11 Easiest Steps : On Getting Online Reviews for Your Business

Getting Online Reviews for your business is one the key’s to success . However, even when someone tells their friend about your business, the next thing they do is Google you to see what others have to say. Whether a prospect was sent your way by a friend or heard your name somewhere else, they’ll usually begin your relationship with an online search, which most often surfaces your reviews at the top. That’s why understanding how to get online reviews for your business is crucial to your success.

Not convinced reviews carry heavy weight? Here are some stats from Bright-Local:

• 79 percent of consumers read online reviews for local businesses.
• 83 percent trust online reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends.
• 90 percent of people say positive reviews make them more likely to use a business, and 79 percent are put off by negative reviews.

Getting Online Reviews For Your Business, Here’s the bottom line : One way or another, potential customers will likely decide whether to do business with you based on what others are saying about you online. You can either sit on the sidelines and ignore this fact, or you can get involved by actively working toward thoughtful, effective online reviews.

How to Get Online Reviews for Your Business in 11 Easiest Steps

Getting Online Reviews For Your Business, you’re probably wondering how to Get Online Reviews for Your Business. It’s actually a lot easier than you might think.

Step 1: Do Good Work

Getting Online Reviews for Your Business also include good networking alongside, and it’s worth emphasizing. Take feedback and reviews seriously to make sure you’re delivering the best service possible. Happy clients are a prerequisite for all the other steps in this guide, Getting Online Reviews for Your Business.

Before you’re done working with a client, do your part to drop hints. Get a conversation going by asking them how they found out about you. Maybe casually mention that you get a lot of business from your online reviews and referrals. Consider adding a window sign at your office or a link to your Yelp or Facebook page in your email signature. Plant the subliminal seeds ahead of time to make asking for reviews easier.

Step 2: Set Up Your Profiles and Claim Ownership

You know your industry better than someone else will, so make sure you’re selecting review sites that accomplish a few things:

• They attract dedicated users. (Yelp now has 214 million reviews.)
• Results show up when your business or name is Googled.
• They make sense for your business and industry.

Once you’ve got a short list of appropriate review sites, get those accounts set up! More often than not, if you didn’t take the time to set up the business page yourself, someone has already added it for you — which can lead to inaccuracies and missed opportunities. This is when you need to take ownership of the page so you have some level of control. Here are a few links to help Get Online Reviews For Your Bussiness :

• How to Claim Ownership of Your Business on Yelp
• How to Claim Ownership of Your Business on Facebook
• How to Claim Ownership of Your Business on Google My Business

Once you’ve claimed the relevant online profiles, you can make sure your business is represented accurately and in the best possible lucent.

Make managing your online presence a snap.

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Step 3: Identify Your Best Candidates

With reviews, there are two important points to keep in mind. First, you’re asking someone you’ve worked with in the not-so-distant past to candidly write up a review of your business. Second, not everyone you’ve done business with will be the best choice for a glowing review, so be selective about who you approach. Try to focus on those who not only had a good experience with you, but also interacted with you recently enough to remember your name.

Also understand that when you ask someone to write a review for you, you’re requesting that they put their own credibility and reputation on the line in order to endorse you. That’s a big deal, so don’t take it lightly.

A side note: If you want to truly better your business, you should make a habit of asking even the not-so-ideal customers for feedback. Ask them in a private email, but ask for an honest answer. Take what they say to heart and really strive to improve your business with their feedback. Not every client is a good candidate for a review, but every client could be a source of information that helps you get better at what you do.

Step 4: Find the Right Time to Ask

Some of those reading this may be in more transactional businesses like salons, spas, auto repair and the like. You have the luxury of being able to ask for a review more casually because you’ll see that customer again in a reasonable time frame. Having a physical location where you can display review stickers also helps, Getting Online Reviews For Your Business.

For those of you in businesses with longer sales cycles, like real estate, mortgage, and insurance, planning how to get online reviews will have to be more strategic.

We’ve put together a whole blog post on this topic with tips on how to pinpoint the right time to ask for a referral or review.

However, here’s the short answer: Ask for a review after a transaction has been completed, and you’ve tied up loose ends and any post-sale issues, but before so much time passes that their memory of the interaction starts to get fuzzy. You want reviewers who still have their experience fresh in their minds, which usually means asking for a review within a couple of weeks ,Getting Online Reviews For Your Business.

Step 5: Then…Ask!

Questioning can be done in different ways — from phone calls, texts and emails to postcards or face-to-face requests. Use whatever method makes you most comfortable; just do it. Because if you’re not asking for reviews, they’re likely not happening.

After the transaction is complete and your client is 100 percent satisfied, it’s time to make your move. Thank them for their business and explain that great clients like them are what help you grow. Be direct with your request, polite in your approach and stay humble,Getting Online Reviews For Your Business.

An example scenario:

You recently bought a home and hired movers. It’s a newer company working to build their company. They are eager to get reviews on Yelp. As they were moving in the last of your furniture, they mentioned how much they’d love feedback on their services on Yelp.

Two days after moving in, the lead mover emails you to make sure everything went smoothly with the move. Again, he asks if you’d be willing to write a review, and he provides a link to his company’s Yelp page. You agree; this two-day time frame was enough time to get settled in, but it was still soon enough after the job to have specifics in mind.

Pro tip: Ask people for reviews when you know they’re home, have some downtime, or are near a computer. Maybe this is an email at 7:30 p.m. on a weeknight or a phone call over the lunch hour. Make it convenient for them.

Step 6 : Identify the right moments to ask according to their buyer’s journey.

Make sure you’re soliciting customer reviews at the right moment in their journey with your business to get optimal results.

Business relationships have natural ebbs and flows, from times of sticker shock or buyer’s remorse before a successful result to times of euphoria after their pain/problem is successfully resolved.

Think about it: If you ask for a review at the wrong moment, it could result in a customer leaving a negative review that hundreds more people read when considering whether or not they want to buy from your business.

Ask for customer reviews at strategic moments along the customer journey, like:

• After they experience or demonstrate success with your product or service
• When they re-purchase or re-order
• After they tag your brand in a post on social media
• If they are spending time on your website browsing other products or services
• If they refer another customer to you

These are just a few examples of signs that your customer is satisfied enough that they would leave a positive review of your business.

For example, Etsy asked me to review a recent purchase approximately one month after I received it. I ordered a party favor for a friend’s bridal shower, so one month later was the right time frame to make sure I had time to enjoy and use my product.

On the other hand, some products and services will work within different time frames. For ride-hailing app Lyft, I usually receive a prompt to review my experience with my ride and driver immediately after the ride ends. For language-learning app Duolingo, I receive a prompt to review the app in the App Store after completing a lesson or achieving a milestone in the language I’m learning.

Step 7 : Choose a method that works for you at scale.

According to Big-Commerce, 50 or more reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates. The big take-away here is that more reviews means more proof and, therefore, more trust in your brand. In addition, dated reviews inspire less confidence than recent ones.

To truly fuel your flywheel and benefit from testimonials as social proof, getting them should become a regular part of your process. Here are some common avenues to help you ask for reviews at scale:

• Train your team to ask for reviews after every successful project or service
• Incorporate requests for reviews as part of your email marketing automation campaigns
• Use NPS to identify promoters (your happiest customers) at scale and have your service team foster relationships with them
• Include review links after checkout or on thank-you pages as an optional final step

Whatever you choose, it should be consistent and often.

Step 8 : Ask the customer in person.

Getting Online Reviews For Your Business, If you work in a customer success manager or account executive role and you have close relationships with the portfolio of customers you work with, don’t hesitate to add a personal touch and ask your customers to review their experiences in person.

If you’re taking your customers out to coffee or lunch, or if you invite them to one of your company events, keep things conversational, and ask them how they’re doing with your product or service. (Ideally, you’ll know if they’re achieving success or not based on your regular communications, so you’ll ask customers that you know are achieving goals already.)

If your customers tell you they’re seeing success, let them know that you value their opinion and their loyalty, and that you’d appreciate them helping you get the word out to potential new customers. Remember the data from the beginning of this post? Most customers will leave you a review — all you have to do is ask.

Step 9 : Leverage moments of customer happiness.

If you’ve just made a major breakthrough for a client, or if you’ve received praise or positive feedback from them, you’ve just come up to a point of customer happiness. At these moments, they may not only be more inclined to give you a review as a way of providing reciprocity for good work, but they are also more likely to give you a good review.

Step10 : Begin with an open-ended question.

Don’t start by coming out and asking directly for a customer review.

Instead, start a conversation — and use an open-ended question to kick off the process.

By asking customers “How are you liking the product?” or “Are you ready to renew/purchase again?” or “How was your recent interaction with customer support?” you can start a conversation and gauge their level of satisfaction before actually asking for the review.

This is helpful in two ways:

• You can source helpful customer feedback
• You can avoid the awkward mistake of asking a customer for a review before learning they had a bad experience

Use the open-ended question to genuinely collect customer feedback — and to sneakily make sure the customer is happy before offering them a reason to submit a review. There’s nothing you can do about negative reviews coming onto various sites, but if there’s a customer who needs a resolution, focus on that before you ask them to rate your business.

An open-ended question in an email subject line — as Bio-Clarity did here — prompted me to get ready to give an answer as a reply or in the form of a review:

Step 11 : Reduce the friction where you can.

If leaving a review becomes a hassle, your customer will be less likely to do it. That means you should make it as easy as possible, especially when asking for a testimonial over email. Here are some ideas:

• Include multiple options so that the customer can choose the platform they’re most comfortable on
• Include a link directly to the page where they leave a review to minimize the number of clicks or steps they must take
• Give them a prompt so they’re never at a loss on what to write (e.g. “Will you leave a review about your experience with your most recent store visit?”),Getting Online Reviews For Your Business.