You are here: Home / Blog / Five Tips for Generating Killer Reviews and Testimonials from Your Customers
By on Aug 9, 2021
In today’s digital world, a happy customer creates an opportunity to generate free, positive press through online reviews and testimonials. Why is this important? Because 72% of consumers say positive testimonials and reviews increase their trust in a business.
While it’s easy to say “get more positive feedback,” it can be challenging for businesses to generate these reviews and testimonials. A user is 21% more likely to leave a review after a negative experience than a positive one, making it vital for businesses to be proactive about encouraging their happy customers to share their experiences with others. We’re sharing tips to generate more positive reviews and testimonials and how a local business listing service can help.
While the words “review” and “testimonial” are often used interchangeably, they are not quite the same. Customers can provide online reviews on a variety of third-party websites such as Google, Facebook and Yelp. In general, online reviews tend to be very short with a user describing a particular interaction or general feelings toward a company. Since the length of online reviews can vary from a few sentences to only a rating (5-stars, 4-stars, etc.), the number of online reviews generated is usually more important than how detailed they are.
One of the most significant differences between reviews and testimonials is that online reviews can be positive or negative. On the other hand, customer testimonials are always positive.
A business might use a positive review as a testimonial. But businesses also might contact a customer directly in order to ask them for a testimonial that the business can use in its marketing. A business must get permission from the customer to use their testimonial in marketing efforts, such as publishing it on their website, advertising or printed promotional items. While online reviews are written, businesses sometimes solicit video as well as written testimonials from their customers. If you are not using video testimonials for your business yet, you should know that 42% of people say testimonial videos are more impactful than written testimonials.
All kinds of businesses need testimonials. Some types of B2B businesses are not likely to solicit online reviews, however. For example, a B2B company that makes widgets for commercial jets is unlikely to get a review on Yelp. However, if it makes sense for your niche, try to generate online reviews and also directly solicit testimonials from your best customers. With both types of customer feedback, you have more opportunities to attract new customers. Here are four tips to do just that.
If yours is a company in an industry that attracts online reviews, analyze your positive reviews for those you can use as testimonials in your marketing. Some of these customers would make great candidates for video testimonials. Reach out to them to see if they would be willing to be interviewed and share their experiences on video. If they do not want to be on video, get their permission to use their words (and potential photo) for your marketing efforts.
While it is easy to take a screenshot or simply copy an online review to your site, it’s crucial that you get the user’s permission first. There is legislation in place regarding the proper practice of paid advertisements, testimonials and reviews. Misuse could result in sanctions.
Roughly 71% of customers say they would leave a review for a business if asked – so don’t be afraid to ask! This will vary based on your industry or business size, but reach out to customers after they make a purchase to thank them and ask them to share their experiences. To create a more personalized experience for customers, review requests can be sent as emails from a sales rep, associate or team member.
Ask customers to leave reviews on various business listing sites to build your online reputation. Business listings are online directories that provide company information like name, address, phone number, website address, types of services and so on. These listings can show up if a person searches for your business directly, or they can help people discover your company when using search engines to explore businesses in a specific industry.
For example, Google My Business is a popular business listing site. Beyond helping people discover your business, t listing sites often allow users to leave reviews. These reviews matter because 75% of consumers searching online for a business turn to online review sites. Being proactive in generating positive reviews for your business listings can help attract new visitors to your website.
Finding, claiming and managing multiple business listings can be time-consuming. Fortunately, business listing services help businesses establish, update and monitor their business listings across multiple sites. In addition to monitoring new business mentions and reviews, these services also offer review generation solutions that can connect to any CRM and automatically request clients to review your business, making it easy for business to reach out and ask for customers to share their experiences.
In general, you don’t want to incentivize reviews because if you post testimonials that have been paid for in any way (compensation, free products, etc.), you must disclose that information. However, you may want to offer some initial incentives to a small number of customers just so other customers see their reviews and begin writing reviews themselves for free.
The incentive to the initial reviewers can be as simple as “receive 10% off your next purchase” or as elaborate as entering participating customers in a contest to win a great prize.
Above all else, it’s important to remember that asking for testimonials and generating online reviews is not a one-and-done campaign. It’s an ongoing process that should continue as your business gains new customers. If your business is not investing in online reputation management, you are missing out on controlling the first impressions of new customers.
46% of all Google searches are looking for local information. Your business listings are essential for boosting your business’s local search presence in search engines. This is especially important if you have a brick-and-mortar business or your business is focused on a local service area.
You should manage your business listings to ensure consistent and updated information across various sites. Claiming your profile on business listings sites such as Google My Business and Bing lets you update and enhance your listings and respond to customer reviews. Local business listing services help businesses manage their company information and control their online reviews and testimonials by being proactive in their online reputation management instead of reactive.
Nine out of 10 people say they trust what a customer says about a business more than what a business says about itself. The impact of reviews and testimonials is obvious, but without manageable processes in place to help you procure and organize customer feedback, your business may find itself scrambling every time you want to use a good testimonial in your marketing. Some things to consider when building this process are:
The goal is to create a review and testimonial generation process that is effective for your business and helps you leverage your happy customers. Local business listing services offer tools to help businesses automate this process of reaching out to customers to continuously generate new and fresh customer feedback. This can make your business’s review and testimonial generation process more efficient and consistent.
Your customer feedback matters. With 91% of consumers between the age of 18 to 34 trusting reviews and testimonials as much as personal recommendations, they are an important part of your online reputation and future business growth. By being proactive and reaching out to your happy customers, you can generate more positive reviews for your business.
Umbrella Local’s business listing services can help you manage your online reputation by providing solutions that automatically ask your customers to review your business/product/service via email and SMS, allow you to manage negative feedback, and evaluate your team’s performance.
Contact us to learn how we can help you generate reviews and improve your review ranking.
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