Whether you’re buying a new television, booking a hotel or looking for a plumber to fix a problem in your home, online reviews play an important role in the online buying process for millions of consumers every day.
As many as 91% of consumers regularly or occasionally read online reviews, particularly for local businesses. Take a look at this search for “Appliance Repair in Trumbull CT”. One of the three results has reviews, the other have none. Which would you choose?
Most likely you would choose the one with reviews. In fact in a study by Bright Local, 74% of consumers said that positive reviews made them trust a local business more.
But how do you go about getting those all-important reviews? How can you start to stand out from your competitors and drive more business from your online listings?
Assuming you’re already registered on Google My Business. Here are 8 simple steps you can take to increase your Google reviews:
- Ask on your company Facebook page –Your Facebook page is a place to interact with your most engaged customers. Chances are there’s a past client that would be happy to leave a positive comment on your behalf. Put out a post asking if fans would be happy to write a review on Facebook or Google.
- Create a FREE review handout – Whitespark’s review handout generator makes it super easy to create a printable sheet you can give to your customers asking them to leave a review. Branded to your business, the handout explains all the steps for leaving a review and is a highly effective way to
Create your handout with a FREE Whitespark account : https://whitespark.ca/review-handout-generator - Create a review card – Similar to the review handout, except business cards are a little easier if your business involves serving customers at their location. You could give an incentive for leaving a review, such as get 10% off your next service.
- Create a link to your review form– A simple way to make it easier for your customers to leave a review is to create a custom link that goes straight to the review form. Whitespark has a handy FREE tool that will do this for you: https://whitespark.ca/google-review-link-generator
- Incentivise your staff – Your staff should be actively encouraging reviews, especially when a customer is visibly happy with your service. Consider providing an incentive for the best performing staff when it comes to gaining new reviews for your business. Make sure your staff know just how important these reviews are to the business and what they should do to try and solicit them.
- Just ask! – It’s not enough just to sit back and wait for the reviews to roll in, most people will be happy to leave a positive review if asked to do so. Don’t simply assume that they will do it on their own initiative.
Reviews not only help your business to stand out from its competitors, they are an important aspect of local SEO helping to improve the position of your website in the local search results. There are countless benefits to getting more Google reviews for your business, so it makes sense to take measures to get more of them.