How To Get Online Reviews For Your Business
Think you don’t need to be actively encouraging online reviews for your business? Then picture this far-too-common situation: You’re plugging along in your business, and have just happened to have accumulated a handful of positive or neutral reviews from past customers on Yelp and Angie’s List. Smooth sailing, right?
Now imagine that a disgruntled customer posts a scathing review on Google+ — a review site you haven’t focused on — and one on which you have very few reviews. That single negative review now shows up at the top of the search rankings for your business name, and gives your business an overall rating of 1 star out of 5. Had you taken steps to encourage reviews, a single negative review wouldn’t have jeopardized the online reputation of your brand. But as it stands, you’re now left scurrying to encourage positive reviews to dilute the impact of that single negative one.
This is why it’s so important to be proactive when it comes to online reputation management. Encouraging customers to leave reviews on popular online review sites can not only improve your reputation online, it can help buffer your business from the occasional negative review. Furthermore, one Harvard Business School study found that “a restaurant that boosts its Yelp score by one full star can see revenues increase 5 to 9 percent.” Clearly, online reviews can make a big impact on a business’s profit.
In this article, we’ll consider three of the most popular online review sites, as well as which types of businesses should be using each. I’ll conclude each section with an overview of strategies you can use to get customers to leave reviews on each site.
With 135 million unique monthly visitors and more than 71 million reviews, Yelp is the largest review site for local businesses.
Who Should Use Yelp: Pretty much every local, service-based business, but particularly those targeting consumers in the 25–34 age category. A significant percentage of Yelp users are college educated (71.8%), and over half (54.5%) have a household income of $75,000 or more; so businesses targeting a middle-upper class demographic should have a strong presence on the platform.
How to Get Yelp Reviews: While some review sites encourage businesses to ask their customers to leave reviews, Yelp discourages this practice. They believe that providing excellent customer service is a better strategy than asking for reviews. They write: “[M]ost business owners are only going to ask for reviews from their happy customers, not the unhappy ones. Over time, these self-selected reviews create bias in the business listing — a bias that savvy consumers can smell from a mile away.”
Business owners may be tempted to offer discounts for customers that prove they wrote a review on Yelp, but according to this blog post by Yelp, “this isn’t a great idea,” and “As a general rule, Yelp has advised business owners not to offer incentives for reviews.”
Yelp does, however, encourage business owners to let their customers know they can be found on the site. While Yelp discourages business from soliciting reviews, Yelp advises several ways to direct your customers to the site:
· Find and claim your Yelp business page
· Put a Yelp badge on your site; this is automatically updated when customers leave a new review
· Put a “Find us on Yelp” sign in your brick and mortar establishment
· Print and display positive Yelp reviews in your store or office
· Add a Yelp link in your email signature, contact forms and/or newsletter
Angie’s List is a user-pay review service, but is free for businesses. At a cost of up to $40/year just to access the reviews, Angie’s List has come under fire over the past couple of years. In fact, listed businesses can even pay to receive prominent placement on the site; obviously many critics find this seriously comprises the site’s claim of providing unbiased reviews.
Who should use Angie’s List: Angie’s List accepts reviews for service-based businesses such as plumbers, realtors and mechanics, as well as health care professionals like massage therapists, doctors and physiotherapists. What sets Angie’s List apart from some other review sites is the lack of anonymity; because users must pay to leave a review, the occurrence of fake accounts or fixed reviews is likely to be far lower than on free sites.
How to get Angie’s List Reviews: The first time a customer leaves a review for you on Angie’s List, the site will automatically generate a page for your business. If you’d like your business to receive prominent placement in the listings and you’ve achieved an ‘A’ or ‘B’ rating on the site, you may choose to pay to offer discounts to Angie’s List users.
Angie’s List encourages businesses to ask customers to leave reviews on the site. The site also offers the Fetch program as a way to collect reviews from your customers. After submitting your customer list, the Angie’s List team will phone those who are also Angie’s List users to request feedback on your business.
As with most other review sites, you can request reviews via email, your website or social media. Angie’s List also gives businesses the option to print out hard copy review forms to hand out to customers.
According to 2011 research done by advertising firm Marchex, 80% of business search results point to social media accounts and online reviews…not to the actual business websites. This means that your carefully crafted (and flattering) copy may not be the first thing potential customers see when they Google your business name.
It goes without saying that providing outstanding customer service is the #1 way to get great online reviews. However, a little extra legwork to encourage positive reviews can go a long way to protecting your brand’s reputation online.
How do you encourage your customers to leave online reviews? Share with us below!
