{"id":10697,"date":"2019-07-05T09:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/?p=10697"},"modified":"2022-12-20T12:28:21","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T17:28:21","slug":"how-to-get-positive-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/how-to-get-positive-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Get Positive Reviews for Your Business Without Cutting Corners"},"content":{"rendered":"

With online reputation management<\/a>\u00a0becoming increasingly important, online reviews are a major focus for companies.<\/p>\n

Studies show<\/a>\u00a0that when businesses have negative reviews, it deters 86% of consumers from doing business with them, and 84% of consumers<\/a>\u00a0trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.<\/p>\n

If a company is highlighted online as a disreputable and discreditable\u00a0company through a slew of bad reviews, the business will likely suffer.<\/p>\n

So what if your business currently has negative reviews \u2013 or no reviews at all? How do you accumulate positive reviews without cutting corners and risking your company\u2019s integrity?<\/p>\n

Read below for our top tips to get positive reviews for your business without participating in less-than-ethical review tactics.<\/p>\n

Provide easy ways for consumers to leave reviews<\/h2>\n

Often times, if it\u2019s not convenient for consumers to leave a review, they won\u2019t. To create more opportunities for consumers to leave reviews<\/a> that takes little effort on their part, provide easy ways for them to do so.<\/p>\n

For example, if you send out follow-up emails after a customer purchases a product or service, create a call to action in the email that asks the customer to leave a review about their experience. If you\u2019re looking to build your reviews on other review sites as well, you could also leave call-to-action links for other sites, such as \u201cReview us on Google\u201d or \u201cReview us on Yelp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ask for reviews in person<\/h2>\n

Depending on your business, you may interact with your customers face-to-face. If so, consider asking them to leave a review after you have a positive interaction with them. You could even print off miniature slips of paper with printed instructions on how to make it more likely that they\u2019ll follow through with the request.<\/p>\n

If you have brick and mortar locations, you could request that all your employees keep these slips of paper on hand at all times and encourage them to reach out to customers about leaving an online review<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Request that your company be added to review sites<\/h2>\n

If your company isn\u2019t currently listed on a variety of review sites<\/a>, request that your company be added. Having reviews on your own website is useful but many consumers also want to see reviews from third-party websites that seem less biased.<\/p>\n

A recent study<\/a> shows 91% of people read online reviews regularly or at least occasionally, and 68 percent form opinions once they read between one and six online reviews.<\/p>\n

Having more reviews on a number of review sites increases your brand awareness and will also likely result in more business.<\/p>\n

Place review sliders on your website from other review sites<\/h2>\n

Many review sites let you take advantage of your company reviews left on their site by adding a review slider to your own website. A review slider can pull recent reviews from that review site straight to your website. Many review sites will also let you filter the review slider to only show recent reviews that have higher star ratings.<\/p>\n

You can display review sliders wherever you\u2019d like on your website but it\u2019s often helpful to be on your landing page, or wherever you receive the most traffic.<\/p>\n

\"customer<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not interested in a review slider or if you want another option, you can also place your company\u2019s review score from other review sites on your website. If you have a high score on a review site, this could be beneficial to your online reputation, as well as could increase your customer base<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"home<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n

The review slider as well as the review score both showcase your positive reviews and could likely elicit more. On either of these review information placements on your website, you could also have the image’s link to your company\u2019s page on the review site, making it simple for visitors to see your profile and\/or write a review for your company if they\u2019re interested.<\/p>\n

Ask for reviews at the right times<\/h2>\n

An important part of gathering reviews for your business is knowing the right times to ask consumers to leave reviews<\/a>. For example, you wouldn\u2019t want to ask consumers to leave reviews after they came into your store with a complaint. Of course, you want to make it possible for customers to leave reviews of your company regardless of the situation, but you definitely don\u2019t want to go out searching for review opportunities that will likely result in negative reviews.<\/p>\n

Focus on opportunities when the customer will be likely to leave a positive review. Examples could be when you have a repeat customer after a customer purchases an item, when a customer refers another customer, when a customer mentions your brand positively on social media, after a successful customer service call, etc.<\/p>\n

Share recent reviews on your social platforms<\/h2>\n

To get more eyes on your recent positive reviews, share them on your social platforms. Make sure to include the date so that people know its recent, and also consider sharing the person\u2019s first name to make it more personal and relatable to your followers.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t elicit fake reviews<\/h2>\n

Eliciting fake reviews may be a quick way to gather a large number of positive reviews, but it likely won\u2019t pay off as you want it to. Most consumers are aware of this tactic, and there are obvious red flags that will alert a potential customer.<\/p>\n

For example, if your business has thousands of only 5-star reviews, that\u2019s a good indicator that you either faked your reviews or that you only allow \u201cperfect\u201d reviews to be seen. No business is perfect and when you try to claim that your company is, consumers will likely be turned off and will take their business elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Respond to negative reviews \u2013 don\u2019t avoid them<\/h2>\n

Unfortunately, negative reviews won\u2019t go away if you ignore them, so avoiding them isn\u2019t going to solve the problem. What will help is monitoring reviews<\/a>, addressing the negative reviews upfront, and responding to as many as you can. Speak directly to consumers and acknowledge their concerns, also explaining to them how you plan to resolve the issue and do better in the future. This will lessen the effect of the negative reviews and may even improve your customer loyalty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When consumers see a company respond to negative reviews, it demonstrates concern for the customer and reflects well on your business. It\u2019s less about the negative reviews you receive and more about how <\/em>you choose to handle them. It may be time-consuming and you likely can\u2019t reply to each one, but making it a priority to respond to as many as possible will benefit your reputation and may even result in more positive reviews in the future.<\/p>\n

Create a customer incentive program based around reviews<\/h2>\n

Customer incentive programs<\/a>\u00a0are a great way to get positive reviews for your business. By offering something to customers, they are more likely to follow through with your request.<\/p>\n

For example, you could create a contest where everyone who leaves a review for your business within a certain time frame will be entered to win a drawing for a free product or service from your company. Another option could be everyone who leaves a review receives a discount on their next order.<\/p>\n

You could promote incentive programs like in a variety of ways, one being having a brief explanation and a CTA at the end of a company newsletter with a link to the review page you\u2019d like customers to use.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

About the contributor<\/div>
\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

McCall Robison is the Chief Editor of Best Company\u2019s Business Blog<\/a>. She enjoys covering topics related to business and marketing, and her work has been featured on Forbes, Business Insider, and other well-known sites. You can find her on Twitter @mccall_robison<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone wants a good review. But how can a business focus on getting positive reviews to flow in? Guest author, McCall Robison talks about a few tricks that can help. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":8674,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5932],"tags":[5920,5919],"class_list":["post-10697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reputation-management","tag-completely-unaware","tag-education"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"Megan Mosley","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10697"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30422,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10697\/revisions\/30422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}