Many consumers rely on reviews to get reliable information about a business. Reviews can work for you or against you, causing the consumer to either give your business their time and money or to avoid it at all costs.
The difference between what a positive and negative review can do for your company is huge, so you should do your best to build a solid online reputation and work on keeping your customers happy.
If you can draw lots of positive feedback from your customer base, you’ll put your business in a great position to grow. Ultimately reviews can influence a consumer’s purchase decision, so it really is crucial to make sure you have a lot more positive than negative feedback.
Your strategy for review generation is essential, and we highly recommend you try out some of the following five methods if you’re wondering how to get reviews:
- Own Your Listings
- Communicate with Customers
- Request Reviews
- Show off Positive Feedback
- Be Responsive
1. Own Your Listings
While having a couple of social media accounts for your business is useful, to get the most impact on reviews, you’ll want to expand your online presence as much as possible. This makes it more likely that consumers will land on your business with their search queries.
As a bonus, the more platforms you have, the more places there are for customers to leave you a review. While it’s true that a significant amount of people turn to Google for their reviews, there are other websites out there, such as Yelp and Tripadvisor, which are regularly consulted for business reviews.
So to boost your chances of getting more reviews, you’d do well to control as many listings as possible to give the consumer a greater chance of stumbling upon your business.
2. Communicate with Customers
Communication is key. You can request reviews easily by reaching out to customers who have used your company’s services or bought products.
Given that a large portion of searches are carried out on mobile devices, why not target these with a short SMS message?
First, come up with a compelling reason for customers to leave a review, then draft up a message and make sure it has a few open-ended queries like ‘how was your experience?’. These queries can act as prompts to get the customer thinking about what they could say in the review.
3. Request Reviews
While requesting reviews through SMS messages or e-mail is convenient, perhaps a more effective method could be to request reviews with a physical handout. If you provide a customer with a review request written on a handout, they will still have the buying experience fresh in their minds, so they might be more inclined to have their say. It can also be too easy to dismiss an e-mail or SMS message, whereas a handout is harder to ignore.
You can even direct the customer to your social media accounts, too, to increase the likelihood of them following your business and leaving a review.
4. Show Off Positive Feedback
One of the most effective ways of convincing customers to leave reviews is to show them that they will be in good company. If you proudly display positive feedback on your landing page and other strategic places, then you can encourage others to follow suit and leave a glowing review.
5. Be Responsive
Engaging with your current customer base is a fantastic way to boost your number of reviews. If a prospective consumer stumbles upon your website and sees that you have addressed issues raised by customers in their reviews, then they will be more willing to leave one too.
People want to know that you care about what they have to say. Even if your reviews are mixed or even mostly negative, you can paint yourself in a positive light by responding promptly to them.
You should take some time to consider the best way to respond to reviews, taking into account your brand/company’s voice and how to come across as friendly and helpful.
You can easily do this & manage all your reviews from a single dashboard with the help of Trustindex. We provide you with all the tools you could possibly need to interact with your customers and boost your sales in the long run.
Using These Methods to Secure More Reviews
Now that you’re equipped with five of the most effective methods for securing more reviews, you should put them into practice and see what works best for your business. Typically, a combined approach works best, using both digital mediums and in-person methods to get more reviews.
Over time, you should find that these methods lead to more positive feedback, and more importantly, an abundance of reviews for your business.