Ways to Encourage Customers to Leave Business Reviews

Whether they are looking to buy even small merchandise or making a big purchase decision, reviews are markedly the first thing the customers will go through. Also, more than 85% of web users read online reviews before investing their time and money into a business. (Find more such statistics here). Thus, brand owners need to be vigilant about having an eye on what customers have to say regarding their business. 

When it comes to the overall rating of a business, the number of reviews it receives also plays a key role. As the number of online reviews increases, positive reviews increase while bad reviews decrease by an even larger percentage. So, to improve your brand’s overall reputation, the apparent next step is to encourage your customers to write reviews on the web. But you must be confused, how to encourage customers to write reviews? Well, we can suggest a few tips to do that.   

Simply Ask Them to Leave a Review:

Yes, this is indeed the best way to increase the number of reviews for your business. But the question is how to get customers to leave reviews? How to ask them? How to encourage customers to write reviews? As we all live in a digital world, your customers also understand how important reviews are for your business. Also, as long as you deliver exemplary services or products and accomplish their requirements, they won’t even mind leaving a review for you. Customers are more likely to give feedback than you think. So, if a customer compliments about your service, kindly let them know that you would appreciate it if they left feedback on any review site such as Facebook or Google. Sometimes people might not know how to leave reviews on Facebook, so do suggest them a video or a guide.

Be Found on Relevant Review Sites:

Some review sites that you may consider are Facebook, Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, LinkedIn, Amazon, Trip Advisor, Yellowpages, Foursquare, and Angie’s list. The big question appears over here is how to get customers to leave reviews on these sites. It will be helpful if your business is listed on multiple review sites instead of just one or two of them. However, the industry you are in influences the review sites where you should list your company. 

For example, if you own an electronics shop, to get the best results, you may list your business on Google, Facebook, and Amazon and avoid listing it on Trip Advisor. So, choose your review sites wisely because that will also influence your company’s appearance on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Incentivize Your Customers for Leaving Reviews:

Every one of us certainly loves getting incentives. Some of your most loyal customers may even want some extra incentive to invest their time in writing a review for your business. Giving an incentive is indeed a good way to show your appreciation. For this, you can set up a program such as a monthly giveaway to reward randomly selected people for writing a review. Also, make it clear that you are giving incentives for writing a review and not a good review. Remember that positive and negative reviews are equally important for any business, so both types of reviewers should have an equal chance of getting the reward. 

Make Reviewing Easy for Them:

Customers may cease to review your business if they find it cumbersome. So, it becomes important to ask them for posting a review and make it as simple as possible for them to do so. For this, put direct links to your review profiles in various places such as your website, newsletters, e-mails, etc. 

Conduct Surveys to get their feedback:

Sometimes it becomes difficult for customers to know what should they write in feedback. In such cases, surveys are an effective way to know what they felt about your business and where does it need improvement. In the survey form, mention that filling it won’t take much of their time. Also, if you have not conducted a survey earlier, you may start by taking the help of some survey websites such as Zoho Survey (zoho.com/survey/), Survey Monkey (surveymonkey.com/), etc. Later, you can even use the survey results to generate social proof. 

Properly Respond to Other Reviews on Your Business:

Appropriately responding to reviews on your business holds a good chance of getting new reviews because people want their opinions to be heard. This can be the best way to encourage customers to write reviews. This will also let the customers know that your brand is committed to solving their problems. Also, thank them for devouring their time for rating your business and also acknowledge that their reviews greatly help your brand to constantly improve and grow!

Hope you have got a proper answer to your question how to encourage customers to write reviews. Working on these tips, we believe will help you to gain a considerable number of customer reviews. Interestingly, getting too many reviews can even negatively affect your business’ rankings. This is because search engines will interpret that you are paying to get reviews for your products or services. 

Also, getting the number of reviews you would expect can take a good amount of time. Thus, it sometimes makes good business sense to hand over your brand’s reputation management to an expert like us! We will make sure that you are getting the number of reviews you want and that your business’s reputation is always incredible!