Editor's note: Since the publication of this post, Google has rebranded Google+Local as "Google My Business". Carry on!
It's the bane of every business that relies on local traffic: reviews. Reviews are not new to business. We have been dealing with them in business since we had businesses and people could talk. In the last few years, we have been able to participate in the conversations that happen between consumers. Local reviews are just an extension of word of mouth marketing. It's a permanent record of consumer's thoughts of your business much like social media.
The worst part is having no reviews, or having reviews (GLOWING reviews) from real customers, and Yelp doesn't show or count them. Reviews are the links of the local world. They drive new business and are imperative to growth. However, if you ask for one or incentivize their posting, they might not count.
"You shouldn't ask your customers to post reviews on Yelp."
"Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased … Don't offer money or product to others to write reviews for your business or write negative reviews about a competitor. We also discourage specialized review stations or kiosks set up at your place of business for the sole purpose of soliciting reviews."
What's a business owner to do?!
Learn from link building
This is going to come at an odd time as link building (guest posting) is hot in the search media right now, but the link building world has been through this exact situation and local businesses can learn from it.
Don't chase tactics. Look for inspiration from other businesses but modify ideas to your business and your users. Just like link building, if your reviews show up in a pattern, that pattern is detectable by a computer algorithm and will likely be discounted.
Anything that is pattern-based is detectable, including:
- IP address of the reviewer: Never ask for reviews from your location(s).
- Timeline: This means if a number of reviews come in together over a period of time, think all in one day or one week. It reflects that they were asked to leave a review in one big push.
- Same phrases: If many reviews use the same phrasing, it can look orchestrated.
Scale is the enemy. Along the same lines as the patterns discussion above, trying to scale reviews is going to produce detectable trends. Don't try to go out and get reviews en masse. You need them, yes, but a slow trend is the better way to get them. This brings us to the next point: influence.
Influence and integrate
We just covered what not to do; now let's review how to go about getting reviews that are approved, shown, and can help grow your business. Just like links, reviews are best when they are placed there without your interaction, but that doesn't mean you should ignore the matter completely. Businesses can influence people to leave reviews. Influence, not entice or coerce. Influence with communication.
Guaranteed reviews: knock down, drag-out fantastic customer service
This is the one solid way to get reviews without ever having to mention the word review. I'm talking Zappos, Nordstrom, and Amazon level of customer service. You treat your customers—all of them—like they are kings and queens. Give them no choice but to tell people about you. The following is a review for one of my favorite food trucks in Seattle:
This is a long time investment though and I know not everyone has the time or thinks about leaving reviews. You can't make great customer service happen IRL sometimes, it's not always you in control. Regardless, this is still the best long-term solution.
But businesses have immediate needs, so here is how to address getting more reviews now.
Define your customer lifecycle
The key is laying out the standard lifecycle of a customer. I am going to pick on a favorite local business that inspired this post: Dreamclinic Seattle. The blue is online interaction, purple is in-person interaction. You can get more color coded with medium (email, organic, yellow pages, etc.) but I went with simple.
The main point of outlining the customer lifecycle is to see the cycle part of it and realize you have more than one opportunity to influence a review. Most businesses that rely on reviews have a customer lifecycle. If you haven't defined yours, do that now.
Integrate with all email marketing
1. Define email contact points
Once you have the customer lifecycle, add in when you normally contact your customers via email. You want to know when they are already online and thinking about you (this is key to online engagement!). There should be a few opportunities like newsletters, offers, post-purchase, post-visit, and confirmations. It doesn't matter if you are selling a good or a service, there should be communication throughout the customer lifecycle.
2. When will the customer be in the right frame of mind to leave a review?
Now consider when the customer is going to be able to write the best review. Sometimes it'll be almost immediately after the purchase, sometimes a few weeks after. For example: Dreamclinic needs to have a "Drink water!" reminder email an hour after a massage with a mention of social media and scheduling the next appointment (the mentions being side thoughts and the water being the main purpose).
3. Communicate for something other than a review.
Once you know when the best time is, line that up with a communication with the customer that is not about a review. Find another reason to get a hold of them. It can be a customer service survey or just a check in about their purchase. In this email, don't attempt to sell them anything, be genuinely interested in how they are feeling. If you get a reply (an engaged customer), then be sure to mention (one-on-one) that you would appreciate a review.
Notice that this whole process is basically identifying people that want to leave a review, are engaged with your brand, and are conversing with you individually. There is nothing about scale here; it's all about identifying people individually and helping them help your business.
Mention social media in all communication
Beyond email, you should be mentioning your best converting and favorite social media outlets for your business to your customers. Not for reviews, but for engagement. Reviews will come with engagement.
Start with the questions:
- Where do you get the most community involvement?
- Are you a new business? If so, where do your competitors see more engagement?
List those places, don't just use Facebook and Twitter because you "should." Once you know your top converting communities, mention them to your customers in all parts of the life cycle. Think about your business cards, mailers, receipts, the chalkboard outside, your menu, and more. Check out some inspiration I found from Heidi Cohen.
Remember, mention your online communities and integrate the mentions into the whole lifecycle, and the reviews will roll in naturally.
Speaking of local search issues, have you heard about the new Moz Local?
My suggestion, which is especially good for Hotel/B&B/Holiday apartments reviews:
when you know that someone has left your hotel, you'll mail him a thank you email and remind him that his review would be valuable for others.
Ok, that's not such a great tip.
The tip is this: format your email with Schema for Gmail, specifically with the review action Schema.
Not only the guest will receive in his inbox a review request that he will be able to execute directly from the inbox, but also he will be reminded about it in Google Now.
Hey Gianluca,
I looked into the review action schema when they first announced it. Unfortunately it can only be used to collect reviews, or "testimonials" internally. You can't use it to get reviews on your Google+ Local listing. Still, it's great for collecting testimonials to post on your website, which are definitely valuable.
Thanks Darren...
what about a using the Schema for Gmail "view action", and - instead of sending your customers to your site - you send them to your Google+ Local Listing for writing a review?
This is a solid idea Gianluca! I'll add it to our to do list to test.
I agree. Thank you guys !
I give my happy webdesign customers (those with a local business) a guide to leave a review (step by step) so that they can show it to their customers. Before that I tell them that reviews are important for a better result in Google. Then I tell them that they can test this step by step guide to leave a comment for my webdesign service (e. g. in Google Maps).
For a simple step-by-step "how to leave a Google+ Local review" printout, this free tool might be handy: https://www.whitespark.ca/review-handout-generator/
Darren
Tool is very very effective. If we have an effective tool, our 80% efforts are sure will go in right direction. Thanks for sharing such an effective tool..
Great post indeed Kate, reviews usually come organically and naturally from happy customers, also reviews can come from people wants to show off their experience at certain places, they want to let other people know that have been here. Usually once a business gains few reviews online gets other people motivated to leave reviews for this particular business too, also bad reviews creates a sense of rival on the happy customers side and then they want to defend this particular business by leaving a positive review, so usually a bad review can be followed by very positive reaction from few other customers wants to prove the bad review person is wrong. I personally ask my customers leave a review for my business every now n then, also reviews come my way naturally without even asking anyone. So my advice to other local business owners don't think about it too much every 3-4 weeks ask a customer to leave you a review any where they find your business online, it doesn't matter if it was a Facebook page, a Google listing or a yelp listing, usually Yelp appreciate reviews from active users and flags reviews from new users just signed up for the propose to leave a review. Regards Mark.
Great Post Kate; It is really important for a local business and also for every website to have positive reviews on their website. Reviews are trusted signals to search engines and also increase user’s interest and help users get convert quickly. For a local business having reviews on local directories such as Yelp, Yell etc is also more important than having on their own website. Google give weight to reviews from these websites and also show ratings from theses local reviews sites in Knowledge Graph.
You have explained a greater way to get reviews for your local business. I have experienced email marketing as the most effective channel to get reviews from customers. But social media is also an effective channel too.
All great points, Kate! As someone who works extensively on enabling review marketing tactics (I run Grade.us) I especially like that you focus on the customer lifecycle and where review opportunities naturally lie. Keeping it "natural" is the name of the game so as not to put off customers *or* reviews site algorithms!
Still, I wouldn't discount the power of face-to-face communication over email in swaying customers to become reviewers. Emails are missed, deleted, ignored or undelivered more than not. But local businesses who transact with their customers face-to-face have a unique opportunity to ask and remind their customers to give feedback.
Of course, since you generally shouldn't setup a review kiosk onsite for reasons you mention, we've found that printed review "invites" are an effective tool to get customers into your review funnel on their own time and terms. I've written extensively about this in The Marketer's Guide to Customer Reviews: about.grade.us/guide
Lots of good points here! I like how you made the focus on the customer lifecycle. I think it's important to always know when a customer might leave a review, but what's even more important is what you said about engagement.
Reviews only come after some kind of engagement, not the other way around. If it's the other way around, it's usually a customer service issue. But either way, I agree that you should focus your energies on sending the reviews to your social profiles instead of Yelp or Google Reviews.
At least with your own profiles, it doesn't hurt you to reply to upset customers. Places like Yelp only encourage others to cut you down and leave others with a false impression about your business. Not good environment for sending your customers to at all.
That's the real thing which we needed to work ....
Reviews are a big backbone of Online Marketing.
Really effective in E-Commerce Industry.
Even Social Media also very effective.
Thanks for your nice guide - Morris.
Thank you very Much !
Defining the customer lifecycle is really the key here. The more you can engage with your customer online (in a meaningful/valuable way [for them]) the more likely they are to engage with your brand online, which could easily lead to great online reviews.
We typically use Review Trackers for our clients and it's been working pretty well.
Collect emails from the clients of known 'happy' customers - craft a personalized email with links to the sites you'd like reviews on - space out delivery and monitor reviews as they come in. Fairly simple process with good results and no downside that I've experienced as of yet. No worries about IP traces, real customers, no incentives, etc.
Kate, awesome post! I really learned something here, especially about the "don't chase tactics" portion. Leaving reviews from the business location had not crossed my mind - thanks for that. If I may add to this:
I always discuss with my clients about Reputation management. It seems Yelp in general just leaves a bad taste for business owner's. It's almost to the point where they fear Yelp or have a hatred for it. Business owners get so discouraged when they see negative reviews. I really make an effort to help them understand the psychology behind reviews and how they can counter them without bribing the customer.
The first step is understanding that reviews can be very volatile. In this instance, Yelpers leave reviews based on mood, attitude or spite. The slightest thing can trigger the difference between a fatal review and a glowing review.
Good or bad, either way, business owners really need to monitor this closely because it can be revealing. One tactic I mention to them is to offer coupons or 5% off check in's. You're not asking them to leave a positive review, you are asking them to remain engaged long after the transaction has taken place. If the service was memorable and positive then naturally a good review will follow.
All this talk about how to manage reputation and counter negative reviews but at the end of the day if the business owner is excelling in customer service then a 5 star review should come very easily.
After all, if they are not talking about your business, good or bad, then you are most likely running a ghost town.
Cheers!
Daniel
I have read various places about this topic. Getting reviews is a good thing to promote local business. But getting reviews is also not that easy.
Good Reviews can give you new customers and good ROI, but we should be careful for quality services if we are listed in local sites like Google+ Local and Yelp, people can give you negative reviews if they do not like your products and services.
I suggest people not to give fake reviews, because Google algorithm easily can track this for un-natural reviews.
Great post, Kate.
I'm curious to know your thoughts on whether something like review handouts (created by tools such as Whitespark's review handout generator) are considered "soliciting." I get my clients using them, and Miriam Ellis included it in a recent Moz blog post, but maybe Google would consider it a grey area? What are your thoughts?
Hey Steve. To my knowledge, only Yelp discourages businesses from asking customers for reviews. (They have gone so far as to advise business owners never to mention the word "review." A little absurd, methinks.)
Google forbids incentivizing reviews or using an onsite "kiosk" to collect them--that is, true conflicts of interest--but does not forbid asking for honest reviews. In fact, you may have noticed that Google *loves* legit content ;)
Things may change, of course. But you can do no better than to follow the leads of folks like Phil Rozek and Darren Shaw in this area. We did so to a large degree in building our review-gen platform Grade.us, and their guidance has served us and our customers very well.
I love handouts as a consumer. I would worry though about asking directly for a Yelp review. Their rules are their rules. Ask people to check out your Yelp reviews, or visit your business on Yelp, but don't ask directly for a review. Dreamclinic gave me a handout and that is what spurred this post. ;)
I liked the part- Mention social media in all communication
It has become a trend to use facebook and twitter for promotion of all types of businesses today but the thing is, not all social media platforms can get you the type of customers you wish for. They might help you get the traffic but then there is a possibility that this might just be the reason for increase in the bounce rate of your website. Identifying the right platform is very important.
Please share your views on this Kate.
"You treat your customers—all of them—like they are kings and queens."
Solid post, proper marketing advice but this still doesn't resolve the fact that reviews are, and always will skewed towards the extreme ends of the spectrum. Guidelines aside, being able to mobilise positive reviews (scale) is pretty important as part of both a proactive and reactive ORM strategy. :)
An excellent article. I read this, then refined the ideas to create a 6 step process for getting Google reviews that works for my business. I wrote it up in a blog post:
Simple 6 step process for getting Google reviews
Would love to get some thoughts on the best place to have your customer leave a review in terms of SEO or conversion.
For ecommerce companies with brick and mortar locations, is it best to have reviews on your product detail page or on Yelp!?
What do you think?
Both. Reviews are not an SEO thing. Reviews help local results no matter where they are and you shouldn't hinder people leaving reviews, no matter the location.
You of course want people to leave their reviews with you above all else, it allows you to markup the reviews with schema, but I wouldn't deter Yelp reviews as they can drive substantial business.
If I had to pick, your site is best for SEO, but if your customers go to Yelp first to research, Yelp should be your priorioty.
Hi Kate, interesting article and thank you for the cool idea of creating a Drink Water email to send our customers an hour after massage. We just might do that!
All the best
Larisa Goldin, Dreamclinic CEO
Every business wants positive feedback from their customers, The local search algorithm is so complex that a good local SEO has to look at almost every aspect of the business’s marketing,
Great article Kate, thanks for the tips!
I don't know if it's just me, but whenever i see a review on a product i want to buy, i have a lingering thought of, is this review fake or not? But i guess that's just my suspicious nature.
Kate Morris exactly !! to hire fake review poster you should concentrate on service by which people can give a lot better and real reviews. You should have widgets on your website or fan page, after serving them always ask for feedback. And I am dam sure if you serve better you will good reviews without any fake demons.
The reviews topic is a great one for local businesses to take into strong consideration. There is a lot of "fluff" and "hype" about obtaining, asking, receiving, soliciting and how-to's for leaving reviews , but the most important piece of all of this is that you do it ethically. Don't go out and buy reviews. Don't go to Fiverr and hire a person reading a piece of paper taped to the side of their computer monitor while sitting in their horribly lit kitchen table to leave you a video testimonial either for that matter. Reviews, whether on the website or within your social sphere or Google+ pages should be earned and voluntary. There is no shame in guiding your clients or customers on how to leave a review, but don't give them an iPad as they are checking out to login to their Gmail account and post a review.
We've heard a lot of tricks and gimics. The Fiverr ones are the best. If you want to kill some time, just go look at the "real" video testimonials $5 can get you!
A great idea which some of our dental clients are using is just leaving small business or post cards at the front desk with all of their social media links/URLs, office contact info, logo, pictures of the dentists and a very quick step by step on how to leave a review in Google, if they felt the service was up to their expectations and enough for them to brag about on the web. It is a hint hint, wink wink to the patient only. Whether they act on it is not chased after by us or our customers.
This is a great article outlining the best ways to earn and obtain reviews, the right way! Thanks for sharing - Patrick
Thanks for the awesome post. 2 questions though:
1) So you invite review, but how can you make sure that you invite the positive reviews. Should you, and how to selectively ask satisfied and contented customer to leave the public review?
2) And how to minimize the chance of the dis-satisfied customers to leave you negative review? (prefer for them to email you about their bad experience instead of publicly displaying through negative reviews)
You can't make sure that all reviews are positive. As mentioned, there will be good and bad days. But having some poor reviews is actually beneficial. There has been research that says businesses with 4 stars get more business than businesses with 5 stars. You want the reviews to be real. And you should always try to respond publicly to negative reviews, even if to take them offline and fix the situation. All negative reviews should be seen as good feedback and ways to make your company better.
Hey Kate, Great post
I really happy to see your post,because its help for E-commerce website for local business purpose.
Now days for review posting there is some new strong rules and regulation is going where after submit the review submission on review website then it goes to investigate the post.
Thanks for this post.
Brand engagement is the key to get back what you offer. A review is just an intangible asset for any business and the key to getting a better review lies in the inbound marketing approach. The schema is also quiet important as discussed bu Gianluca. Google now feature is really gonna make a good impact in terms of reviews and this markup would be pretty important with smart phones capturing major part of the marketing searches.
Maybe it's just me, but the methods listed here to influence with communication seems way too much like asking for a review, which Yelp tells you not to do.
Don't get me wrong, I think these points are good advice, I just mentally can't see the difference between influencing someone to review and asking them to leave a review.
It really is a fine line. The difference, the line, is actually asking. Ask for a testimonial for your own marketing purposes is fine (it's not for Yelp or Google), but mentioning Yelp and other services in the thank you email from that might spur another review that you never asked for. Again, this is one on one communication with a customer, not mass communication. That is key too.
never thought about points like that one:
but the most clients don't want to participate anywhere where users can write reviews, because the competitors may write bad reviews and they don't want to watch yelp, google+, etc.
Many of them now also dont want google maps for there local businesses because of that. Something here is going horribly wrong x)
@Michael Janik is that the same with your clients - think you are from germany to.. Also ist es bei dir genauso?
"A slow trend is the better way to get them" ... I agree but that's a link-building way of thinking (as you pointed out), the problem is that it's completely possible for a restaurant to naturally get hundreds of reviews and then nothing. That's what happens when the restaurant gets a mention or a review in a major newspaper or online publication ! Or starts a promotion on Groupon. Everybody goes there and then it gets tons of reviews all of a sudden.
Oh yeah, that totally happens but not every month, or every two months. Computers are really good at spotting trends, but a sudden influx and decline is not a trend, it's a good part of chaos.
Hey Kate,
Wonderful post -Thanks for sharing this article with me and your reader. I have add your site to my bookmark for search any more article that I am search then I come for your site first for search.
According to me You should post your Reviews and Ratings on those Review sites which are Trusted and Loyal. Because we know that Trust is the key factor which turn Your Visitors into your Customers. "trustpilot" is a very authentic Review site.
Thnx Kate for this post, interesting view on the contact point proces of Dreamclinic (Dreamclinic has one ugly website though :-). )
Nice share - Kate Morris , I seen Great response of your post on web...
This is really useful. Do you know the best sites for reviews in the UK. I use trustpilot.co.uk. Can you suggest any others?
Wonderful post Kate..
The way you defined the article through the diagrammatic cycles makes it so precise.
If a customer is in the right frame of mind, he can leave a great review even for a task moderately, so here understanding consumer psychology works a lot.
Wise words +Kate Morris... There is definitely a fine (yet clearly defined) line between risky, scaled review solicitation & doing great things to generate genuine customer reviews online.
Which are the best sites to get reviews for Indian local business?
Reviews are a joke - you can buy them!
Getting Feedback or Reviews from customer is very important .We must take care of it
you kept my attention throughout the whole article, and that's a task. Thank you such an amazing article.
Excellent guidance...thanks !