Table of Contents
Introduction
Did you know that Google records an estimate of 63,000 search queries per second, with a yearly global search being 2 trillion?
Google holds its ground for being the most popular search engine across the globe. With Google dominating the search engine use, it becomes imperative for small businesses to establish their presence, as it is the ‘digital word of mouth’ that can help them grow. It is a powerful tool to establish credibility in this competitive world and create a strong impact. But the question here is, how do you create that credibility in the most organic way? It’s simple. You get more google reviews for your business.
Google reviews are very important for you if you want to achieve success with respect to online reputation management. With google reviews, not only will you get access to a large base of potential customers but also give your business that extra edge.
When a customer searches for a business on google, the google reviews are visible with the business profile, just like the image below.
What are the benefits of Google Reviews?
If you run a small business and want to attract more customers, then it is imperative that you get discovered in google search results. If you get more google reviews for your business, you’re on the path to building trust with your potential customers.
Here are some reasons why Google Reviews are important:
Helps customers in decision making
As much as 89% of customers read online reviews before they make a purchase or choose a service.
Helps in Local SEO rankings
Offers better visibility
Increases customer trust and credibility
Note: Quality, quantity, recency, and relevance of reviews are the factors that Google considers while assessing the authenticity of a business. When customers share their experiences about a business, Google understands the kind of position that the business holds in the market. It would be safe to say that a business that has plenty of reviews and a higher star rating will be more visible on local searches, and therefore impact local SEO. If a business has a rating of 4.5 on Google, it means that the customers like the brand and this is what Google picks while ranking businesses. Google’s algorithm uses fresh content (latest reviews) to analyze whether a business is active, and the kind of service it is providing.
15 Ways to Get More Google Reviews
Here are some methods you can use to get more Google reviews for your business:
1. In person request
The most obvious and easy way to ask for reviews is when the customer is done availing your services. You can maybe train your staff to to ask customers for reviews during in-person interactions. It’s also a good idea to showcase steps of how customers can leave a google review, via posters at your office.
2. Display QR Codes
Create QR codes linked to your review page and place them on business cards, menus, or promotional materials.
This makes it easy for customers to scan and leave a review.
3. Use texts
Text messaging is a great way to engage customers as it boosts engagement rate as high as 98%! You can use a reputation management software to send text review requests in bulk.
4. Use reputation management software
As discussed above a reputation management software will allow you to send text review requests in bulk. It can also help you filter out bad reviews. For example, with Emitrr, if a customer gives low star review you can nudge them to leave a private feedback instead of a public review.
5. Add a review link on your website
A business’s website is the go-to place for any customer to find out more about the business. It is frequently visited by customers to obtain information. If a customer decides to leave a review for your business. your website may be one of the places they head to first. Add a call to action to the Google review page and make sure it is easy for the customers to find.
Tip: You can place a review CTA on the left hand side of your page as Website viewers spend 80% of their time looking at the left half of your pages (Nielson Norman Group)
6. Run a email campaign for reviews
The best way to collect reviews is to simply ask. Until you ask for a review, it is very unlikely that a customer will leave a review by themselves.
You can formulate an email campaign and request your customers for review.
Round up all your customer’s emails and shoot them an email requesting for a review. You can include the link to your google review page in the body of the mail.
7. Run a text message campaign for reviews
Just like the email campaign, you can also run a text message campaign for requesting reviews from customers. If you have the phone numbers of your customers, and they agreed to receive text communication with you previously, you can consider a text message campaign for reviews. SMS has an open rate of 98% and therefore will guarantee that your review request message is read by the customer.
8. Ask for reviews immediately after an appointment
Asking for a review just after a job completed can also help you get a new review. If the customer is satisfied with your service they might oblige then and there and write a review for you. Sometimes a new review is just an ask away!
9. Include review links in your email signature
Including a simple prompt like “Happy with our services? Leave a review here” can help guide your customers towards leaving a review.
10. Ask for reviews in your marketing materials
Whether it is a physical marketing material or a digital one, it comes with an opportunity for you to include a review CTA in it.
Suppose you have a weekly newsletter, you can add a review CTA at the end of it.
You can write something like: “Reviews are really important to us. We’d love to hear about your experience.”
You can also think about adding a review QR code on a physical business card, or any physical card you may send to your customer.
11. Send follow up email
After a successful job ends send your customer a follow-up email reminding them that you’re on Google and appreciate any feedback.
12. Create a Google review link
To facilitate all of the points listed above you need to provide your customers with a link. To get a review link for your business follow these steps:
- Visit Google Place ID;
- In the ‘Enter a location’ field, write your company name;
- In the drop-down list, click on your company name that appears;
- Your Place ID will appear in the popover, and just copy it;
- Paste this ID number at the end of this link (after the = sign) https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=
13. Ask for reviews on Social Media
Your social media profiles are another place customer’s visit to know more about your business. Place review CTA’s in easy to find and intuitive places.
For example, if you have an Instagram page, you can create a ‘highlight’ of all the reviews you’ve received and add a CTA review link.
14. Include Google review link in surveys
Surveys are a great way to get customer opinion in detail. Surveys give the customers the oportunity to freely speak their mind. Use this to your advantage and add a review link at the end of the survey. As customers are already in the mood of giving their opinion, it is highly likely that they agree to leaving a Google review as well.
15. Respond to existing reviews
Responding to existing reviews shows to your customers that you care about their opinions and actively monitor what customers say about you. Regardless of whether the review is positive or negative, make sure to respond.
Here’s how you should respond to positive reviews:
Acknowledge their feedback. Say “thank you”.
Motivate the customer to revisit or repurchase your product or service.
Make sure that your response is crisp and tight.
An example: “Hey, thank you for your feedback. We would love to hear from you again!”
Here’s how you should respond to negative reviews:
Respond calmly; do not get into an argument with the customer.
Do not wait for too long. Try to respond within a 24-hour period.
Leave your contact information so that your team can look into the matter and resolve the customer’s concern.
An example: “Hey, we’re sorry to hear that. Please let us know how we can help.”
Here are some text review request templates you can use for generating more reviews.
Review Request Text Templates
“Hi [Customer’s Name],
We hope you enjoyed your recent experience with us. Your feedback means the world to us. Please take a moment to share your thoughts by leaving a review [Link]. Your input helps us improve and serve you better.
Thank you for your support!
“Dear [Customer’s Name],
Your satisfaction is our priority. We’d be grateful if you could take a moment to share your thoughts about our service. Your review is invaluable to us.”
“Hi there,
We’re always striving to improve. Please help us by leaving a review of your recent experience. Your feedback guides our efforts to serve you better.”
“Dear [Customer’s Name],
We value your opinion. Kindly consider leaving a review to let us know how we’re doing. Your insights are important to us.”
“Hello [Customer’s Name],
Your feedback is essential to us. We’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to leave a review. Thank you for your continued support.”
“Hi [Customer’s Name],
Your review helps us grow. Please share your thoughts about our service. We look forward to your feedback.”
“Hi [Customer Name],
We hope you are enjoying your new [service]! We would love to hear about your experience to improve our services at [Link].”
“Hello [Customer Name],
You will have been using our service for X years! Therefore, we would be very grateful if you would share your experience at [Link].”
“Hi [Customer Name],
Thank You for deciding to use our business! As a new customer, it would be great to hear about your first impressions. So please leave us a review at [Link].”
Top 5 Reputation Management Software to Get More Google Reviews
1. Emitrr
Emitrr is a complete customer communication and engagement platform. This means that is has various features aimed at helping ease communication with customers and engage them more effectively. One aspect of customer communication and engagement is review generation and reputation management. Emitrr along with its advanced texting capabilities, also offers stellar review management features as well.
If you wish to collect more reviews for your business you can use Emitrr’s text campaigns: Manual and Automated to send review requests to your customer base. Automated review requests can be sent at a click of a button, all you will need to do is turn on the review request campaign. Integration of Emitrr with your CRM will enable you to run automated review request campaigns.
To send manual review requests campaign, you can follow these steps:
You can see how your review request campaign has performed on Emitrr’s Review metric page.
Review management features do not end with Review generation. With Emitrr you can keep a track of the reviews you have received across different platforms and respond and manage them under a single platform.
Emitrr has an overall rating of 4.8 on Capterra, with an amazing 5/5 rating for its customer support. It rated 4.9 for Value of Money and 4.8 for Ease of Use.
You only pay for the features you use, so its a pocket friendly option with great features!
2. Birdeye
Birdeye, like Emitrr is also an omni-channel review management software. With Birdeye’s review management feature you can solicit, and respond to reviews across different channels. Birdeye can integrate with your CRM to send automated review requests just like Emitrr. You can also set auto responders and assign negative reviews to team members for corrective action.
Birdeye has an overall rating of 4.8 on Capterra with a 4.7 rating for customer service.Ease of Use is at 4.7 and Value for Money at 4.5.
Birdeye offer great review management features but falls flat on its customer service as demonstrated by customer reviews and also has the reputation of making it hard for businesses to get out of contracts.
“Birdeye might be useful for those doing only monitoring. For those who want to generate reviews they are inconsistent and have no value add. ROI is 0%.” (Capterra)
3. Podium
Podium is a customer communication platform that offers review management features as well. Podium’s review management features include text review requests, review management across different channels, AI powered auto suggestions and auto responders.
Podium has an overall rating of 4.3 on Capterra with a 4.1 rating for its customer service. Podium scores 4.3 for Ease of Use and 4.0 for Value for Money.
As said by one of Podium’s customers,
“Poor customer service for a company that solicits reviews”. (Capterra)
Many users have reported struggles with poor customer service with Podium. It is also reported to take up a long time to set up.
4. ReviewTracker
ReviewTracker is a software built specifically for reputation management services. Features of ReviewTracker includes monitoring, managing, and collaborating on responding to reviews from 120+ review sources. It has additional features such as sentiment analysis that allows businesses to gauge the general customer sentiment towards their business.
ReviewTracker has an overall rating of 4.7 on Capterra with 4.7 rating for customer service. ReviewTracker scores 4.7 for Ease of Use and 4.5 for Value for Money.
ReviewTracker is reported to be easy to use and quick to implement.
“ It is easy to implement the actual email but that is about it.” (Capterra)
5. Weave
Weave, like the above mentioned sofftwares is a complete customer communication tool. Weave allows businesses to connect with their customers at every point in their customer journey. Weave’s review management features include soliciting reviews, real time monitoring of reviews, and Response assistant that uses generative AI to create custom reponses for each review. You can manage reviews across two platforms Google and Facebook.
Weave has an overall rating of 4.1 on Capterra with a 3.6 rating for its customer service. Weave scores 4.3 for Ease of Use and 3.9 for Value for Money.
Weave’s customer service is perhaps the worst of all the review platforms mentioned till now.
“Horrible. The implementation team does not know what they are doing. This was an incredibly stressful experience and they continue bothering me MONTHS after cancelling with mistakes!” (Capterra)
How to Get More Google Reviews With the Emitrr Software
If you have served hundreds of customers to date, then you might need to write to each customer, asking them to leave a review. When you ask your customers for a review, you can either personalize your message or can send an automated message through email or text. For instance, with the Emitrr software, you can easily send a review message to multiple customers at once. There are a variety of email and text templates that you can use, and can even customize those as per your needs.
Simply log in to your account and head to the campaigns page located on the main menu. From there, choose ‘Manual’. This section allows you to send personalized messages to your customers, along with an option to schedule those. You can also send a follow-up text/email later on. Here’s what the page looks like:
For initial review message:
For follow up:
If you want to send automated review messages to your customers, simply select the automation page, and from there, choose reviews. The image below shows what you’ll be directed to.
In these templates, you can schedule the review messages, send messages via both text and email at once, and even preview what you’re sending. Here are some examples for your reference:
The review page:
Here’s what a text template looks like:
Here’s what an email template looks like:
FAQs
1. How do I request more Google Reviews?
You can request Google reviews through various channels. You can either send email review request or text review requests. You can also ask your customers to leave a review through a phone call or in-person while they are at your business location for service.
2. What happens when you get more Google reviews?
When you receive a considerable amount of Google reviews, say 100, your online reputation improves. Customers will start perceiving your business as a trustworthy one.
3. Can I buy Google Reviews?
No, you should not buy Google Reviews. If detected, your google reviews will get deleted and your account suspended. Fake Google reviews can seriously damage your reputation as mostly they are easily identifiable.
Conclusion
If you want to amp up your online reputation, attract more customers, and generate more revenue, then you need to get more google reviews as these will help you achieve all your growth objectives. You can also formulate a review management strategy for better clarity. So, make sure to document customer experience by the way of google reviews and watch your sales graph go higher and higher!
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