It’s always been the case that people go off word of mouth when it comes to companies, services and products to use. Today, this is no different. In fact, it’s even more so, but what has changed is that people will listen to anyone rather than people they know. Many people even look for the reviews and read through them before anything else, so the more reviews that you have then, the better. So much so that, Google has factored reviews into its local ranking algorithm and not just how many you can get but the quality of those reviews too. So, how do you get plenty of reviews for your business?
Offer Excellent Service
This one should go without saying, but you would be surprised by the number of people who focus on how to get good reviews yet miss the most obvious thing. If you want people to leave reviews, then you need to give them something to talk about. Obviously, if you want a useful review, then you have to work even harder to have something good that stands out. Make sure you’re delivering the best service possible. And bear in mind that if people take time to give you feedback, you should take it on board. You may even ask your customers questions such as how they found out about you to see what they say. You can also can ask them how the service or product was to ease the process of getting a review.
Do Your Homework
Make sure that your business has a presence on all of the major social media sites that people look at to read reviews. Start with Google and search for your business’s name. If you see, Is this your business? Then you haven’t claimed it, so you need to do this by following their instructions. Once you have done Google, then make sure you’re also on sites such as Facebook, Yelp, Bing and Yahoo. If you’re starting from scratch and unsure how to do any of these things then look into professional SEO marketing services to get you started.
Make It Easy For Your Customers.
Let’s face it, people are busy. No one is going to want to leave a review for you if it’s going to be complicated. Keep it simple to get feedback by sending an email and giving your customer multiple-choice questions.
Reward Your Customers
Offer incentives for your customers to leave reviews. Don’t pay for them as you want to get authentic, honest reviews from people who are your actual customers. So perhaps you could offer points in your customer loyalty program or an entry to a competition.
Tell Customers How to Do It.
To some of your customers leaving a review is an entirely new concept so you need to let them know how they can do it for you. Also, some of your customers will worry about writing and finding the right words. You can help by making sure you tell them that they can leave a star rating without writing anything. And if they do want to write something, then it only needs to be one or two sentences.
Thank you so much for these tips. I completely agree about telling the customer what to do. It is amazing what can happen when you simply just ask.