Reviews are undeniably important in making purchasing decisions. From shopping on Amazon to deciding where to get dinner, consumers rely mostly on the recommendations of others, regardless of if it’s a friend or a stranger. Read on to find out why this is so critical and learn the most effective ways to solicit reviews.
When the recommendation comes from a friend, one may be enough to make a purchasing decision. Yet, when it comes from strangers, the referral needs more than one occurrence. People ask themselves: “How many people left a review? Are they “real” people? Are they local or are they like me in any way?”
Reading a good review builds trust in the buyer about the value and credibility of your offering. Hence, you should collect as many reviews as possible, from as many customers.
Furthermore, reviews can literally put you on the map. How so? When you have enough good reviews, Google rewards you by listing your business at the top of map searches. When you reach the top spots, the potential for getting clicks sky rockets.
But here’s the bad news: getting those coveted reviews isn’t easy. Unlike Amazon products or a local Chinese restaurant, you may not have dozens (or hundreds) of customers you service each day. To get reviews, you must ask for them. Here’s more info about reviews and how to solicit reviews the right way.
Benefits of having reviews
Social proof and brand credibility
Reviews build social proof because people trust other people when deciding where to spend their money. Here are some eye-opening facts from a recent BrightLocal survey:
- 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- 73% of people have more trust in a local business with positive reviews.
- People read 7 reviews on average before trusting a business.
A positive review is even more important than a referral as it’s a public endorsement that doesn’t just work once. A review stays in your account and is front and center for thousands of people who are searching for a service like yours.
Reviews provide potential customers critical feedback from past customers, even if they’re strangers. Essentially, reviews can turn your satisfied customers into your brand ambassadors.
Positive reviews can also help people understand how your product/service can improve their lives. A real time experience will show your buyers how you deliver on your brand promise in the real world.
All in all, a positive customer review might bring you what other marketing efforts can’t. To turn leads into customers, social proof is a necessity.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Reviews have the most impact in local searches, improving your findability. When you search something in Google you will notice that local search results appear at the top on a map search. A few businesses are listed right below those, including their star rating. This is where you want to be.
Of course, the most relevant business results are listed at the top. This ranking depends on the business location, site authority, backlinks, reviews, and other SEO factors. Keep in mind that users can choose to view businesses based on ratings as well.
Furthermore, the quality reviews you have about a product on your site can boost your topical authority. This adds to your domain authority and, the higher your authority, the better your overall search rankings.
Another benefit is that Google can index your reviews and potentially use them as direct answers for search queries. They’ll show up in Google Answer Boxes.
Is it unethical to solicit reviews?
Each platform you use has its own guidelines on what you’re allowed to do in seeking reviews. If you don’t comply with the guidelines, you’ll suffer some consequences. Your business listing may be removed altogether, or it could suffer public shaming from the platform or even your customers. Yelp, for example, outright prohibits asking customers for reviews.
Google, however, is fine with review solicitation as long as you don’t entice clients with money, discounts or other prizes. In fact, Google encourages businesses to manage reviews and to invite customers to leave reviews.
Google also lists reviews from other sites in your business listing.
As mentioned, there are things you shouldn’t do when soliciting reviews to avoid penalties:
- Don’t request reviews from customers in bulk. Request reviews one by one only from genuine customers after genuine transactions. Don’t send bulk email review requests that don’t reflect real customer transactions.
- Don’t incentivize consumers. Incentives are likely to inject positive bias into reviews. Your reviewers may also call you out for “bribing” them in return for reviews. Providing incentives for reviews is not ethical because it taints the results. Don’t do it.
- Don’t discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or ask for only positive reviews. A negative review is not the end of the world. If a customer writes a complaint, say that you understand their problem and are willing to solve it.
- Never post reviews on third party sites on behalf of customers. Reviews must come directly from customers from their own devices.
The good news is that most platforms allow encouraging customers to leave reviews. All things considered, every business should have a review solicitation strategy in place, especially small local businesses.
How to get reviews the right way
Ask for reviews
Stellar customer service and product quality are not enough. Your customers might need a little push to share their opinion online. Research shows that 7 out of 10 customers would leave a review if prompted.
So don’t be afraid to solicit reviews, and make a plan to do it correctly. This simple task can easily get forgotten because it’s not a vital part of running your day-to-day business, but there are solutions to make it easy for you to ask for reviews.
For example, add a post-it reminder on your paperwork so you won’t forget to mention this to your customer, or delegate, if you can, to your assistant or another staff member.
Solicit a review from every single customer (hopefully your satisfied clients will be happy to help you out) to increase your odds. Considering that 77% of consumers ignore online reviews that older than 3 months, you should aim for a consistent flow of fresh reviews (at least 2-3 a month).
Solicit reviews at the right time
Strike while the iron is hot, as they say. The best time to solicit reviews is at the end of a transaction. Don’t save the “review requesting” task for the end of the month or for when your workload is easier.
By then, your customer’s enthusiasm might have cooled off. They could see your review request as one more thing added to their to-do list.
Happy customers are not always as driven to write unsolicited reviews. They may just say “thank you very much!” and go back to their busy lives. That’s the moment you want to solicit that review – because that’s when a client is most likely to oblige.
So make a habit to solicit reviews as soon as the transaction is done, when the client is most likely to respond.
Make it a breeze
Leaving reviews should be smooth and painless. This might seem obvious, but many businesses fail to make it easy for customers to leave a review.
Tell your customers exactly where you want them to leave reviews, and include a direct link to your review platforms.
By the way, don’t ask them to write a review on all your platforms. Offer no more than three choices, such as Google, Facebook, and Angie’s List. Don’t forget the paradox of choice: too many choices may overwhelm or confuse your customers and they may end up not choosing anything.
If you’re face to face or on the phone with customers, tell them you’d like to hear from them, and point them to the online place where they can leave a review.
To make requesting reviews even simpler, consider using an online review platform. They allow you to easily send tailor-made review request emails directly to your customers. These tools also help the customer provide feedback and reviews effortlessly.
Why use a review solicitation app
Review solicitation apps simplify the process of asking for reviews and of guiding users to your review links.
Consider this scenario: you run a brick and mortar office and you’ve just finished business with a customer in person. Do you tell them face to face: “Hey, thanks for your business. Can you please leave me a review online?” and hope they’ll oblige? It’s not ideal, as they’ll probably forget by the time they get to their car.
Would you hand them a tablet or phone and say: “Here you go, would you write your review?” Of course not! That will get you in hot water with Google due to your device’s ID (and not only). To write a legitimate review they need to be logged in to their own account, not yours.
Instead, why not send them a personalized email or text message to tell them exactly what to click to get to your review pages. Review requests apps make setting up custom emails and social platforms easy. You just have to customize the message a bit (client’s name, transaction type, etc.).
Yes, you could sit down and email individual clients a link to your review channels, but finding time to write an effective email sometimes takes longer than you expect. Inevitably, as you locate, copy and paste the links to your social channels, you’ll find 10 more things to do in your inbox. A review request app could help you present a polished, consistent message, and in the process save you – and your client – precious time.
Conclusion
Online reviews are the ultimate social proof. They improve your reputation and SEO, validating your business to attract more customers. But getting reviews is not so easy – it can happen organically, or you can give it a little push.
Put this in your marketing plan: solicit reviews from genuine customers, asking (not incentivizing) them to leave a sincere review. Advertising will get clients to your door but ultimately it’s what other customers say about you that closes the deal.
If you think more online reviews could improve your company’s social proof, check out our review solicitation app, Bright Reviews. It makes review solicitation a breeze and streamlines your clients’ actions to make writing honest feedback simple and straightforward. Give it a shot!