REVIEW COLLECTION AND CURATION HAS TAKEN ON UNPRECEDENTED IMPORTANCE FOR BUSINESSES THAT FIND CUSTOMERS ONLINE.
Reviews serve a critical function in today’s business world. Almost everyone reads them when doing research to find and choose an SEO or digital marketing firm, as well as when doing due diligence on a particular company to verify they can meet their promises. Over 90% of people say that positive online reviews influence their buying decisions.1
In fact, according to BrightLocal, consumers read an average of 10 online reviews and spend an average of 13 minutes and 45 seconds reading reviews before feeling they can trust a business.2
As a result, reviews affect almost every aspect of an SEO firm’s business development lifecycle:
- Reviews are critical to discoverability. Potential clients might discover your business in the first place simply by reading a review. If nothing else, search engines like Google consider reviews in their ranking algorithms, especially for local search.
- Then, reviews serve as a lead generation mechanism by encouraging potential clients to reach out for more information.
- Finally, reviews impact conversion rates, with higher-rated firms more likely to close the deal.
So, it’s in every digital marketer’s best interest to cultivate a portfolio of glowing reviews.
That’s easier said than done, however, even for companies that are familiar with review management and understand its importance. In this paper, we’ll present a start-to-finish guide to cultivating a portfolio of amazing reviews.
Let’s get started.
In This Paper...
- Where to ask for reviews
- When to ask
- How to ask
- How to increase response rates
- How to turn negative reviews around
Where and When to Ask for Reviews
Where
First, you need to determine which third-party review sites to utilize. Indicators you may want to focus on a particular site include:
- It shows up in Google organic searches
- It shows up in Google paid searches (for most consumers, paid versus organic doesn’t matter – if it shows up, they’ll click it),
- Your competitors are listed on it (especially if they’re listed on it and the most reviewed competitor has fewer than two dozen reviews – you should be able to outclass them easily, quickly, with minimum effort),
- You’re already listed on it and your reviews are too few or under 4.0 average rating, and/
- You’ve already gotten traffic from it.
Which sites are going to satisfy these qualifiers? In general, it means you’ll want to focus on the big ones – Google, Facebook, Yelp – that are appropriate to your area of business, as well as sector-specific review sites with online traction. Fundamentally, you want to focus on any review sites where customers are likely to find you or go to do due diligence on you.
When
Don’t be afraid to ask for reviews. Over two-thirds (68%) of customers say yes, on average, when asked to leave a review.
The request should ideally come at a touchpoint in which soliciting a customer review makes sense. That might mean after the initial sale, after a successful experience, after reordering or renewing the product or service, after referring a new customer to you, or after mentioning your brand on social media or other channels
Determine the specific trigger(s) for sending the request, understanding that you make handle each request differently depending on the trigger.
In general, you want to establish a predictable workflow where your review request is integrated into normal procedures. Asking for a review should not be something that’s “extra” or out of the ordinary.
And keep the process as simple and easy as possible, as explained on the next page.
How To Ask For Reviews
When figuring out a process for asking for reviews, always follow the KISS (“Keep It Simple, Silly”) principle. First, the process needs to be easy for you and your own staff. Otherwise, the whole process loses efficiency, ROI falls, and you’re less likely to do it at all. You can outsource this process entirely, keep it in-house but automate it with a service or tool, or use a templated approach to keep staff consistent. (That said, personalizing requests is a good idea; see item #3 on the next page for more on this poin.
Second, it needs to be easy for the customer too, otherwise they won’t bother. Don’t make them hunt for information or forms or websites, and help them understand what they need to do. Give them all the information and resources they need to take immediate action, and keep the whole process – from first seeing your request to hitting the “submit” button on their review – as simple and fast as possible.
Finally, take care when considering who you’ll ask to leave reviews. A blanket program targeting every single customer might maximize the number of reviews, but the ratings they leave could be all over the place. Focus on your best and happiest customers. If you’re not sure about the customer’s experience, precede the request with a survey or inquiry to make sure they’re satisfied with the service.
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Which channel should you use to request the review? |
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In-Person |
Review Service or Tool |
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Email is probably the easiest and most common way to request reviews, but it’s also impersonal and may fail to incur a sense of obligation on the part of the recipient.
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In-person is a great way to ask. It can make the customer more likely to review; Marketing Land says they see 7 to 8 times more reviews from in-person requests than emailed.3
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Another option is to outsource to a review curation & management service. They’ll request the review in your place. But that means you have to trust them with your customers.
getting relatively few reviews, they might also be doing inadvertent damage to the relationship. |
7 Ways to Increase the Review Request Response Rate
- DELIVER OUTSTANDING SERVICE.
Consider setting up a strategic account management program. Salesforce refers to this as “clienteling,” or ensuring every client has an assigned point person who can help them satisfactorily resolve issues quickly. According to The Harvard Business Review, such programs generate a 20% increase in client satisfaction, and happy clients leave glowing reviews.4 - MAKE IT EASY FOR THE RECIPIENT TO TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION.
As described above, remove every passive barrier to action you can. Does the recipient not know where to go to leave a review? Tell them or provide a link. Are there too many steps in the review process, and prospective reviewers are dropping off? Simplify the workflow. Remove all friction that reduces response rates. - PERSONALIZE THE REQUEST.
Personalizing the request with content specific to the recipient can increase response rates. According to email marketing platform Campaign Monitor, personalization increases email open rates by 26%.5That might mean using the recipient’s name or otherwise referencing aspects of the relationship with them. The request should feel as close to a bespoke, one-on-one message as possible. - A/B TEST YOUR REQUESTS.
Test your requests by sending out different versions to see which version performs better. For example, you can vary subject lines, verbiage, visuals, whether to include a link or a button, whether to send the request from a female (due to the so-called Anita Effect) or a male account, etc.6Testing is the only way to continuously improve response rates. - MAKE THE REQUEST MOBILE FRIENDLY.
More people are using mobile devices to read emails and navigate the Internet than ever before. If your request or the review process itself is not mobile-friendly, you’ll automatically lose some reviews because the would-be reviewer found the process too cumbersome. - PAY ATTENTION TO AUTOREPLIES AND OUT OF OFFICE MESSAGES.
Just because you get an automated reply doesn’t mean you should give up! But pay attention to what the message says. If the recipient is out of the office, try again after they’ve returned. If there’s a specific problem, try to address the issue or send the request via a different channel. - IF AT ONCE YOU DON’T SUCCEED, TRY AGAIN.
According to one experiment, the average response rate nearly doubled (from 16% to 27%) when the campaign included at least one follow-up. After all, the initial email might have hit the recipient at an inopportune time; they’re willing to respond but didn’t have a chance at first. A follow-up can give them the prompt they need.
The Foolproof 5-Step Process To Turn Negative Reviews Around
Inevitably, some reviews will be less than glowing. Don’t worry! Negative reviews are not the end of the world. For one thing, many customers actually regard an occasional bad review as legitimizing the other reviews. People are suspicious if your portfolio of reviews look too good to be true.
In fact, research from Northwestern University has found that the likelihood of reviews leading to a new purchase peaks at ratings between 4.0 to 4.7 out of 5.0.7Zero negative reviews is seen as unrealistically good. That means a negative review or two that drag your rating down into that ideal range may actually be doing you a favor.
It’s also possible to turn negative reviews around entirely. Taking appropriate action in response to a negative review, as described below, can move customers to take down or change their review.
Specifically, a Harris Poll survey found that, of customers who had left a negative review and got a response from the business, 33% then posted a positive review and 34% just deleted the negative review.8
In other words, you can potentially undo the damage of two out of every three negative reviews if you follow the right review response plan.
- RESPOND QUICKLY – DO NOT LET NEGATIVE REVIEWS FESTER.
Speed is critical. Those customers who will be willing to change or delete their review need to have their concerns acknowledged or addressed sooner rather than later. If you can respond within a few hours, that’s best, but don’t let a response go longer than 24-48 hours. - DO NOT GET DEFENSIVE. INSTEAD, TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE REVIEWER’S PERSPECTIVE.
Getting defensive and reacting angrily is a recipe for an even worse review, as well as scaring off future customers who read the review and see the unsettling response. It’s better to simply acknowledge their complaint and ask questions so you can understand why they’re upset. - TAKE THE CONVERSATION OFFLINE.
It’s usually best to keep the review response simple, take responsibility, and indicate a willingness to resolve the problem. But from there, invite the reviewer to reach out through another channel so you can get into the nitty-gritty without an online audience. - SOLVE THE PROBLEM.
Speed is critical. Those customers who will be willing to change or delete their review need to have their concerns acknowledged or addressed sooner rather than later. If you can respond within a few hours, that’s best, but don’t let a response go longer than 24-48 hours. - ASK THE CUSTOMER TO UPDATE THEIR REVIEW.
After you’ve gone through a problem-resolution process, it’s okay to ask the customer to update their review. Don’t dictate what they should say, just ask them to edit in line with their current experience. From there, it’s just a matter of sitting back and reaping the rewards of your new portfolio of reviews!
References
1 https://www.zendesk.com/resources/customer-service-and-lifetime-customer-value/
2 https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/
3 https://marketingland.com/ask-customers-reviews-actually-get-172494
4 https://hbr.org/2007/09/managing-global-accounts
5 https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-marketing-new-rules/
6 http://www.websm.org/db/12/11920/Bibliography/Determinants_of_Response_Rates_of_Online_Surveys__The_Anita_Effect__Results_of_a_Joint_Project/?menu=1&lst=&q=search_1_1_-1&qdb=12&qsort=1
7 http://spiegel.medill.northwestern.edu/online-reviews/
8 https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/146630/retailer-follow-up-on-negative-reviews-pays-off.html
