Some benefits of customer reviews:
- Consider it free advertising.
- Builds trust in your brand (even negative reviews).
- Helps to positively impact search engine optimisation.
- Gives your feedback about your business.
- Improves the click-through rate to your website.
As you can see, having customer reviews is pretty important. Believe it or not (but do because it’s true), 93% of people say a review influences what and where they buy.
The more reviews you have the better. Just remember, it doesn’t hurt to have a few negative ones as 92% of consumers report not trusting brands with all positive feedback. It’s how you handle them that matters (See: Your Untapped Marketing Goldmine).
But how do you get more reviews? If you’re like most small business owners, you have enough on your plate without having to remember to ask for reviews. Well, with our handy tips, you’ll be able to set-and-forget while reaping the benefits of all those reviews.
Be Where Your Customers Are
Hopefully you already have a Facebook business page; but where else can people leave you reviews? Being in more places online does more than just give your customers more opportunities to review you. It also increases your online presence AND potentially helps your search engine optimisation (see: Everyone Loves a Good NAP…Including Google).
Here are some places to put your business for free:
Include a Review Reminder on Invoices & Receipts
You’ll already be giving your customers an invoice or receipt, so adding a message with a reminder for them to review your business is super simple. At the bottom of the invoice or receipt (or back of), have a little message telling them your preferred review platform.
Example message:
Tell us about your experience in a review on Localsearch!
Combine this with our next tip and you’ll see even more customer reviews flooding your Facebook, Google My Business, Localsearch profile page and more.
Offer an Incentive (Legally) for Customer Reviews
It sounds easy enough to tell your customers they’ll receive 10% on their next order if they leave you a review—but there’s a bit more to it. The person writing a review, business receiving it and the platform its on must comply to The Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (learn more). Part of The Act compliance is offering incentives for reviews.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission states:
Businesses that offer incentives to those who write positive reviews risk misleading consumers and breaching the CCA. Incentives should only be offered in exchange for reviews of your business (its products or services) if:
- Incentives are offered equally to consumers likely to be complimentary and consumers likely to be critical, and positive and negatives reviews are treated the same.
- The review is expressly told that the incentive is available whether the review is positive or negative.
- The incentive is prominently disclosed to users who rely on affected reviews.
Long story short, don’t pick and choose who to give the incentive to, don’t not give it to people who give you a bad review and disclose an incentive was provided.
Add Reviews-Us Widgets to Your Website
A widget is a piece of software you embed into your website code to display information. They can be anything from a social media feed, calendar, weather display to ‘Find us on Localsearch’ with a link to your profile page. Very little room is taken up by a widget and they normally sit in the sidebar or footer.
Having a widget on your website with your review rating or a link to a review platform will remind returning customers to leave you one. Plus, when they click it, they’ll be taken straight to the platform to do it.
Did you know Localsearch has widgets to stream the reviews on your business profile on your website? Get yours here!
Try Out a Customer Review Collection Tool
Emailing every client post-transaction to ask for feedback (and a review) is a highly effective method for growing your review count—however, it’s also very time consuming. A review collection tool will do it for you.
How does it work? You can upload customer lists for the tool to automatically generate an easy-to-follow email. The email will ask them to rate their experience. If they give you a high rating, the tool will ask them if they’d like to share their feedback with the world, leaving a review on their favourite platform. Any low ratings will prompt an email to you so you have time to resolve the matter before they take it online with a review.
Not only does this save you bucketloads of time, it keeps your customers engaged, even after they’re finished with you, so they’ll be more likely to buy again. Find out more about review collection tools.
Include Links in Your Communications
Your email signature is prime real estate for prompting your customers to interact more with your business. Adding a link to your preferred review platform and a message asking how they rate their experience today is an effortless way to prompt people to review your business.
Speaking of emails; if you’re sending out bulk marketing communications to your customers, make sure you always add a link for them to leave a review. It doesn’t have to be big, just a little footnote for them to click on and give you their feedback.
It Sounds Simple…But Just Ask
Educate your employees why reviews are so important for your business. Then, when they’re on the phone, emailing clients or face-to-face with customers, they can ask if the client or customer would be kind enough to mention their name if they leave a review. This subtle approach will put it in their mind and make them feel like they’re doing something good when they follow through.
Having a link to your preferred review platform, as recommended above, makes it very easy for your employees to do this. If they receive praise from a customer, Whenever they receive good feedback from a customer, they can see if the person would like to rate their experience. Easy!