How To Collect Online Reviews For Your Local Business

Gathering online reviews organically may take a while to accumulate. With online reviews being an essential tool for local businesses marketing, an unattended business listing profile could lead to a loss of not just one customer, but a ton. 

Before, the best form of review is word-to-mouth. But now that technology has evolved, so did our ways of sharing recommendations. According to Bright Local, 86% of consumers read reviews, and only 40% of those acknowledge businesses that had reviews within the past couple of weeks. Those figures are crazy if you observe how many local entrepreneurs do not take advantage of this opportunity to expand their reach and marketing efforts. 

If you’re looking to improve the online presence of your local business through customer experience, here are five tips:

The habit of asking customers to leave online reviews

Remember that there is nothing wrong with asking for reviews. Just make sure you know how to ask for them. Develop the habit of requesting reviews from customers if you want to continually obtain new ones consistently.  There are several ways you can do this in a doable and time-conserving way.

1. Manual Approach

Approaching a customer manually doesn’t mean going up to them at the door before they leave and asking for a review. That wouldn’t be efficient and effective for anyone. Instead, put up QR codes on your tabletop signs, business cards, and receipts. This way, customers would only have to scan it and be redirected to your review links.

But never take the classic approach (asking for reviews immediately) for granted since it’s most especially helpful for cafes, restaurants, clothing stores, and novelty shops.

2. Automated Approach

If you’re more pressured on time, use an automated review request process. There are review management tools where you can send out review request emails and SMS texts to your customers right after they leave. Remember to always include a link to your review page on all emails and SMS templates.

This approach is especially helpful for businesses that require appointments such as salons, BnBs, cleaning services, and contractors.

An important thing to remember when asking customers for reviews is to be deliberate. Create a strategy where you won’t just be gathering as much reviews as you can, but also how to make customers into big fans.

Never settle for just one platform

If you want to establish an influential online presence, settling to one platform won’t be enough. You want to be where your customers could be wanting to leave a review. For instance, you have a Yelp profile, yet your customers can only leave reviews on Facebook. Since you sadly don’t have a Facebook business page, then that’s one less review for your business. 

As much as possible, try to set up and verify your local business profiles on platforms like Facebook, Google My Business, Yelp, and TripAdvisor. Information on those profiles should also be up-to-date. Don’t forget to add all your social links to your profile description so customers could easily follow you online.  

If you find that juggling multiple review platforms are annoying, try using an online review monitoring app. Pick one that would allow you to receive review notifications in real-time and respond to online feedback right from the platform itself.

Appropriate responses to customer feedback

Not everyone will love, and not everyone will hate your products/services. As much as you want to provide consistently excellent customer service, you won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But even with that, your responses should always be immediate and professional. 

If you see a negative review, don’t respond to it with hate. Fighting fire with fire is never a good idea. Instead, calmly assess their concerns and to apologize for their bad experience and that you’ll do better next time. If you can, you may also offer them to tell more about their experience through direct messages and settle it there.

Other businesses would even request their customers to change or delete their review once the issue has been handled, but digital marketers have mixed feelings about that.

Remember, good reviews come from good customer experience

Make your customer experience good enough that people would leave reviews on their own without any review encouragements or automated invitations. If customers enjoyed their experience with your business and want you to continue in the long run, they would let other online users know. The true essence of online reviews is to provide outstanding customer service consistently.

Excellent customer service can be especially useful if your local business has already established some online presence. But if you’re still starting, I suggest that you invite customers for a review along with an excellent customer service experience.

Share the Good News

Getting new positive reviews are always good news. It allows you to know that customers are happy with your current service. When you’re receiving them, make sure to share them with your audience to encourage other customers to do the same.

A great place to share it is on your business website and social media pages. You can either reshare the review or have it on a nicely edited photo with the review’s caption as quotes. If you want to take it much further, you can use the post as a series of boosted ads on your paid campaigns.

Customers love to spend their hard-earned money on a business where excellent service is guaranteed. So make sure to share those precious reviews, if you got them. Otherwise, your reviews would be a waste if they are not recognized.

Summed Up Wisdom

Digital marketing can be quite a challenge, especially for local businesses that are just starting. Nowadays, great customer service is what will bring those customers to come knocking at your door, but this isn’t just enough.

To keep your online presence intact, place a powerful online review management strategy. This task would include monitoring reviews, inviting customers for reviews, responding to customer feedback, and promoting it on your social pages.