How to get reviews

If you shop online, then you are no stranger to reviews. Whether it’s a simple book review on Amazon, or a review of a restaurant on Yelp or a testimonial in Google, reviews play a role in how we view businesses that we may want to do business with. Online reviews can make or break your business, particularly if you are a local service business.

You can post glowing testimonials on your own website, and you should if you can, so long as you do it right. But these testimonials will never carry as much weight as the reviews that go on Yelp and in Google.

Studies have shown that people tend to read 6 reviews before making up their mind about your business. Will one bad review ruin you? No. Will six? Maybe.

Not only do reviews help people make up their mind about using you as a business, but they also play an important factor in SEO. Search engines can use reviews to determine about 10% of your search engine placement.

Are you sold on reviews yet? Great! We have a huge secret on how to get online reviews.

ASK.

That’s really it. The majority of your clients will be happy to give you reviews if you ask for them. The reason so many businesses have more negative reviews than positive is because people are more likely to give a poor review online if they’re upset with the service they’ve received than they are to leave a positive review if they’re happy.

However, to flip this, you simply have to ask.

It may take time to email your clients personally after each project and ask for a review. You can do it in many ways. You can hire a service to do it for you. You can set up a mailing list that sends out once a week or once a month to request reviews. You can set up a CRM to automate the entire process.

The truth is that reviews are important and not that hard to get. Don’t wait for the reviews to come to you. Go after them to improve your online posturing.