Did you know that a whopping 90% of people’s buying decisions are influenced by online reviews? So if you aren’t making an effort to encourage your customers to leave ratings or reviews of your business on sites such as Google, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook or TripAdvisor, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to drive more traffic to your business.
It doesn’t matter if you operate a restaurant, run a nail salon or are the owner of a vape shop. Publishing the opinions of your customers is an important part of marketing your business and can help with persuading new customers and even with boosting your site’s SEO and increase web traffic to your site because reviews are one of the most important factors to climb up in local search rankings.
But how do you encourage customers to leave reviews? We put together ten tips from other, small business owners, just like yourself, that have proven to work well.
1. Ask, ask, ask.
It’s the most obvious one, but you should really make sure both yourself and your staff are asking customers for their feedback whenever possible. 70% of customers are happy to leave a review when asked.
2. Countertop display.
A really easy way is to put out a small countertop display, like a tent card, that asks your visitors to review. Even a sticker on your front door mentioning that you’re on Foursquare, TripAdvisor or Yelp can remind people to check in or leave a review.
3. Email
If you have your customers’ email addresses, it’s a small effort to send them an email reminder a few days after their initial purchase or visit with you, asking them to leave a review. You can even automate this process with tools such as Square Marketing.
4. Customer service.
Every business has to deal with questions, concerns or issues. After you or your customer service staff resolve an issue, ask if the customer wants to review your business on Google or Yelp etc. When you make this a part of your customer service process you will surely see an increase in reviews for your business.
5. Customer review software.
There are several software tools on the market that specialize in customer interaction and online review management. One of the most popular one being Podium. Others include ReviewTrackers and Real Time Reviews.
6. Incentive.
You have to be very cautious about paying your customers for reviews because most review sites discourage that and might even penalize your listing when they find out you’ve been paying customers for reviews. But offering a small incentive such as a free drink or cookie upon their next visit to your cafe, for example, is perfectly fine and a very effective way to generate more reviews for your business.
7. Social media.
Consider asking your fans or followers on Facebook and Twitter to review your business once every while. You will have to open yourself up to criticism from people but it could be an effective way to build up a volume of reviews.
8. Send a postcard!
Yes, you read that right. There are many ways you can ask your customers for a favor that take less time and are less expensive, but none of them can quite match the effectiveness of sending a personalized postcard trough snail mail.
9. Reminder on invoices.
How about putting a sentence or two on every invoice you sent out, asking your clients to review your company on their preferred website. For digital invoices, you can even include links.
10. Send a push message
if you have already loyal customers enrolled on a digital loyalty card such as Loopy Loyalty you can send out a push notification directly to their smartphone after they have visited your store, asking them nicely to leave a review. You can even offer them a small incentive to do so such as a couple of stamps towards their next reward.
Last but not least:
11. Make it easy
If you own a hotel, for example, you can consider putting an iPad on the edge of the check out counter, with the browser already opened to your hotel page on Yelp and invite anyone who’s checking out to leave a review.
