customers to leave reviews?

Since online reviews are so valuable, it is important that you find ways to gain more authentic reviews that could potentially drive more business and potential customers to your website.

Here’s how you can encourage your customer to leave reviews:

1) Join review platforms

It may sound obvious but you may not be aware of just how many review platforms there are. While you are able to host reviews on your website, it is much easier for your customers to leave reviews on review websites such as Google My Business which most of your customers will already have access to, even if they don’t know it.

2) Ask them to leave a review

It is very rare for a customer to leave you a positive review without a push. However, it is very common for someone to leave a negative review if they have had a bad service. This is why you will see more sites (especially estate agents) with a lot of negative reviews compared to positive due to them simply not asking their happy customers for reviews.

The easiest way to ask is via email but by phone call or even in person may encourage them to leave you a review.  

3) Provide them with options on how to leave messages

If you request a review you should give your customers options on how to leave you a review and make it easy for them. Ideally, they would leave a review on your Google My Business page as this will give you many benefits, however if they don’t have a Google account and don’t want to set one up then you should give them other options.

We advise that you put an email together with direct links to your online reviews pages, with instructions on how to leave a review to make it as easy as possible.  

Provide your customers with easy access and a couple of options to give them the feeling that you truly value their feedback and aren’t just begging for compliments.