How to Entice Online Reviews Without Rewards

Online reviews can make or break your business, especially if you gain most of your customers through organic marketing or a local search. A Marketing Land survey, among others, has found that 90 percent of people say that a positive online review makes an impact in whether or not they purchase a product. This is impressive and creates a unique opportunity to grow your business. By providing excellent customer service and a superior product, you are already setting the stage for getting good online reviews and gaining more customers. Now, all you need to do is make it easy for your satisfied customers to review you.

Several Ways to Increase Your Number of Online Reviews

• Ask for them. When you know that a client is satisfied, ask them to go online and give you a review. This can be in the form of an email with a link to the review site, on a business card or over the phone. When someone is delighted with your product or service, they will be more inclined to go online and talk about it.

• Use email. Every time you send out an email, it can be a subtle reminder to send you business or write a review. Simply add the language to the bottom of your email signature so that people can read “I appreciate your positive reviews” and click on it to go directly to the review site. This takes thirty seconds to set up and is an easy way to improve your organic marketing since every review can improve the likelihood of you coming up in a local search.

• Create a web page. Often, customers want to give you a review but are confused about the process and how to get to the right page or find you on a site. Make it easy for them by creating a review web page that can redirect to your specific review profile on a site like Yelp. If you don’t want to redirect, provide links to your profile on all of the review sites along with some customer quotes.

When trying to increase your online reviews, remember to make it as easy as possible for people to find and review you. By doing so, your ranking for organic marketing may improve. There have not been official releases regarding how the number of reviews improves your organic ranking or ranking on a local search. However, studies have found that companies with more online reviews have had a higher ranking than those without. If you are desperately trying to get the top spot on a local search, this is an advisable place to start.

Keep in mind that another benefit of securing reviews on Google, specifically, is that the number of stars you have will show up in local search results. This creates an immediate visual comparison for users to see the difference between you and a competitor. Make getting a five star rating a top priority so users can immediately identify you as providing good service. If your rating is low right now, you can start to clean it up by addressing customer complaints and asking customers to give you positive reviews since the rating system is based on the law of averages.