Reviews are essential to businesses. For starters, reviews can help increase your sales because feedback from your previous customers can foster your marketing strategies, helping you attract new customers to do business with you. Reviews can also build your credibility as an enterprise, improve your search engine optimization efforts, drive traffic into your website, and help spread awareness of your brand.
Gaining reviews from your customers can become your edge to stand out from the competition, as well as earn more profits. The more positive reviews your business has, the easier it’ll be for your firm to succeed in the long run. Reviews are important, but do you actually know how you can earn these from your customers? What strategies should you implement to entice customers to give positive reviews to your brand? How can your business make this whole process easier?
For you to come up with answers to these questions, implement the following techniques so you can easily get reviews from your customers:
1. Respond To Every Review, Including Negative Ones
Regardless of how hard you try, you can never please everyone. Creating the most affordable products and services doesn’t warrant that your target audience will be pleased with your brand. More often than not, people will always find fault in your products and services and would use different social media platforms to vent out their frustrations.
If you want to get reviews from your customers, it’s important that you also know the right strategies in responding to negative reviews. This is important because your customers are also human beings, and seeing that you take the time to address their concerns can make them feel valued. This act will encourage other customers to leave reviews, regardless if these are negative or positive because they have full confidence that your business will actually read and consider what they have to say.
2. Create Different Spaces To Leave Reviews
Most of your customers have a very hectic lifestyle, which is why they would usually spend their hard-earned money on products and services that could offer them utter convenience. They no longer have the time to do even the simplest of tasks themselves, and would just rely on businesses to do these things on their behalf.
For you to easily get the reviews of your customers, make sure that it’s easy for them to do so. As much as possible, provide different platforms where they can leave their reviews. Aside from your own website, you should also offer third-party websites that would allow your customers to leave reviews. Some of the most common examples are the use of Yelp, Facebook, Google, and Amazon. The more platforms you offer to your customers, the more they will be encouraged to leave reviews about your business and your offerings.
Since your customers are always on-the-go, it’s also important to make sure that all of these platforms are responsive and can be accessed on different screens. The questions asked to customers as they browse your website through their desktop computers should be the same questions asked to customers who use smartphones. Not everyone has the time to sit in front of a computer, so make sure that you also consider the diversity of your customers’ lifestyles.
3. Offer Unique And Interesting Incentives
Reviews are beneficial to your business, but how can your customers benefit from expressing their opinions about your brand? Your business is more likely to succeed if it has earned positive reviews from past customers, but what will it do to customers who’ve left those reviews? One of the easiest ways to get reviews from your customers is to put yourself in their shoes and offer incentives that will entice them to leave reviews. Any of your customers will be encouraged to talk about your business if they will be getting something afterward.
Depending on your budget and the niche of your business, you can offer coupons or freebies after a customer has left a review. Cold hard cash, gift cards, and online shopping perks are also great ideas for incentives.
4. Pay Attention To The Timing
As an entrepreneur, you should aim to provide the best experience to your customers. This can be your competitive edge against your rivals. Aside from providing innovative products and services, you should make sure that all of your customers are happy from the start to the end of their transactions. They should be welcomed politely as they open the doors of your business establishment, treated by your staff with respect as they place their orders, and greeted with a smile after they pay for their orders and leave.
If you want to get reviews from your customers and ensure that your business provides the best customer experience every single time, pay attention to your timing when you’re going to ask for reviews. You should ask for reviews at the right time. If you ask at the wrong moment, your customers might be irritated and would prompt them to leave negative reviews.
To ensure that none of these happen, ask for customer reviews around these times:
- After they have experienced using your product or availing of your service
- After they referred another customer to your business
- After they tagged or mentioned your brand in social media
- After they have spent a significant amount of time browsing on your website
- The moment they re-purchase or re-order from your business
When deciding on the perfect time to ask for reviews, consider what your business is offering to your customers. For example, if your business sells party favors for children’s birthday parties, it would be best to ask for reviews a week or a month after the customer purchased the product. You need to make sure that you give enough time for your customers to use and enjoy your product before getting their feedback.
If your business offers services, for example, it would be ideal if you ask for reviews after the service was provided. If you are operating a hotel that offers accommodation to guests, you should ask your customers for review after their stay. Waiting for weeks or months before doing this will make it challenging for your customers to remember their experience.
5. Follow Up With Customers
Not every customer in the world understands the importance of reviews to businesses. They think that their transaction with the business ends the moment they receive the products or experience the services they paid for. However, this isn’t always true in the business context. Reviews are one of the most important ingredients to your business’s success, so it’s of the essence that you reach out to your customers to remind them to leave some feedback.
You can send emails or text messages to your customers the moment they receive the product or avail of your service. If you have already prepared a form or survey for their reviews, provide instructions on how they can access it.
Your simple effort of following up with your customers will surely go a long way for your business to earn reviews from them. But, if you’re leaning towards this direction, make sure that you don’t go overboard and always determine the fine line between following up and being a nuisance. Reminding your customers to give you reviews several times during the day can make you one of the latter, and can become the reason why your customers will leave negative reviews.
6. Verbally Mention To Your Customers How You’d Appreciate An Honest Review
If you have a brick and mortar store, train your employees to personally invite your customers to leave reviews on different platforms. If your business sells signature drinks, for example, have your employees introduce your website to your customers as they take their orders. Your employees should give as much information as they can on how your customers can leave their reviews about your business.
Same with the previous tip, your employees should not sound too pushy as they are asking for reviews personally. Instead, they should sound genuinely concerned about reaching out to your customers and asking them to leave a review.
7. Exhibit Great Reviews From Customers
You need to reach out to as many customers as you can and be able to encourage them to leave reviews for your business, and you can easily achieve this goal by highlighting reviews left by your previous customers. You can post some great reviews on your website or social media accounts, or even print out some of these and post them in your brick and mortar store.
Aside from being a great marketing strategy, showcasing great reviews from customers will also encourage other customers to do the same. This is especially true if you’re going to include your customers’ pictures (with their consent, of course).If you prefer to use videos, check out this VocalVideo guide on how to ask for reviews from your customers. Human beings love to feel appreciated, and this is one way of achieving this goal.
Audit Is Vital
If you want to succeed in getting reviews and using them to your business’s advantage, be consistent with your efforts in following the tips in this article. Pay attention to the strategies that work and tweak those that you think need improvement.
Auditing your existing strategies and making constant changes is vital for you to create and implement techniques that would allow your business to get reviews from customers!
