5 Ways to Gain and Improve Online Reviews

Before a customer decides to buy your product or visit your business there are a lot of factors that they run through first. Even more so with today’s mostly digital age, it’s a necessity for most if not all potential customers to check out a business’s reviews before making such a decision. That is why you must depend on your existing customers to leave reviews about your business!

Lucky for you we have 6 tips for gaining and improving your businesses online reviews from our digital marketing agency:

Create Different Spaces to Leave Reviews

The first step in improving and gaining online reviews is of course having platforms available for customers to leave reviews! It is also important to keep in mind what platforms will potential clients be looking at for reviews. Some of these top platforms consist of Yelp, Facebook and Google – no surprise there.

Bright Local found that Yelp and Facebook were consumers’ most trusted source of customer reviews in the U.S.! What does that mean? That makes make sure your business is registered and up to date on both Yelp and Facebook. What about Google? Google is extremely important because getting reviews on Google means setting up your Google My Business, GMB. This allows potential customers to find you if they’re searching for information on Google or searching for directions in Google Maps. People of course also leave reviews on Google, truly making it the best of both worlds.

While getting reviews is the first step, we also want to place an importance on making sure you are monitoring all reviews that you are getting. Engaged business owners lead to a higher customer satisfaction, as well as a higher chance of future customers leaving reviews!

Create Incentives

If there is one thing is that similar between most people in the US, it’s that we all believe our time is valuable. Your time is valuable and so is your customers time! Make sure your customers see and believe that taking time out of their day to leave your business a review is worth their time. How do you do that? You create incentives!

Incentives don’t have to be huge but need to show you value your customers. These can be things like coupon and discount codes, gift cards for coffee, your business or online shopping, or even the ability to enter into a contest for an even bigger prize. Chose an incentive you think will show how much you value your customers.

Ask At the Right Moments

Asking customers for reviews at the wrong moments can lead to the one thing we want to stay away from – negative reviews. Soliciting customers for reviews during the right moments within your client – business relationship is highly influential for successful results.

Ask customers to leave a review after positive moments or interactions like:

After they tag you in a post on social media
If they are spending a good amount of time on your website browsing through multiple products
If the refer another client to you
After they have demonstrated success with your product or service

Your customer is already showing they have had some sort of positive experience with your business; therefore, they will be more inclined to respond positively to the task they are presented with.

Respond to Every Review – Even the Negative Ones

You might have heard of this saying before: “Customers are more likely to leave a review about a negative experience than a positive one”. Unfortunately, this seems to ring true, however if you follow these tips, you’ll be on the road to review success. Another important tip is to not only respond to the positive reviews but to also respond to the negative reviews.

Nobody’s perfect and mistakes happen all the time, just make sure you know how to respond to them when they happen. As HubSpot states, make sure to take the time to respond thoughtfully, without being defensive, to come to a resolution. It’s the right thing to do if you work in customer service, and it could actually help your business in the long run. Depending on the situation you can offer a free product or service or ask them for an email or phone address so you can personally reach out to them.

The more accommodating and personable you are the better. If you were to simply not respond or deal with negative reviews potential clients would notice. That decision could cost you in the long run.

Share Positive Customer Reviews You Already Have

Once the positive reviews start rolling in don’t be shy! Share and highlight them across your social media platforms, so other clients will feel inspired to do the same. For example, you could reshare positive Facebook reviews in a post on your page, or you could format positive reviews as quotes on Instagram to post for your followers.

As HubSpot states, social marketing is a powerful tool – customers see other people like them sharing reviews, they’re more likely to do the same by following the crowd.

Gaining and improving online reviews is highly influential when it comes to increasing the reputation of your business and the intake of future potential customers. If you still have questions or need some help setting up and managing your businesses online reviews give us a call @ 888-277-7153!

5 Ways to Gain and Improve Online Reviews