Positive reviews increase conversion rates, sales, and visibility. They help you get noticed and influence purchasing decisions by providing social proof. According to a TrustPilot study, 82 percent of customers are more likely to make a purchase if there are positive reviews and star ratings. Here are seven ways to drive more positive reviews.
1. Make It Easy to Leave Reviews
If you want reviews, make it easy for people to leave them. People are busy, and if they have to search for a way to leave reviews, very few people will end up leaving one.
If you want people to leave reviews on your homepage, include a clear CTA in the sidebar or header, whether in a menu or otherwise. Alternatively, use an exit pop-up to remind people to leave a review before they leave your site.
Email automation is a great way to encourage people to leave reviews. After a purchase, send people an email follow-up asking them to leave a review – but not immediately. Wait a few days to a week, so they have time to form an opinion about your product.
For physical businesses, things work a bit differently. For example, if you own a restaurant, bar, or barbershop, how can you encourage people to leave reviews? In such cases, QR codes are helpful.
Most people have smartphones, and many have QR code scanner apps downloaded or built into their phone cameras. iPhones, for example, automatically come with QR code scanners built into the camera.
At checkout or when serving customers with the bill, include a prominent QR code with a CTA asking people to scan the code and leave a review. Embed a URL into the QR code that takes users straight to your Google, Yelp, or Facebook review page.
Another way to make it easy for in-person customers to leave reviews is to use automated SMS marketing. If you can get customers’ mobile phone numbers at checkout, you can send automated SMS messages asking them to leave reviews.
2. Give Your Customers a Wonderful Experience
Do you want more positive reviews? Give your customers a wonderful experience, so you don’t even have to ask them to leave reviews. If you go above and beyond what people expect of you, and they are delighted with your service, they will be grateful and want to thank you with a review of their own will.
Furthermore, even if you have to ask some customers for reviews, they will be more enthusiastic when leaving them if they were satisfied with your service. They’ll go into more detail about how fantastic your business is and how much they liked your products or services, and they may even thank you by name. Their passion will show.
There’s no way to get around it: If you want good reviews, you must provide top-notch customer service.
3. Ask Customers for Reviews
Many customers won’t leave reviews unless you ask them. They need that extra push to do it. Often, a simple request does the trick, whether online or in person.
Online, you can have a CTA that says something along the lines of, “Review us on Google!” You can put this CTA in your email footers, website, or social media profiles. You’d be surprised at how effective it can be.
If you deal with customers in person or over the phone, don’t hesitate to ask for reviews. You don’t want to appear pushy or like you care more about the review than providing a great service, but mentioning it at the end of a conversation won’t hurt.
4. Give Customers Incentives for Leaving Reviews
One way to encourage reviews is to give customers incentives for doing so. However, you must be extra careful if you decide to go down this route.
Firstly, not all platforms allow incentivized reviews. Giving people discounts or free products for leaving reviews on Google can get you penalized, as Google strictly forbids it. Yelp goes a step further and even prohibits just asking for reviews, as it wants customers to leave reviews without being prompted. The penalty for soliciting reviews on Yelp is a demotion in rankings.
However, you can ask for reviews on your own website, as you have more control there than on a third-party platform. Nevertheless, you still have to comply with relevant guidelines. In the United States, the FTC regulates incentivized reviews in its business guidelines.
If you offer an incentive for a review, you must disclose that, so people know that the rating may be biased. Furthermore, you must not make the incentive depend on the review being positive. In other words, you may offer a free discount to people who leave a review on your homepage, but you can’t say that you’ll only give it to people who give you five stars or rate you positively.
So, what kind of incentives can you offer customers? Here are some ideas:
- Free membership for a month
- A discount on their next order
- A two-for-one offer
- Free shipping
- A free product
Offering free products is a common strategy for driving reviews. Many businesses send free product samples to customers in exchange for a review once the customer has tried the product. If your product pages lack ratings, such a campaign can be very effective.
5. Appreciate the Reviews and Showcase the Best Ones
One of the best ways to encourage more reviews is to show appreciation for previous reviewers’ effort. When people browse your GMB profile and see that you engaged with reviewers and thanked them for sharing their thoughts, they will be more likely to leave reviews as well. Everyone wants to get noticed and receive recognition.
If you can, respond to positive reviews by name. Don’t use a cookie-cutter copy-and-paste response to each positive rating, as it looks low-effort. Instead, write a unique response to each positive review.
Showcase the best ones on your homepage or social media feed. Many people may not be aware that you have a GMB or TripAdvisor profile where they can leave reviews, but if you showcase your best GMB reviews on Instagram, they might also want to leave reviews.
6. Look Out for Inaccurate and False Reviews
Inevitably, you will receive false and inaccurate reviews. The two are not necessarily synonymous.
Inaccurate reviews are not always malicious. Sometimes, customers don’t have access to the whole picture and leave negative reviews due to misunderstandings. Sometimes, they even leave reviews for the wrong business by mistake.
Yes, that does happen. Customers can confuse two similar businesses in the same mall or area. If you have a similar name as another business, even if you’re not in the same vicinity, you may also receive reviews intended for the other business.
False reviews, on the other hand, are usually malicious. Sometimes, a customer will badmouth you online because they weren’t happy with your service or the treatment they received. While that may warrant a negative review, they may invent additional information that isn’t true.
Sometimes, your competitors might intentionally smear you with fake reviews.
So, how do you respond to fake and inaccurate reviews? The first step is reporting them to the respective platform, whether it’s Google, Facebook, or Yelp. Many times, you will be able to get them removed.
If your removal request is denied, you need to respond to the review. If the review is entirely fake, and you never had a customer by that name, make that clear in your response.
Alternatively, if the reviewer was a customer of yours but has written inaccurate information, explain your side of the story and why the review is incorrect without getting personal. Keep it professional.
7. Handle Negative Reviews Politely
Not all negative reviews will be inaccurate or false. The longer you stay in business, the more likely you are to encounter customers who are unhappy with your products and services. That’s just part of the game – you can’t please everyone.
While it’s hard (and perhaps impossible) to avoid negative reviews altogether, they won’t damage your business reputation and sales if they are few and far between. What makes a big difference is how you respond to those reviews.
If you ignore them altogether, it’s a bad look because it shows that you aren’t listening to your customers’ concerns.
When you respond, keep it short and straightforward. Don’t attack the reviewer or dismiss their concerns. Apologize for their experience and assure them you will make it up to them.
Try to take it off the platform by giving them a number or email they can contact to resolve the issue. Even better, contact them directly and make it clear that you have contacted them in your response. That avoids a lengthy back-and-forth on the platform, which can quickly get messy.
Conclusion
To drive more reviews for your local business, you need to build more local citations on more platforms. Some noteworthy platforms to focus on include Google, Yelp, Bing Maps, Apple Maps, Facebook, and TripAdvisor. However, there are many other directories you can get citations on, depending on your region and niche.