Posted by Aimee Cozza on September 6th, 2017One question we often get asked if how to get better reviews on Yelp, Google, Facebook, or any other review site. The problem with “getting better reviews” is that you can’t just get 5 star reviews – you really have to earn them. Most of the time customers will not go out of their way to rate your business unless they felt they had a bad experience. Often times this means that Yelp or Google can be littered with poor reviews of a business that may not entirely be deserving of being rated 1 or 2 stars. The more people you invite to review your business, if you’ve got a really great business, then the more chances you’ll get for a 5 star review.
Invite people to review your business
You want people to review your business and how they felt about the services they received. Unless you’re a business where you’re expecting reviews, photos, and a lot of social media presence (i.e. an event or a restaurant would be one of these businesses), chances are most people will generally not look to go out of their way to review your business until they have a bad experience.
The simplest way to mitigate this is just to ask! Ask former or current clients if they have a few moments to review your business on Yelp, Google, or elsewhere. Send them a link so they don’t have to fish through your website or the review website to look for it. Invite them to leave feedback on what you did well, what you did not so well, and extend a hand so you can hear about what your customers really think.
Time it right
Asking can be simple if you have a one-and-done business where you conduct a transaction then ask for input on that transaction. Say you sell a client a product, then send a follow up email a few days after asking for a review on the business (and perhaps the item as well). This is easy. Ongoing clients can be a little more difficult as there’s no clear-cut place to ask for a review. If you’re a company or business that wants a Yelp or Google review and you have an on-going client, ask them a little bit into the relationship. If you have long outstanding clients who are thrilled with you work, send them a quick email to ask them to take a few moments to rate the services you perform.
Integrate into your email marketing campaign
If you’re actively sending out marketing emails every month, week, or otherwise, this could be a great opportunity to invite reviews. You can tack it on to the bottom of every email, or you can have an auto-responder ask for a review when someone subscribes. Again, it’s important that you make sure that you link directly to the place you want reviews with your Call to Action to make it as easy as possible for a customer to leave a review of your business. Google now allows you to link directly to your review page so customers don’t have to search for where to review your business. You can actually obtain your direct review link through Google by following these steps:
- Search for your company in Google
- Click the button “Write a review”
- Copy the URL from the URL bar. In this instance it is: https://www.google.com/search?q=hasoptimization&oq=hasoptimization&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i61.2543j0j8&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8&safe=active#lrd=0x89e26add098f4d89:0x1e02af670eb22801,3
- Use this address to direct people to your company to leave reviews.
- OPTIONAL: Take a look at the URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=hasoptimization&oq=hasoptimization&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i61.2543j0j8&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8&safe=active#lrd=0x89e26add098f4d89:0x1e02af670eb22801,3 If you add an additional “5” after the final comma in the URL, you will populate the review with 5 stars! (so the URL will look something like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=hasoptimization&oq=hasoptimization&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i61.2543j0j8&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8&safe=active#lrd=0x89e26add098f4d89:0x1e02af670eb22801,3,5 ) The customer can then add or detract if they want to and add their comments.
- OPTIONAL: Shorten the URL using a service such as Tinyurl or
Goo.gl(Google has discontinued their link shortening service) - Send to customers!
We hope you find this guide on how to get reviews and how to ask for them helpful. Remember, Google isn’t the only enterprise that uses reviewing as a system. Don’t be afraid to ask for reviews on other platforms. Stay tuned for next week when we talk about bad reviews and how to handle them.
How did it work out for you? Let us know in the comments below!
