Strategies To Get Online Reviews From Customers

People generally only review two types of businesses: hotels and restaurants. For most other types of businesses, customers will only leave reviews if they need to report a negative experience. This creates the paradoxical result of having a great real-world reputation, but a terrible online reputation.

It generally goes against social norms to ask for a review. However, you need to break that presumption. The best way to get online reviews is to ask your customers for them. Knowing that you can ask for reviews, what is the best way to go about doing it?

Ask your customers for an online review in person

As always, the best way to get someone to do something is to ask them up-front and in-person. Asking for an online review in person puts a face to the issue and personalizes it for people. It makes you and the request more memorable. Several studies find that companies that ask in-person get 7 to 8 times more reviews than companies that don’t.

Now that you know to ask in person, who should do the asking? The best-placed person is the salesperson who helped your customer or client. This employee would have spent hours or days getting to know the customer. This personal connection reinforces the memorability of the request.

Offer employees an incentive for getting an online review

You cannot offer incentives to customers for online reviews. However, you can offer incentives to employees that get reviews from the customers. People like knowing that they made a difference and a bonus is a good way to materialize a benefit.

Email happy customers and request an online review

For many customers you may never work with them in person, so email is the only practical method to request an online review. However, with such an impersonal method of communicating, how can you know who to ask for a review and who not to? You obviously don’t want to ask someone who had a bad experience. The only real remedy is to use an internal survey system to identify favorable customers

Once you identify the correct customers to ask for an online review, how do you get them to read the email? There are a few tricks. First, have the request come from a specific person’s email, preferably someone the customer knows and worked with. Second, make the request personal. It should sound like that particular employee is asking for the review. Third, keep the online review process simple. Use a very easy link or button to direct the customer to the review site. Don’t get too ambitious and ask them to like you on social media and other goals. Keep the email simple and to the point.

No single email campaign or strategy will work, you will need to test and be flexible with your approaches.

Need to talk to someone about your online marketing campaign?

Asking for online reviews needs to be a goal for everyone. It isn’t enough for a single department or team, you want the entire organization to be behind this process. If you have any online marketing needs, contact us here at UCI Digital. Give us a call today at (806) 553-5332 or contact us via email. You can also stop by in person at 1000 S. Adams St. in Amarillo, Texas. Be sure to check out the other various services we offer to help push your business to the top!