In 2017, a study showed that 97% of people look for online reviews before they decide to make a business decision — to purchase from you, to work with you, or even just to engage with you in a business relationship. Reviews are incredibly important and now, we’re going to talk about five tips for getting more positive ones.
1. Deliver exceptional service
This may seem like a no-brainer, and when we’re talking about getting reviews, you may want to jump directly and asking for them and getting more. But one of the most fundamental things that you can do is just provide excellent service. People that are happy with your business, they’re satisfied with the product or the service that you provided — those are the people that you want giving you reviews. So by giving great customer service and that exceptional experience, you automatically set yourself up to generate more reviews more positive reviews without really adding a whole lot of effort to yourself. If you focus on your business, and you focus on the deliverables and everything that you’re providing to the customer, that is going to be the first step to generating more positive online reviews.
2. Ask for reviews
You don’t have reviews because you didn’t ask for any and 68% of people will leave a review when they’re asked. Now you could start by asking some customers you’ve done work for in the past. You can ask them face to face. You can send out an email. You can just reach out to them in different ways. But eventually, you’re going to want to offer an opportunity for people to leave reviews that you haven’t communicated with directly. This is a great way that you can start to generate more reviews, more volume and more trust and people look for that as well. If you’ve got two or three five-star reviews, honestly, that’s not adding a whole lot of value. People are going to look for that volume. They’re going to look for consistency. People want to see how many other people agree with them. This is confirmation bias, right? People want to believe that they make good decisions. So by seeing other reviews, they’re automatically going to think that they’re making a good decision as well. But you can’t get those reviews if you don’t ask for them. You can use a myriad of different ways like email, text, on Facebook, and ask people face-to-face. I love it when service clients or people that go to other Properties or locations take an iPad with you pull up your review platform. Whatever that is, whether it’s a Google+, Facebook, Top Rated Local you can just have that pulled up. Thank you so much for the time. We know that you love the service that we provided. Would you mind leaving us a review? It’s a great way to get more reviews to get high-quality reviews and not have to worry about people not having the time later on. You need the reviews. So you have to ask for them.
3. Incentivize your reviews
Generally speaking, if people have a great experience with you, that’s what they expected and they’re probably not going to leave you a review if you haven’t asked for one. On the other hand, if people had a poor experience, they’re a lot more likely to leave a review. So if you find that just providing exceptional customer service and asking for reviews are not getting you there, now you can start to incentivize. Now the goal is to get reviews without needing to do this because you do have to watch out for over incentivizing and breaking some of these Terms of Service. You don’t want to pay for reviews, especially if those relate to the best dropshipping products. You don’t want to incentivize too much to where people are just giving you reviews because they’re getting something free in return. There’s no value there and people will understand that if they see that on your review platform you probably paid for it. That really hurts your trust. But you can do giveaways! For every verified review that we get we’ll pull a name out of the hat and this person gets a service worth X dollars or show us that you have to review on Facebook and get 10% off of your next purchase. Something like that. By incentivizing at a base level you give someone something back for them spending time leaving a review. At the end of the day, providing excellent customer service is your number one priority. But if you need to incentivize, it’s okay. As long as you’re strategic about it and you’re providing a great value.
4. Respond to your reviews
What you don’t want to have happen is just create an echo chamber of different reviews positive or negative. Respond to these. Your review platforms are an excellent way for you to engage your customers in conversation. When new customers and clients go and see that the business is responding to the reviews, they can trust knowing that you’re looking at these. Now respond to your negative reviews as well. If you’ve got negative reviews, but you’re able to turn that into a positive dialogue, this is a great way for you to grow your company to expand your reach and to really showcase that you do. Really care about what your customers are experiencing by responding to the reviews. You can just turn it into a dialogue between great experiences, poor experiences. You can acknowledge faults. You can make amends, you make things right. And really what this does is it builds trust. You have to build trust online because if you don’t have reviews or you just have an echo chamber of poor reviews, people are going to decide that they don’t want to work with you without giving you a chance. Take control of the conversation and take control of your online reputation. Respond to your reviews and your business will grow.
5. Monitor your brand
There’s nothing worse than going through all the energy and effort of creating a quote going out and visiting a client and then realizing that you’ve lost the bid or you’ve lost the business because they found a negative review that you had no idea existed. If you did know it existed you would have been able to address it. Maybe even resolve the issue and have the review taken down or better yet change it to a positive review. So monitor your brand. Periodically send out interesting content that will increase brand awareness (ie “How to make money on shopify?”).
Monitor your review channels regardless of where they are. Whether it’s Facebook or Google+ or Top Rated Local. These are all different places that you can keep an eye on your reviews. Additionally, it is always recommended that you set up a Google Alert for your own brand name. That way you can monitor your own brand name and when you’re mentioned. You will get an email from Google letting you know about the mention. You can go and respond to that review. You’re no longer surprised by a customer finding something that you didn’t know existed. You can also use Top Rated Local (topratedlocal.com) and you can monitor some reviews there. Top Rated Local is an aggregate. It pulls your reviews in so you can see them in one place. It links to your verified review sites – another great way to use that as a meeting point for all of your reviews and you can then manage there. So between Top Rated Local and Google Alerts, you’ve got a great opportunity to keep an eye on your reviews. So you’re no longer surprised when a customer comes to you and says that they have an issue or they have a review and didn’t want to give you the business. Keep an eye on your reviews and you’ll see the results.
