8 Secrets to Getting Positive Reviews (and How to Leverage Them)
How things have changed! You meet a person, and you search him online. You want to buy a pair of trendy boots—you browse online. You want to do business with an SEO company that looks like a good fit—you check their reputation online!
Think about it like this: many moons ago, if a person liked a product or service, he would tell his friends and family. Now, by leaving an online review, that person can tell the whole world. Nowadays, online reviews directly impact your business. Customers rely on them, and search engines take them into consideration when ranking pages.
While negative reviews aren’t necessarily bad, positive reviews have the power to make you a star. A HubSpot survey discovered that 60% of consumers believe online reviews are either trustworthy or very trustworthy. According to this statistic, the more positive reviews you get, the better the chances are they will convince potential clients to make a purchase.
A BrightLocal study found that 73% of customers trust a business that has positive reviews more, and 57% of customers would visit the company’s website once they read positive reviews.
Numbers don’t lie—if you want your business to grow and stay competitive in today’s market, you need positive reviews. Follow these strategies to get more positive reviews and grab the opportunity to build credibility and trust with your clients.
1. Ask
Asking for reviews is the simplest way to collect reviews. However, in order to ensure you get positive ones, you need to personalize the request for the specific service or product you want reviewed. Make sure not to use templated requests; instead, try and craft them individually, expressing your company’s unique voice. Also, make it simple—don’t turn a simple ask for a review into a long, dull survey. In fact, right at the beginning, assure them it will take only a few minutes of their time.
2. Timing Is Everything
To increase the chances of getting a positive review, you need to ask your clients when they’re in “a happy place” with the product or service they got from you. Typically, those moments are right after purchasing your product or service, after receiving them, or after receiving the promised benefits. If you use an email form to request a review, send it on Tuesday morning.
3. Rate Customer Satisfaction
Before asking your clients to leave a review on review sites, check how happy they are with the service or product they got. Ask them to rate your service or product on a 1–10 scale. Then, if they choose a number 1–6 redirect them to your customer support page and provide them with a form where they can detail what they didn’t like. If you get any number from 7 to 10, push your clients to the review sites. Say you’re glad they had a great experience and ask for a more detailed review of their experience.
4. Incentivize Your Employees
Your employees should be aware of how important getting positive reviews is for your business. To motivate them, offer an incentive scheme for the positive reviews they generate. Then, follow their progress and work on increasing the number of positive reviews. Report the results in order to show how you’re doing. Highlight the best examples and point out what can be done better so that your employees can learn.
5. Ask Your Employees and Friends to Write a Review
Having your staff or friends review your business is legit as long as they disclose it in the review. For example, your employees can say how great working for your company is and how you provide individual attention to every client. Also, they can mention how they’ve resolved an issue in order to give potential clients a better picture of the people they would be dealing with. Your friends can provide insights into the quality of the products or services your company offers.
6. Steal Your Competitor’s Review Hacks
Monitoring your competition is healthy because it inspires innovation. The same tactic applies to review hacks. If your biggest competitor has thriving reviews, see what they’re doing and copy their hacks. Google their reviews and see which platform clients are reviewing your competitors on. You can also use an SEO link review tool to discover all the review sites linked to them.
7. Monitor Your Social Media Presence
Using social media to generate positive reviews is still an underestimated yet very effective strategy. You need to monitor the major social media platforms and discover the people that positively mention your brand. Monitoring can be done manually or with a social media monitoring tool like Hootsuite, Keyhole, and Digimind. Then, reach out to them, express how happy you are they think well of your business and ask them to leave a review on a review site of your choice.
How to Leverage Positive Reviews
Getting positive reviews is a good thing on its own. However, to use the full potential of these powerful words, you need to know several simple strategies and use them to your advantage. Apart from using reviews to market your business, here are some less-known tricks that will unlock new potential.
1. Say Thank You
Reviewers love when a brand engages with them and replies personally. By saying a simple “thank you” for their kind words, you’ll be setting the groundwork for having more positive reviews come your way. Again, it’s important to craft original responses, personalized to every user. Or consider giving your best reviewers a social media shoutout—they will love the extra attention. Some of those clients might even turn into brand ambassadors.
2. Learn
While negative reviews point out to the areas that need improvement, positive reviews inform you about the things that people like most, making them an excellent starting point for improvement. From positive reviews you can discover what aspects of your service or product people appreciate most and you can use that information to make those unique selling propositions the center of your offer. Also, positive reviews provide fresh insight into all the new ways your product/service can be used.
3. Rave About the Positive Reviews
Once you get a positive review, you’re allowed to rave about it. Choose the best, most relevant reviews you’ve received on third-party sites and feature them on your website. Don’t forget to use the logos of the review sites and implement a link to the actual review. People might want to check other reviews on those sites or maybe even leave you one themselves.
When displaying the reviews, get creative and use appealing visuals. You can even use social proof widgets that showcase your stellar reviews. They might well be the potential push clients need to close the deal.
4. Craft Success Stories
Positive reviews are an excellent base for leveraging and crafting success stories, testimonials, and case studies. If you see a detailed review from a client who’s particularly satisfied with your service/product, reach out and ask them whether they would be interested in collaborating with you and answering a few questions in order to get a deeper insight into their experience with your brand. You can offer a gift, special offer, or discount in exchange for their collaboration.
5. Craft Posters
Get creative and present your best reviews in posters. Craft a unique one or use famous movie posters to feature key quotes of a witty review. Quote posters are fun and appealing and will definitely resonate with your potential clients.
Wrapping It Up
Positive reviews influence potential clients’ decisions, and investing time and effort into getting them pays off big time. Make sure to keep your clients happy, and encourage them to share their positive experiences. If you leverage positive reviews right, your company will gain more trust among your current and potential clients, search engines will love your page, and you’ll see more revenue coming your way.
