Reviews are important for your business, but good reviews are vital. We take a look at some strategies for increasing the number of good reviews you receive.
Given that nearly 85% of people trust product reviews as much as a recommendation from a friend, they’re vital if you want to get ahead.
Getting your customers to leave good reviews is as challenging as it is rewarding, but you need to focus your attention on it. Companies that get good reviews and lots of positive ratings get more first-time and new customers thanks to how search engines rank them during searches.
Here are four ways to ensure that you get the reviews you’re looking for to attract new customers.
1. Create Accounts Everywhere
If you want to ensure that you get good reviews, you need to have a way to get reviews in general. This means that you should create accounts in as many places as possible. If you’re not where your customers are, how will they know to review you?
When people search for a company now, they’re often met with reviews at the top of the results. Search engines know that consumers want to know not only what kind of products are available but also what people are saying about them. If you want to appear like you’re a transparent company confident in your products, then you need to gather reviews.
Keep an active profile on Facebook, Google My Business, Yelp, and LinkedIn. There may be even more sites relevant to your audience but these are some of the most vital. This way, when people want to reach out to you or want to express their support for what you’ve done, they can.
Add the same familiar avatar on every single site so that your audience knows they’ve found the right profile.
2. Make Great Content with Optimized Feedback
Another one of the ways that your audience is going to interact with you is through your content. The more avenues your audience has to communicate with you or learn about your products, the more feedback they’re going to have.
Start by posting great content via blogs. When people search for something online, they’re often searching for a specific product or the answer to a question. Create content that responds to those questions with a solution that leads directly to your products and services.
This can come in the form of text, video, or even a podcast. At the end, just make sure you’ve got a comment section for people to respond to. This ensures that they have the opportunity to interact and let you know what they think about your products, services, or even just your content.
When they respond, don’t let the interaction end there. Within 12 hours, you need to have a response for them. You should be telling them what they want to hear or thanking them for their response to you.
Set up badges to link your visitors from your site to your review pages on Amazon, Yelp, or Facebook. Make sure that your site is mobile-optimised so that your customers get the chance to interact on their own terms. With so much more interaction happening on mobile than ever before, you could be left behind if your site doesn’t work on mobile.
3. Create Some Promotions
Since everyone’s time is both tight and valuable, you need to respect the time that your customers give you. If you don’t respect it and reward customers for giving it to you, you’ll risk sending them to your competitors who could be telling them what they want to hear.
Stay ahead of your competitors by offering incentives and deals when your customers leave you reviews. You could offer them a free coffee or dessert if they leave a review before they exit your restaurant. You could even offer them something on the next visit they make to ensure they leave a review.
Discounts or coupon codes are a big help when you’re looking to increase your reviews. Gift cards and prizes allow you to get your customers interested in products and services they’ve yet to try before. If they get something free and new in exchange for a review, they’re more willing to leave another review talking about how great the new product is.
These reviews are going to bolster your sales, so invest in them and work to grow the interaction you get. A few pieces of product that only cost you a few dollars are worth giving away if they lead to ten more customers.
4. Time Your Interaction
You’ve put in all the time to market to your customers at the right moment, so why not do the same when it comes to asking for reviews?
Timing is everything when it comes to getting time and attention from your customers. Getting a customer to give you positive feedback out of the blue just isn’t going to happen. However, if you catch them right after a good experience, they’ll be very positive about their review.
After you’ve just sold something to a client that they’re very excited about, offer them the chance to review you without asking them to redirect. Connect them to your review portal in the thank you window. This way, you’ll have their time and attention and pitch to them perfectly.
Offer them the chance to give you a positive review after they’ve referred another customer to you. If you have a review program that gives them positive incentives, get your reviews then so that you ensure their attention.
Good Reviews Lead To Good Money
If you get the good reviews that you’re looking for, you’re going to see a higher conversion rate and increases in sales. If you don’t focus on reviews, your customer certainly will and you’ll see very little growth in the coming years.
If you’re looking for more ways to attract attention to your site, check out our guide for more.
