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Marketing your business is hard.
Most of your potential customers are skeptical of your intentions.
But what if your current customers market your business for you?
That’s a whole lot better. And more effective.
This is what you achieve with online reviews. Most of your potential customers want to know what your past customers think about your business.
Because history is usually a good predictor of the future.
If your current customers think you’re great, then a potential customer in your locality is more willing to pay for your service.
If your current customers think you’re bad? Then good luck to you.
And if you have no reviews? Almost as bad as having negative reviews.
Having no reviews gives the impression that you have no customers. So there’s no reason a potential buyer should take a risk with you.
I’m fact, according to a BrightLocal study, 86% of customers check online reviews of businesses.
Now, the bad news.
Having so many customers is no guarantee that you’ll have many reviews. Very few customers think of leaving reviews after great service.
So you have to collect reviews.
Among the 66% of consumers who were asked to leave a review, 70% of them left a review. A good number for any business.
In this guide, I’ll show you 7 effective ways to collect reviews for your local business.
1. Be available on the most trusted and popular review sites
Your customers are already aware of some of the popular review sites. In fact, some of them have accounts with these sites already.
Therefore, it’s easier for them to drop reviews on these review sites. If your customer has to create an account before they can leave their reviews, this can discourage them from fulfilling your request.
Another advantage of these trusted websites is that your potential customers tend to give them a bigger weight when making their decisions. Many potential customers go to these sites directly when looking for businesses to patronize.
Some examples of such popular review sites are:
- Yelp
- Google My Business
- Amazon
- Better Business Bureau
- Industry websites
For every type of business, there are popular review sites for the industry. For instance, TripAdvisor is a popular review site in the traveling industry. While ZocDoc is popular in the health niche and G2 Crowd in the software industry.
It’s vital to have your business details on these industry websites as industry professionals might trust the reviews here more than other sources.
See an example of reviews for a chiropractor on Google My Business:
2. Send email requests
Email is an effective way to communicate with your customers and potential customers alike. The advantage of email is that your message will be difficult to miss.
Most customers will see this message and be able to take the intended action.
But how do you go about this?
It’s difficult to just tell a customer to review your business without a reason. To get better results or to encourage more reviews, you should tie your review request to a product they bought recently.
How long does it take for your customer to use this product and get satisfaction from it? The amount of time varies for each product or service.
Whatever time works for your product, you can send an email about their purchase during this time. Your email would be about the product they bought or the service they got and leaving a review about what they think.
Also, customers are more encouraged when you tell them reviews will help you to improve your service.
While telling your customers to leave a review, you need to make it easy. Add a link to the review site where they can click-through and leave a review in a few minutes.
You can also carry out A/B tests on your emails just to find the email copy that attracts more click-throughs and reviews.
See an example of Etsy sending an email to a customer to review a product they purchased. The customer can see the product and even the purchase date.
By doing this, Etsy can use customer reviews to increase conversion of other shoppers in their ecommerce store.
Below is another example of an app sending an email to review an app in the app store. The company tells the user how much they’ve saved through the app. They’re likely to leave a positive review after seeing that.
Emails are personal. So, most customers will see your message.
If you’ve offered a smooth shopping experience, they’ll likely fulfil your request to submit a review.
3. Add a review link to your email signature
This is similar to the previous point but it’s different. Most businesses have an email signature that accompanies their emails to subscribers.
In their email signature, they can have important details like:
- Website address
- Social media pages
- Address
- Telephone number
Another link you can add to your signature is a link to your review page. Subscribers who see it here can click through to drop a review.
You can see below how Dr. Brian Fann has added a “Review us” link below other details in his email signature.
A tool like Wisestamp can help you add review page links to your email signature.
4. Add links to review sites to your website
One of the biggest opportunities to get people to review your local business is your website. You can leave links to review pages at different locations on your website.
For instance, one great location to have links to your review pages is your website footer. But to make it even more visible, you can have a review page on your website.
On this page, you explain the benefits of leaving reviews for your customers. How do you use the information to improve your service to customers?
After this, you can add the links to your review pages where customers can leave a review about your business. This is easy for your customers as you save them the stress of looking for your review pages.
This page is also an opportunity to find customers who want to create a case study for your business. A case study is usually more detailed than just a review.
Customers can contact you through a form on this page. Some might also give you suggestions about your business based on their pain points.
OnPoint Urgent Care has a page to encourage their customers to share their experiences on Facebook. It provides a link that makes it easier for a potential reviewer. They also added a link to Google and Yelp for reviews on those platforms.
5. Ask for reviews after a positive experience with your business
It’s human nature.
People will usually remember their recent experience with your business when writing a review. Therefore, having a recent positive experience means they’re more likely to write a positive review.
Just to ensure more positive reviews, you can collect customers’ feedback before asking them to review your business. This way, you’ll know someone who’s likely to post a positive or negative review.
For instance, you can send an email asking your customer for feedback on your service or product. Based on their reply, you can take the next step.
If they’ve had a positive experience from your business, you can now send them another message to review your business. If they’ve had a negative experience, you can address their problems with your service.
This is especially important to local businesses.
People come to your physical location for your service or you go to theirs. Whether you’re a dentist or a plumber, you’ll provide your service at a physical location. Even if you’ve attracted them through the internet.
In cases like these, it’s easy to know when a customer is satisfied with your service.
And at that moment, you can ask them to leave a review for your business on your preferred platform. They’re likely to fulfill this request.
Second, they’re likely to leave a positive review. Having reviews is vital. But you also want to have a much higher proportion of positive reviews.
It’s better to ask for reviews when your customers are happy.
6. Respond to customer reviews
People want to be heard. Simply because it makes them feel valued.
One of the best ways customers can feel valued is to have a response to their reviews. This means your business take their views seriously.
What type of impression does this make on a potential customer? That you care about your customers even after they’ve paid for your service.
This will also encourage other customers to leave reviews about their experience with your service or product.
It’s inevitable that you’ll have negative reviews. All you’re trying to do is keep them to the minimum.
But what happens when a reviewer makes a scathing attack on your business? Do you ignore it?
No.
It might even be more important to respond to a negative review than a positive one. Other people want to see how you respond to the complaint or accusations leveled against your business.
When you respond with the aim to resolve the issue or prevent it in the future, other customers with negative reviews will be comfortable leaving their reviews.
See Netline here responding to a review by one of their customers and further reinforcing their commitment to good service.
Below is an example of a negative review for SizzorS salon. The business account has responded to the complaint to clear the misunderstanding with their customer.
Every customer knows there’s no perfect business. Ensure you reply to reviews even when there’s a criticism of your business.
On sites like Google My Business, you can also vote some positive and relevant reviews as helpful so that they can rank higher among the reviews.
7. Share positive customer reviews
Your online reviews are a form of user-generated content (UGC). It’s also a form of social proof.
So, it makes sense if you share them on platforms like social media channels.
This tells potential customers that you’re satisfying your customers. It’s a pull to patronize your business when they need such a service.
Likewise, sharing customer reviews is an encouragement to customers who are yet to leave their reviews about your business.
Of course, you can’t share every customer review. But you should find some valuable reviews that you can share once in a while to show how people see your business.
This will encourage other customers to write reviews about your business.
Conclusion
Reviews are vital to your local business performance. Potential customers want to know what current customers think about your business.
Then they’ll decide whether to take a risk with your business or not. Use these strategies to gather more reviews for your pages to improve your marketing.
Do you know business owners and marketers who can benefit from this? Share this post with them.
Samuel writes long-form guides to help businesses and entrepreneurs achieve better results from their marketing activities. He also writes for marketing and SaaS companies that want more leads and customers. Get in touch with him to discuss your content needs.