How To Get More Local Reviews to Increase Trust and Acquire New Customers

Nothing works better to draw attention to your business than word of mouth and reviews essentially act as a grapevine to attract more business. It’s human nature for people to want to see what others are experiencing before making purchase decisions. In this case, the more reviews you have, the clearer the picture is for potential customers of what they can expect when doing business with you. 

A large number of great reviews will help to solidify and improve brand trust and boost conversions. The more trust people have in your ability to provide quality products, services, and general customer experiences, the easier it will be to build your online reputation and grow your business. Plus, by increasing your online exposure through a growing list of reviews, you can reach a wider audience that shares a common interest in your business.

Reviews are also valuable to you from an internal standpoint. You may not be aware of an underlying issue that could be negatively affecting your customers. Listening to customer feedback allows you to recognize what you’re doing right, but even bad reviews can help you determine what is going wrong so you can fix it quickly. By doing so, you are showing your customers that you are engaged and care about their experience, which can lead to increased revenues.

As Google’s algorithm continuously works to offer users the most relevant results to any given query, your business can more readily appear in those search results if you have a large number of reviews, whether they are highly rated 5-star reviews or poor marks with 1-star ratings. Google takes reviews seriously and will rank you higher in search results given a large number of high ratings.

Now that we’ve established the importance of reviews for your business and how they can help boost your visibility in local search rankings, let’s take a deeper look at how to gain more reviews. 

Since we are focusing on Google reviews, it goes without saying that you will need a Google Business Profile if you don’t already have one. It’s an easy way for your business to get noticed online while also enhancing your local presence to stay ahead of your direct competition. After all, as we’ve established, the more positive reviews you get for your Google Business Profile, the better chance you have of outranking your competitors.

Asking for Reviews in Person

There are several ways you can go about asking for reviews as customers come into your shop. The simplest is just asking. It’s good practice to thank a customer for doing business with you and while doing so, make sure you mention that you would appreciate their feedback in a review. But don’t stop there! Your customers will have to know how they can leave you a review and this should be done as simply as possible. 

Today’s technology can allow you to direct a customer to a QR code that is visible in strategic areas of your shop, like at the service counter or on the exit door. Customers can quickly scan the code and they are instantly on your profile ready to leave a review.

Along with every receipt you provide, it’s easy to hand a customer a review card that instructs them on how to leave their review. Additionally, instructions can be programmed into your register so that every receipt printed can be referred to. To be sure your customers understand the review process, you can also quickly guide them through it. It’s engaging and helpful, which can only lead to more favorable reviews. 

The Google My Business Marketing Kit can be a useful tool to help you get these ideas off the ground and implemented into your daily business routine.

Utilize Your Marketing Materials to Gain More Reviews

Take advantage of every opportunity to get the most out of your marketing efforts, including reviews for your Google Business Profile. The possibilities here are far-reaching as you can track your progress, tweak your methods, and establish important connections with existing and new customers in just a few clicks.

• Bitly allows you to create a short and memorable link that incorporates your brand. So if your business profile has a long URL that might be difficult to remember, you can shorten it to make it easy for your customers to find your review page. Plus, Bitly can help you track that link so you know how well you’re doing with it.
• Social media is a huge cache of existing, new, and potential customers over a range of platforms. Include links to your review page on your social media posts so that your customers can access it easily to share their reviews and find existing reviews that could lead to more business for you. 
• Your business email is more than just a conduit to answer questions or connect with a customer. By adding a custom link to your email footer, you can instantly direct every person you have an exchange with to your review page. This is something you can set once and forget it’s even there unless you want to draw attention to it in your message.
• Create an email campaign specifically for reviews. A well-composed email and a strictly managed campaign that includes a brief message to draw interest and features the link to your Google reviews page can go a long way. It’s an excellent way to ask your customers for reviews, which is why it’s so important to continuously be gathering email addresses from as many customers as possible. You can stay connected, offer something of interest, and ask for this small token that can be extremely beneficial to your business. 
• Create a short survey for your customers to fill out and include a link to leave a review. You will be able to gather valuable information from your customers and give them quick access to your review page

Your Website Can Be a Review Gateway

What better place than your virtual address to ask for reviews and show customers how they can go about sharing their positive experience with your brand. You can add a clear call to action for customers to see on the footer of your website. Include a button that directs them to the review page and you’re all set. 

You can also develop a landing page designed entirely to bring in more reviews. Encourage your customers to leave their reviews while making it easy for them to see other reviews. This can help with your conversion in bringing in new customers but it can also prompt customers to join in with a review of their own. 

Plus, incorporating your reviews in a test format for Google crawlers to be able to read them, is an excellent SEO strategy for your business bringing you added exposure. This can be done manually or through available plugins that can handle the process for you automatically. 

Using a reviews widget on your website is also a great way to ask for reviews while organizing those that you want to have displayed, responding to any reviews that need attention, and keeping your web page fresh with new reviews all with minimal effort

Go Beyond the Customer for Greater Exposure

While they are not customers, your vendors and partners can shed light on their experiences in doing business with you. They interact with you regularly so they have insight that a customer would not be privy to. Their reviews can have an impact on whether someone then chooses to use your services or buy your products based on how you deal with your business partners. And that’s then another opportunity for you to ask for a new customer review. 

Your business associates should be quite willing to leave a Google review for you if you generously leave one for them making it a win-win.

Why Responding to Existing Reviews is Key

By responding to your reviews, whether it’s a simple note of appreciation for a 5-star rating or to address issues suggested in a 1-star review, you are showing potential customers that you are engaged with your patrons and are willing to take the time to actually read what people are saying about your business. This way, people don’t feel like they’re wasting their time writing a review, as 97% of those who read reviews also read a business’ response to those reviews. 

With that in mind, there are a couple of ways to go about responding to reviews:

• In responding to positive reviews, be brief, grateful, and specific to the point of even making it a personalized message when possible. This will prompt additional reviews. 
• When replying to a negative review, be apologetic and empathetic, while solving the problem. You may end up turning that negative review into a positive one.

What Not To Do and What To Always Do for Google Reviews

Let’s take a moment to acknowledge what you should never do to find more Google reviews for your business. Your reviews should never come from an incentivized process. Reviews should always be real, natural, and true. It is against Google’s policy to gain reviews by offering something for them or buying reviews. You can be penalized by Google for violating that policy 

Achieving your business goals begins with serving your customers. Making sure that each customer receives the highest level of service possible to have an exceptional customer experience will put your business on the right path, so that is always what you should strive to do. The better your service, the more likely your customers are to leave a review, which will lead to new business. There is no better time to ask for a review than right after you have given the customer excellent service. New customers will soon come to expect that service from your brand and when you combine that with all the different ways you can ask for 5-star reviews, your business can truly flourish.

As not everyone has the knowledge to create a Google Business Profile, manage it, and implement the range of options available to ask for customer reviews, Trust Conscious Commerce to handle it all for you. After all, you have a business to run. The professionals at our digital marketing agency understand every detail of the Google Business Profile framework and how to make it work for you, including growing your list of 5-star customer reviews. Speak to one of our SEO Google experts today.