Almost everyone uses Google! It is the most popularsearch engine on the internet.
Google reviews play an important role inmaking your business look like a trustworthy source. Many potential customerswill choose whether or not to buy from your business after reading reviewsonline. For a lot of businesses this is your first line of defense to convincea prospective customer to keep going.
The reviews on your Google business page arecrucial to your local rating. In addition to getting your name, address, andphone number listed, your google reviews can be the number one way to increaseyour SEO.
Some advantages of getting Google reviews include:
- Increasing brand trust
- Online exposure
- Converts more customers
- Increased traffic to your web page
How do you get Google reviews that will outpace your competition? It’sactually easier than you think.
The System
The quickest way is to approach it in four waves.
1. First wave: Friends and family. Reachout to everyone you know and ask them to review your business. This is one ofthe easiest ways to increase your reviews from 0 to 30 (or more depending onyour number of close friends) in a short period of time.
2. Second wave: Vendors, partners,business relationships. Everyone that you have donebusiness with or worked with in some capacity.
Reach out and ask them to review your business. Ifyou want to make the process even smoother, you could find their business onGoogle, give them a glowing review, then email them and include a link of yourreview for their company with your “ask”.
They will be very appreciative of the review andmuch quicker to reciprocate the action on your page.
3. Third wave: Your clients.These may be the hardest to get, due to everyone’s short attention span anddistractions interrupting their path from your “ask” to an actual done review.
Make a list of all clients you have done businesswith that you know you had a good relationship with. Create an email askingthem directly and personally to follow thelink to your page and write a review that matters.You may even want to includea few past client reviews to give them an idea of what you are looking for.Spell it out. It’s less work for them when they don’t have to think. In youremail, include a link directly to your Google reviews so they literally justhave to click once and they’ll be there.
4. Fourth wave: For all your new relationships, this is more of a system you would put in place when you reach thecritical point in your relationship to ask for a review on your Google page.
This system includes sending a personal email askingthe client to rate your business and leave some comments under their review.The comments should be helpful for prospective clients to learn about theservice that they enjoy. You can reuse the email you crafted for past clientswith small adjustments so it makes sense for where you are in your relationshiptimeline with them.
Once you have on-boarded a client, after 60 days of workingwith them and developing a solid relationship, then you can reach out and putthis system to use. Ultimately, this is a great system to build into yourexisting on boarding process. Then you know it will get done.
This system will allow you to get more quality reviews overtime and prevent your page from going stale. If you make this a top priorityfor 30 days, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to hit 100 reviews. You mayeven surpass 100 pretty quickly.
Issues you may run into
Two recurring issues that we’ve seen come about whenbusinesses are trying to grow their reviews on Google are following up andlearning how to write a great review.
1. Follow Up: Let’ssay you email 30 people and ask them to review your business onGoogle.
Less than half of those 30 will probably do asasked. It’s a great idea to keep a list of those people with a status checknext to their names. A simple excel spreadsheet will work or you can includethis in their CRM profile. Go back to this list on a weekly basis and mark offthe people who have given reviews, and follow up with the people who haven’t,giving them a friendly reminder.
If you’ve reminded them two or more times withno response, it may be best to not pursue that request anymore, for the sake ofthe relationship. Circle back around in 6 months.
2. How to Write a Good GoogleReview: When you write a Google review, you want it to be longer (1-2 paragraphsrather than 1-2 sentences).
The reader should gather a good sense of the experienceyou had, so it gives them confidence in buying or investing.
Include as many keywords that would help yourank as much as possible. Keywords have proven to be helpful to increasingrank.
Make sure what you write has value outside of the actual review.
How to Formulate an Email to Clients, Partners, Friends, or Vendors:
1. Add the link directly to your Google page so they have no trouble findingit.
2. Give them a brief, one sentence instruction on how to leave a review ifthey’ve never done so.
3. Politely ask them at the end of the email to add in two or three keywordsinto the review to add more value to your ranking.
Sample Review
Here’s an example of a partner/vendor of ours who left a review for ouragency on our Google Business page. It has all of the right marks of a greatreview.
One last thing
As you can see from the review above, we responded immediately when thereview was left saying thank you to our reviewer. This is helpful to show other prospects reading it that the company is engaged and cares about the effort putin from the reviewer.
Now it’s your turn.
Take this system and implement it with your team. If you have multiplelocations, assign each branch manager or general manager the task to make it apriority to get 100+ reviews in the next 30 days. You could even incentivizethem. Make it fun!
After crossing the 100+ mark, you’ll put yourself wellahead of your competition and have a new process built into your way of doingbusiness. This is something relatively simple to do and it doesn’t cost you anymoney. Why wouldn’t you do it?
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