Simple Ways to Encourage Reviews (And Why You Need to)

Simple Ways to Encourage Reviews (And Why You Need to)
Why should you care whether or not your customers leave reviews? For one thing, around 85% of people now view online reviews with the same value as personal recommendations. What’s more, average sale-values are around 30% higher with brands that provide plenty of reassuring customer reviews. More sales, higher sale-values and greater authority in your niche – three reasons you absolutely need reviews in your life.

As for how to make it happen, encouraging more reviews doesn’t have to be as difficult as you might think. Most customers can’t wait to make their voices heard – it’s simply a case of giving them every opportunity to do so.

Use a variety of review sites

For example, not every customer who leaves reviews on Google is a fan of Yelp or OpenTable. And the same of course applies in reverse. If you want to stack up as many reviews as possible, you need to appear on as many popular review platforms as you can. You can then scrape as many as you like and present them anywhere and everywhere you see fit.

Show them how

Don’t just assume every customer will instinctively know how and where to leave a review. Instead, it’s worth providing fool-proof instructions from start to finish. What’s more, it’s also important to make it as easy as possible for reviews to be submitted. Make it mandatory to fill in 35 boxes and answer dozens of questions and you’ll struggle. Use a simple star-rating and/or comment box and they’re far more likely to complete the process.

Instil trust

Make it clear that you take a stand against fake reviews and have no intention of tolerating them. Along with communicating this outright, you can instil trust further by publishing neutral and negative reviews alongside your better reviews. No business has ever earned 100% positive ratings – hide the truth from your customers and they’ll find it difficult to trust you.

Respond and reply

Get it right and negative reviews can have even greater impact than positive reviews. If you make it clear that you take negative feedback seriously, you’ll be identified as a brand that actually cares. This is why it’s important to respond and reply to all reviews you receive – not just those you pick and choose to be worthy. Respond to negative press publicly and you could be looking at a significant boost to your reputation.

Make use of social

Don’t forget that for millions of consumers worldwide, social is becoming a leading platform for customer support and general interaction with businesses. Requesting and receiving reviews via social media can be a great way of collecting social proof to be used when, where and how you see fit. Again, the key lies in taking a proactive approach.

Empower customers

Last up, turn a customer into a brand ambassador and they’re inherently more likely to spread the word. The idea being that you get in touch with your regular customers directly, let them know how important they are and ask them directly to submit their feedback. Along with being a great way of building reviews and social proof, you’re also guaranteed to learn an important thing or two about your business.