Reputation is King
The public perception of your company is one of the most important things in business. From its lexical definition, reputation is 100% created by people other than yourself. Of course, the interactions that you have, the quality of service that you provide all matter, but at the core of things is the truth that you need your customers to say the positive thing about you online. Everyone knows that Google is the dealer of life and death for businesses. Companies spend countless amounts of money to land on the first page of search results. Businesses even spend small and large fortunes on pay per click marketing to get in front of Google’s billions of users. Another battleground that must be occupied and dominated is the Google Business review section. The Google Business review section will seal your fate, and determine what prospective customers think about you. Your goal as a company is to ethically receive as many positive reviews as possible. It is not always easy to achieve this task, but in this article, we will teach you how to get Google business reviews, and how to create a funnel of real reviews.
Do Great Work
If you are not first a company who does great work, the techniques that we will teach you will mean absolutely nothing. It is impossible to receive ethical positive reviews without being a good company. It all starts with your service and products. You have to build a solid foundation of success, and that starts from the bottom up. There have been unethical companies who have faked reviews, and this has lead to an even worse reputation than they had before, losing their profile on Google, sandboxing of their core website in search results. A strong ethical foundation is where you must begin. One thing that you will learn is that satisfying your customers leads to them wanting the best for you, happy customers actually want to tell others about their great experience. In our social sharing digital world, you only have to give the spark and your customers will build your reputation for you. Of course, this goes both ways, positive and negative. One unfortunate truth is that unhappy customers will always be the loudest, they want to share with everyone the awful experience they have had with you. Do your primary job well, which is satisfying customers, doing a great job, delivering what you promise, and they will happily post great reviews about your company.
Give Stellar Customer Service
Most of what we have talked about so far might be seen as obvious, but believe it or not, it really represents the fundamentals to getting plenty of positive reviews on your Google Business account. We challenge you to think about your personal interactions with companies, what typically stands out when you receive stellar service? For most people, receiving great customer service from a provider with a great personality is what they remember, it even motivates them to leave a review. The same is true for poor customer service. If you are not already, become a customer first business because everything else that we will talk about, especially asking customers for reviews will count on it. So far, everything we have talked about will lead to a slow drip of passive positive reviews without you doing much, but ultimately you are not looking for a slow drip, you are looking to open the floodgates so that you can instantly have a stronger rating, a stronger reputation, and so that you can gain new customers because of your favorable reviews.
Follow Up and Ask
Beyond the basics, this is the most important section of this article. This part of the article is about how to actively receive positive reviews. If you are a good company who does great work and you provide stellar customer service, then this is how you open the floodgates of positive reviews. First, let’s talk about a concept called aftercare. The majority of businesses have no idea what it is, and more importantly, they do not integrate aftercare into their customer service strategy. Aftercare is all about following up with customers. The best way to do it is to be honest. Call, email or text your customers and ask about their experience, if they are unhappy or have suggestions, take them. Try to resolve any issues they might have. Offer a discount in the future for them for repeat business. If they are happy with your service, then thank them and ask if they mind leaving you a review on Google Business. If this is via email or text, then directly link to your Google Business account so that they can easily click over. If you are making follow up calls just ask over the phone. Not only will this build rapport with your customers, but it will also lead to near instant reviews.
Make It Easy
In the last section, we discussed how to follow up after you finish a job or make a sale, and then how you need to ask for a review. In this section, we will talk about making it easy. The truth is that no matter how much a customer likes you, how well you performed or happy they are with your service, they will not leave a review if you do not make it easy for them. The good thing is that there are multiple ways to make things easy for them. What do we mean by making it easy for them? What we mean by this is basically ushering your customers directly to your Google Business page to leave a review.
Get Started
As you can see, when it comes to how to get Google Business reviews it all starts with where you are. The type of company that you currently matter most. Who you decide to become at this very moment is what will seal your fate. If you focus on the fundamentals of being a great company, then you will have the proper foundation to build a funnel of positive reviews. If you already satisfy your customers, then contacting them and asking for reviews will lead to positive results. Of course, there is an art and science to all of this, but nothing that the average person couldn’t master with the right instructions. Alternatively, consulting and maybe hiring a reputation management firm will be your best course of action. Perhaps you do not have the time to learn these skills, perhaps the opportunity cost is too high, this is when a professional reputation management firm will be of great assistance to you.