Now that we’ve discussed why online reviews are important
and how to ask for them in ways that are professional, here’s our list of the
top ten ways that you can maximise the quantity and quality of the reviews your
business receives.
1. Make It Easy For
Customers To Review
As a customer, would you leave a review about your
experience with a business if the business made you jump through hoops to do
so? The likelihood is low, especially if your review was a positive one. This
is important, as customers are 21 percent more likely to leave a
review after a negative experience than a positive one.
The easier you make it for people to leave reviews, the more
reviews you’ll get. Don’t make people navigate multiple pages or cumbersome
login pages to leave a review. The lower the barrier and the shorter amount of
time it takes for someone to leave a review, the more likely they will be to do
so.
As a business owner, you must put yourself in your
customers’ shoes and think about how you can make leaving reviews easy and
convenient for them. Once you do, you’ll find you get many more reviews,
especially positive ones.
2. Follow Up With
Email
After a sales transaction has been completed, it’s a good
time to send an automated email following up with the customer and asking them
to share a review. Many companies take this approach, asking for reviews from
customers right when the experience is still fresh in their minds.
That said, you can also run an email campaign that reaches
out to a large number of recent previous customers at once, asking them to
review their experience with your business.
An email campaign can target every customer for the past
month or two, for example, but try to keep it recent! Reaching out to customers
who transacted with you more than a few months ago can be awkward and come out
of nowhere.
It’s a good idea to also make sure that the emails you send
asking for reviews are simple and easy to respond to. As mentioned in point
one, you want to make it as easy as possible for customers to leave reviews.
3. Leverage Customer
Happiness
Happy customers are often willing to shout about their
experiences, with surveys finding that 87% of customers will tell
their friends and family members about a good shopping experience with a
company.
Why not leverage those positive feelings by encouraging your
customers to go beyond just telling friends and family and telling the world by
leaving an online review. When a customer is happy, it’s a good time to
encourage them to share their experiences by leaving a review for others to
see.
For example, if a customer service representative has a
positive conversation with a satisfied customer, this presents a good
opportunity to ask that customer to share a review and give them an easy way to
do so right then and there.
4. Use Retargeting
Campaigns
In addition to reaching out to your customers directly and
asking them to leave a review, you can also leverage the power of online
advertising by using retargeting to get your customers’ attention.
Retargeting works when you run digital ad campaigns on
Google or social media websites like Facebook or Twitter, specifically
targeting your own customers, rather than the public at large.
In reaching your own customers on the websites they visit
the most, you’ll be able to engage with them, grab their attention, and
hopefully convince them to easily click through and leave a review for your
company, as your business is a brand they’re already familiar with.
Unlike email marketing, retargeting requires an advertising
budget so it’s not free, however, it is important to bear in mind that
retargeting is one of the most cost-effective forms of advertising and it can
be very effective as well.
5. Use In-App Review
Prompts
If your business sells products or services using an app,
in-app prompts can be one of the most powerful tools in your toolkit.
In-app prompts are the messages that pop up within an app,
giving customers useful perks like offering discount codes and, you’ve guessed
it, asking for reviews.
Companies like Uber and Deliveroo use in-app messages to ask
their customers to review their experiences straight after a transaction has
been completed within the app.
This is an opportune time to get your customer to leave a
review, as the experience is fresh in their minds right at that moment.
6. Ask For Reviews On
Social Media
Today, most companies and brands have social media presence
in the form of engaged followers on their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and
TikTok accounts.
If you’ve built a strong presence with numerous followers on
social media, then using your social media channels to ask for reviews is a
good idea, because you’ll be able to reach mass audiences and chances are high
that those who follow your company on social media do so because they have had
a positive experience with your brand.
These engaged, happy social media followers are likely to be
willing to leave positive reviews.
7. Use A Third-Party
Reviews Service
Did you know that 91% of customers between the
ages of 18 to 34 say they trust online reviews just as much as personal
recommendations?
The power of online reviews is huge, but there’s also
concern about the existence of ‘fake’ reviews where unscrupulous business
owners hire people to pose as genuine customers and write positive reviews.
Such illegitimate actions cause harm across the industry and
can cause consumers to lose confidence in the reviews they read.
A great way for your brand to overcome any scepticism about
customer reviews is by using a third-party review service, such as TrustPilot,
which handles customer reviews by verifying that the customer leaving the
review is someone who has purchased a product or service with that particular
business.
Such third-party review services are useful in building
credibility for your business by assuring your customers that each review is
genuine. When you partner with a third-party review service, they will also
automatically reach out to each customer following a transaction to encourage
the customer to leave a verified review. This is very useful in that the
service takes care of doing the reviews solicitation for you!
8. Offer Rewards For
Reviews
Everyone loves to be rewarded for their efforts. Customers
often don’t leave a review because they don’t have the time to do so. By offering
them a reward, such as a discount code on future purchases, for a review, you
can show your customers that you care about both their feedback and their
valuable time.
Offering rewards needn’t be costly either. Vouchers,
discounts, or even donating a small amount of money to charity for every review
can be a small investment that yields a big return by resulting in a sizable
number of reviews.
9. Respond To Every
Review
When customers leave reviews, it’s because they want to be
heard. Whether the review is good or bad, they want to know that someone at the
business on the other side of the review is paying attention.
You can show your customers that reviews are important to
your business by leaving replies to every review. If the review is favourable,
you can simply reply by thanking the customer for sharing the review and
thanking them for their business.
Should the review be a negative one, you can reply by
showing regret, asking for more information to see how you can rectify the
situation. This shows customers that your business takes customer feedback
seriously and wants to improve.
If new customers can see that prior customers’ reviews
matter to your business, they’ll be more likely to leave their own reviews.
10. Share Positive
Customer Reviews
When you receive positive reviews from customers, highlight
them! It’s a good idea to share positive reviews from customers because this
shows prospective customers that they are also likely to have a positive
experience buying from you.
Reviews websites like Google, TripAdvisor and Yelp allow
businesses to mark reviews as ‘helpful’, and those will be the reviews
prospective customers see first when they look for online reviews of your
business on those sites. You can take advantage of this to highlight your best
customer reviews.
Additionally, you can use customer quotes in your own email
and social media marketing activities. For example, your marketing emails can
include quotes from satisfied customers, or you can design Instagram posts with
these quotes.
Doing this not only presents your brand in a positive light
to your followers but showcasing customer reviews is also a powerful way to
encourage other customers to leave their own reviews.
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