Social proof, in the form of online customer reviews, has quickly risen to the top as one of the most effective marketing tools.
And for good reason.
Customer reviews now serve as the new word of mouth. Research has shown that 92% of customers will seek online reviews before making a purchase.
Seeing how important online reviews are, it makes sense to set review collection as a priority for your business. Question is: do you know the right way to ask your customers for them?
In this article, I will show you the right way to do this and two major channels you can focus on. Plus, I will include a few templates for inspiration.
But first, some key points to consider.
Before you request for customer reviews, there are three basic things you need to keep in mind.
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Make Your Request By Emails And Text
Email and text are the most effective ways to request for customer reviews. Why? Because they make the process easy for your customers. Your customers will find the prospects of searching for your profile on review sites very daunting.
To make it easy for them, send them a text or email request with a direct link to your review page. Then they only need to click on the link and leave a review.
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Make Your Request On The Same Day They Buy From You
People say, ‘Out of sight is out of mind’, this statement is true for most of your customers. When you customers leave your business premises, the memory and feeling of the experience they had begins to fade. And so the longer you delay, the more difficult it would be for them to leave a review.
Try to send your request for reviews on the same day your customers buy from you. This way, you can guarantee that they are still excited about the experience they had with your business.
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Request A Review From All Your Customers
Humans can be picky sometimes. And so it may be tempting to select particular customers to send review requests to. I get it. There are some customers who appear more likely to leave you a request than others.
But this strategy is wrong. Doing this, you will likely miss out on a whole lot of other customers who may be willing to leave you a positive review.
Therefore, send requests to all your customers. It won’t cost you any more than sending to a few customers but it will get you more reviews.
Now that we are past the basics, let’s dive straight into the major review channels and request templates.
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Email And Text Requests templates
You are making a simple request to your customers to leave you a review, there’s no need to make it complicated. Writing a long-winded request will only bore your customers and reduce your chances of ever getting that review.
Therefore, for email and text requests, keep it short and sweet. Like this:
“We appreciate your business and hope you enjoyed your experience. We’d love to hear your feedback. Click below to leave a review.”
“[Your Customer’s Name], thank you for choosing (Your Business Name). Please provide your feedback by clicking the link below.”
“Hey (Your Customer’s Name) Thank you for visiting (Your Business Name) today. Please take a moment to leave us a review. Your responses will help us serve you better in the future.”
Don’t forget to add the direct link to your review page at the end of the text or email. So that all they have to do is click the link and leave a review.
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Asking For Google Reviews
Google is undoubtedly the largest review platform on the planet. And the fact that it has the most widely used search engine makes it the most viewed review platform. If used properly, Google reviews can help you pull in a ton of customers. Here are 9 new Google My Business features you can use to generate sales.
You can use the same templates I gave earlier to request for a Google review. There are a couple of things you need to consider first, though.
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Claim your business on Google:
This is the first step you need to start getting Google reviews. You can check if you already have an existing profile on there. And if you don’t, just visit Google My Business and create one. It’s simple, fast, and free.
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Get a Google My Business short link:
You don’t want to turn your customers off with a clunky review link. And so, Google gives you an option to get a short link. This link is easy to insert in your request message. It keeps your message nice and clean.
Note: do not attempt to buy Google reviews; it’s a bad idea. Here’s why.
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Asking For A Facebook Recommendation
Last year, Facebook removed the review feature where customers could rate businesses using stars. Currently, customers can only either recommend your business or not. To get more out of Facebook recommendations, here are a couple of things you should do first:
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Create a business profile page:
A Facebook business profile makes it easy for your customers to find basic information about. Save your profile link so that you can embed it in your review request.
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Ask customers for a check-in:
Facebook’s check-in feature lets your customers check-in whenever they visit your business location. This way, Facebook knows who has visited your business and will send them a recommendation request when somebody asks about a similar business.
To make this easy, set up an automated system that will send customers a review request after they have bought from you. If you have a Wi-Fi marketing platform, you can program it to trigger a review request to be sent to customers after a purchase. You will save a lot of time and still collect customer reviews efficiently.
If you do not have a Wi-Fi marketing & analytics platform integrated into your guest Wi-Fi, contact us now. Let’s help make your marketing more profitable.
POSTED ON October 31, 2019Share:
