FOR SEO AND DIGITAL MARKETING FIRMS, REVIEWS ARE ONE OF THE MOST COST- AND TIME-EFFICIENT WAYS TO LET YOUR CUSTOMERS DO YOUR SELLING FOR YOU.
Time is easily one of the most precious resources for SEO, PPC, and digital marketing firms.
In addition to their normal client work, these agencies have to keep up with near-constant changes to Google’s search ranking algorithms, stay current on ever-evolving trends and tools, and figure out how
to prove the ROI of their valuable services to never- satisfied clients.
So, if they can utilize a customer prospecting and acquisition tool whose net results are greater than the time, cost, and effort required, it’s a no-brainer to pursue that strategy.
Enter review management.
Any SEO or digital marketer already knows that online, third-party reviews are critical to discoverability, reputation, and search rankings.
According to the gurus at Moz, for example, review signals contribute over 15% of the weight to Google local three pack rankings.1 As a result, reviews are likely already an important component of the work they do for their own clients.
But SEOs shouldn’t neglect their own review management.
As content marketing platform HubSpot writes, “Your company’s best marketers and sales reps aren’t your employees – they’re your existing customers.”
In other words, the impact of reviews is more than just their technical relationship to search rankings. They are a major mechanism by which businesses including SEO firms can use customers to find customers. In fact, midsize companies (those with 101 to 250 employees) consider third-party review websites to be the most effective method of finding customers, at 76.9%.2
But the truly surprising thing is how effectively reviews turn happy customers into brand evangelists. A single customer can sell your services for you over and over again, 24/7, and the investment of time it takes to get that review is negligible relative to the value is produces.
But how can you get started using reviews to turn customers into evangelists? Read on.
In This Paper...
1: What makes reviews cost-effective 2: What makes reviews time-efficient
3: How to determine which customers to ask 4: How to decide which review sites to use
5: How to ask for reviews
6: How to follow through on reviews
Reviews are more cost-effective than almost any other lead gen tactic.
GetApp, a platform for business app recommendations, researched the role that third-party review sites play in business development. They found that they’re amazing tools for lead generation:
71.7% of organizations told GetApp that third-party review sites are effective in generating leads. They also found that customers will spend 31% more on businesses with excellent reviews.3
In other words, curating an effective portfolio of reviews not only attracts potential clients, it can also get them to spend more money. As online marketing guru Neil Patel writes, “What else in your business provides a 31% increase in revenue that you can do today? You could probably fire someone, but that’s not adding revenue, it’s just cutting cost. And you’ll probably regret it. My point is: you don’t have many other avenues to see a hike in spending like that for your business other than 5-star reviews.”4
Reviews are time-efficient: even just a few can have an outsized impact.
88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, according to research from BrightLocal, which provides local SEO tools to SEO agencies.5 Admittedly, that depends on the presence of multiple reviews, but nevertheless, it’s amazing how influential your own customers can be when speaking to prospective clients.
Procuring those reviews incurs a cost, of course. It takes time, energy, and some expense. But once in place, a portfolio of reviews will never stop working. It’s like putting a crowd of customers at your front door and having them extol your virtues at everyone who passes by, all day long, and all you had to do was assemble them in the first place. Even better, it takes your customers just minutes. That makes reviews an exceptionally time-efficient way of getting your customers to evangelize your firm.
Determine which customers to ask for reviews.
The first step is to determine which customers to solicit for reviews. The good news is that over two-thirds of customers are happy to leave reviews if asked.6 But which customers should you ask? In general, you want to pick (1) your best customers who are (2) most likely to actually leave a review and (3) likely to leave a good review specifically
There’s no need to be afraid of an occasional bad review. In fact, a small number of bad reviews can lend credibility to the rest. But clearly the majority of reviews should be positive. Before you ask a customer for a review, try to do some due diligence to establish that they are genuinely and unreservedly happy with the service (see Section #3 below for more on this).
The key: don’t ask customers who deem the review as the only effective method of making their voice heard or the other channel for communicating raw feedback, complaints, or requests. Even if they are “mostly” happy with your service, some of the complaints might sneak in.
Decide which sites to use and focus your efforts there.
In general, there are two types of sites where you want to concentrate your review management efforts. First, look to the big three – Google, Facebook, and maybe Yelp (if your firm is listed there) – because these sites are the most trafficked and have the biggest impact on SEO factors. See the chart to the left: traffic on these sites is staggering.
But it’s also important to focus on sector-specific sites, those directories and review sites that cater to the SEO and digital marketing industry specifically. A nontrivial number of consumers of SEO, PPC, and digital marketing services prefer using industry-specific review sites for discovery and due diligence.
They may consider the reviewers to be savvier consumers of the services rendered, or they may find that these sites are more focused on their needs. Plus, nichespecific review sites themselves show up in search listings themselves. By appearing prominently on them, SEO and online marketing agencies can cultivate yet another channel of discoverability for themselves.
Ask the right way: the smart strategy for requesting reviews.
Time your request right.
In general, it’s best practice to make asking for reviews a standard part of your closing or follow-up workflow, but in the case of an SEO or digital marketing firm, you might be asking for reviews from an ongoing customer.
How long should you wait before you ask for review? In general, the request should come at a point that make sense in the customer lifecycle – where they won’t be blindsided by an unexpected request – when you know that they are happy and likely to speak highly of you. See the sidebar for a list of smart touchpoints for asking for reviews.
Otherwise, don’t begin the request with a direct solicitation. Instead, start a conversation with a question designed to assess their impressions of your service: “How are you liking our work?” or “Would you purchase again?” If they seem satisfied with their experience, then ask for a review. Otherwise, resolve any concerns first.
The good news is that, once you start asking for reviews under these guidelines, you can expect your average star rating to increase overall.7
Use the right channel.
There’s no one right answer when determining the medium to use for soliciting reviews. It really depends on your organization’s relationship with your customers. It also depends on how you time the request. For example, it might be appropriate for an account executive to request the review after an in-person meeting, but you also run the risk of the customer saying, “Sure!” only to promptly forget. If the customer makes online purchases at your website or through an online invoice, you might ask for the review at that point of interaction. That said, email is probably the most popular channel, and it’s perfectly appropriate to use to request reviews.
Be goal oriented.
Think about what it is you want to get out of the review before you ask for it. In this paper, we’re talking about turning customers into evangelists. That’s different from using reviews to try to cultivate customer loyalty, or using a review process to generate honest feedback that could include criticism as well as praise. Ensure your request for the review is tailored to your goal for it. Then, personalize the communication, keep it short, and include all the information necessary for the recipient to take immediate action. Tell them where to go, what to do, and provide any links that they might need. Do everything you can to eliminate passive barriers to action.
Follow through after the review to maximize the customer’s voice.
Respond to the reviews.
The missing ingredient in a lot of review management programs is post-review response. Many organizations – a full three quarters, in fact – simply skip this step.8 They don’t see the time trade-off as being worth it. It is.
Consider negative reviews. These are unpleasant to confront, but responding to negative reviews is also one of the most effective ways of changing a negative review into a positive; one study found that one out of every three customers who receive a response to a negative review later change it to be more positive. Another third just delete the negative review.9
Further, review responses are correlated with increases in ratings, revenue, leads, and conversions. For example, research from Harvard Business School found that every 1-star increase on a Yelp rating yields a 5 to 9% increase in revenue.10 Businesses that respond to even a single review earn 4% more than average.11
Promote the best reviews.
Here’s the real secret sauce to getting evangelist-level mileage out of reviews: work with them off the review site. Good reviews can be incorporated into your own website as a testimonial or even serve as the basis of a full-fledged case study that itself can be turned into a content marketing vehicle. A case study, in turn, can be easily turned into blog posts or be paired with a complementary white paper. Many review sites and directory listings allow businesses to highlight positive reviews through social media channels as well, and that’s a great way to get added buzz.
Finally, get visible: purchase visibility (by sponsoring your listing) if necessary
Our underlying goal with this review management strategy is to turn a single or small number of customers into brand evangelists through a cost- and time-effective mechanism. In other words, we want a tool that turns customer recommendations into a non-stop engine of new leads and new conversions.
There’s a secret ingredient underpinning the likelihood of success: visibility.
Far from turning customers into evangelists, reviews that remain invisible will silence their voices. In general, the best ways to ensure your business shows up prominently are the same basic factors behind Google’s standard ranking algorithm: lots of people talking about your business, with lots of good ratings.
That kind of review portfolio can take time to build out, however. In the meantime, many review sites offer the opportunity for businesses to “sponsor” their businesses for a more prominent listing. It’s the PPC answer to review sites’ internal SEO. Ultimately, your agency must get eyes on your reviews, or the whole effort will fizzle. In the end, it’s that simple: a relatively low-effort strategy that can yield tremendously big dividends.
References
1 https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
2 https://lab.getapp.com/third-party-review-sites-lead-generation/
3 https://lab.getapp.com/lead-generation-strategies-research-report/
4 https://neilpatel.com/blog/online-reviews/
5 https://searchengineland.com/88-consumers-trust-online-reviews-much-personal-recommendations-195803
6 https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/local-consumer-review-survey/?_ga=2.82002964.326156022.1556724069-933118289.1529345498
7 http://spiegel.medill.northwestern.edu/online-reviews/
8 https://www.womply.com/impact-of-online-reviews-on-small-business-revenue/
9 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/332549
10 https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=41233
11 https://www.womply.com/impact-of-online-reviews-on-small-business-revenue/
