Maybe if you ignore them, they’ll go away?
Love them or hate them, reviews are here to stay.
Online reviews are a force and impact your business’ bottom line.
But no reviews is good news, right?
Not quite.
If you have no reviews, someone will look up the type of service or product you offer. They will find your competitor who has 248 (average of 4.5 stars) reviews. Guess who they are more likely to do business with?
What did you think happens?
“Oh sure, I’ll call this business at the bottom of the list with zero reviews? They hardly look like they’re in business online, but let’s roll the dice!”
Still Not Convinced?
After all, with zero reviews, there isn’t pain in continuing to ignore reviews.
Let’s change things up to a scenario I see often.
You wake up tomorrow with a brand-new review!
It’s your first review. This is exciting!
Wait…
It’s a one-star with a detailed story about the nightmare this person had with your business.
Ouch.
Whether you like it or not, your business now has this bad review for the entire world to see.
Guess what you’re going to be doing the next few months?
Playing catch-up.
You could have been on offense, but now you’re on defense trying to get as many good reviews as you can.
You contact your customers and ask them for reviews. Your customers are busy, and they’ve worked with you guys for years. There is no urgency on their part.
In the meantime, your one-star review is being seen every day. Or maybe not, because your local search rankings have now dropped. Every day that goes by is more money lost.
In business, I like offense more than defense.
How do you get more reviews?
Whether you’re in the above situation, have zero reviews, or would like more reviews, here we go!
#1) Make sure you’re proving an excellent experience for your customers.
This is paramount.
If your service or product isn’t great, reviews will come, and they will be bad. You’ll be exposed quickly.
If you don’t provide an excellent experience for your customers, please stop reading. Seriously.
To get more reviews, it’s very simple.
#2) Ask every customer that does business with you to leave a review.
If you’re nervous, ask how their experience was. If it wasn’t the best, forget asking for the review. Make it right with the customer, so they have a good experience and end on a positive note.
When you ask for a review, you can’t just say “leave us a review, thanks!”.
You need to give them a reason to take time out of their busy schedule to leave you a review.
Let them know why they should care to leave your business a review.
If you’re a family-run small business, say something like “Reviews like yours are extremely important for a small family business like ours. We’d sure appreciate your review.“
#3) Make it Easy for your customers to leave a review.
Create an easy-to-click link that automatically sends them to where they can leave a review. That way they don’t have to work too hard to get there.
Create a print piece with review instructions. Hand these out.
Do not provide incentives, discounts, coupons, etc. in exchange for reviews. Not only is this against Google’s rules, but it’s also unethical. A simple ask is all that’s needed.
The more asks, the more reviews you’ll get.
I’ve found that if you provide a great experience for your customer, they will be thrilled to leave a review. When a business wows me, the first thing I do is leave them a review on google as thanks. I don’t leave bad reviews, because that’s not me. I’d rather put out positive things in this world then stir and stew on the negative.
Speaking of Bad Reviews
It’s going to happen. You’ll get a bad review.
Try to learn from the experience. That’s all you can do.
Something “fun” to do when you get a bad review, is look up the person’s profile that gave you a bad review. Often, you’ll see a profile full of bad reviews for other businesses. Some people are like that, constantly negative and always looking for someone to wrong them.
Again, learn what you can from that experience and improve. But don’t dwell on it. People online are smart enough to differentiate between a company with a few bad reviews out of hundreds.
Reviews can help or hurt your business.
It’s a good reminder that the best product doesn’t always win.
You could have the best product/service in the world, but if no one knows about you, you’ll be left in the dust. You must adapt to this new business environment or fall by the wayside.
Reviews are a big part of the new business environment.
We Can Help You
If you’d like strategies to make it easier for your customers to leave you a review, please fill out this form or call (360) 450-3711.
We can help with print material and even custom website links that help your customers go to the right place to leave your business an online review.
