Who’s the best dentist in the neighborhood? Let’s check the reviews. Which bakery sells the freshest, yummiest pastries? Let’s check the reviews. Where can we find a contractor who’s professional and affordable too? Let’s check the reviews. No matter what industry or sector your business caters to, reviews are a critical tool in your armada of business strategies for increasing awareness, landing leads, earning goodwill and growing your business. In this article, we bring you 5 great hacks that’ll help your business gain more reviews in the smoothest, easiest way possible.
1.Park your content on the sites that matter
The first question to ask is, are customers seeing and reading all there is to know about your business? So, a good way to start would be by listing your business profiles on online review sites and other relevant social media channels explored by curious customers who are always on the lookout for a better experience. How do you improve your business profile on these sites? Here are a few ways to make some noise.
- Add images of your product, service and premises – actually anything that lets the world see you’re a business with a serious intent to delight customers.
- Say hello with a brief introduction – about your company so your customers know about where you’re located, what your mission is and more importantly, what you have to offer.
- Include your business timings, contact numbers, website link and working days – because your customers love both people and businesses who are transparent and have nothing to hide.
- Put on interesting content – relating to the products or services, expertise or experience that your business has to offer. The more you share, the more the world gets to know about you.
2.Follow the review site’s playbook
Getting your business page on top review platforms is a great way to increase your exposure as well as the quantum of reviews earned by your business. However, when on Yelp, do as Yelp tells you to do. In short, each review site has its recommended practices and rules – set in place to safeguard the best interests of genuine customers as well as businesses. For example, one of the commonest practices that gets businesses blacklisted is having employees pose as customers and then pose reviews. Another practice that’ll get you out of a review site’s good books as well as the site itself is soliciting reviews from customers in bulk.
So, while you’re investing considerable efforts in setting up your review profile on these sites, make sure you’re also checking up on the policies or rules that the site expects your business to adhere to. Play by the rules and you won’t ever find yourself in a situation where your reviews get removed or your profile gets blocked. Remember, a review retained is a review gained!
3.Be candid, ask your customers
Contacting your customers via emails is a great way to get them to open up about their experience with your business. All you need to say is, it matters to you what he / she thinks about your product, service or business and this opinion will only enable you to work towards making the experience even better for the customer. Here are some tips to keep in mind when soliciting a review via emails.
- Send an email requesting a review immediately after the customer has had an experience with your product, service or business. Research shows feedback collected immediately after an experience is 40% more accurate than feedback collected after 24 hours or even longer.
- Send your email for a review from a real person’s email address to add that personal touch to your interaction.
- Be informal in your draft because the more conversational and real you sound, the better the chances of the customer engaging with you.
- Lastly, include clear directions to the link or website where you expect the customer to leave his or her valued review.
4.Make it easy for customers to leave reviews
Asking customers to leave a review without showing them the path is like asking someone to deliver a package without handing over the address. So, before you ask or expect a customer to do that kind deed you’re hoping for, make sure to get the groundwork done. The easier you make it for customers to do something they aren’t obligated to do in the first place, the better the chances of them going out of their way to do it for you.
- Link your social media accounts / pages to relevant review sites where you want customers to leave reviews
- Add a review request in the emails you send your customers upon completing their transactions but before receiving their orders
- Ask specific questions that you desire responses to.
Here are some examples:
1.What did you like most about our product / service?
2.How did you use our product / service?
3.Is there anything that you think can improve our product / service?
Make the process as easy and simple as you can and you will see more reviews coming in.
5.Keep a constant look-out for reviews
Today’s digital universe offers customers virtually unlimited options or places to leave reviews and inform, educate and enlighten their world about their experiences on a day-to-day, or actually, minute-by-minute basis. The point is, you can only find the treasure if you know where to go looking. Here’s the tip. Arm your business with a smart and effective monitoring tool so you don’t have to handle the headache of searching the entire web to know what your customers are thinking, saying or spreading about you and where. If there’s anything about you out there – from the shortest to the longest comment, the tool will take you to it.
We hope you put these simple yet effective strategies to good and regular use and see a rise in the number of reviews that come your way. As the wise SEO expert says, it’s always better to have more people saying nice things about your business. Because people don’t buy from businesses, they buy from people whom they like behind those businesses.
