This past summer, I brought my computer to the lake to get some work in, and out of no where a woman comes up to me and puts her purse/ wallet down on the picnic table next to me and asks…
“Can you watch this please?”
I told her of course. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me that a random stranger trusted me with the thing that was important to them.
Online Reviews, building trust and ranking with Googles trust is the very same.
Reviews accomplish that for customers if they are making important decisions on who to choose, or how to evaluate a referral that just was given to them.
It’s just their way of checking their work.
In fact reviews have the ability for customers to see your team dynamics, to see how you work, to see your expertise, they have the ability to move the trust factor up x 10, they are a window into their ability to move a little bit closer to you in your pipeline. Too many things to list here in a email.
I can’t go into our whole methodology today on how we get more reviews. Things such as how we can get more reviews from customers that didn’t leave our clients a review, how reviews help you rank higher without investing in ads, and reviews are a cheat sheet to your marketing plan right now. Your reviews tell you everything that you need to be communicating so you can stand out versus either not communicating, or communicating like every other team.
Instead start with these two things:
1. Ask for reviews at the right time
You already likely have a good amount of reveiws, and you know the power of this written refereral in most cases.
But why do some clients leave a review and why do some not?
In most cases, it’s likely that you are asking at the wrong time, or you’re not asking. This happens a lot.
One might think that asking at the highest emotional moment of a clients process is the best time.
You might think that asking after the deal is done, might be a good time.
I might in some cases, but not always.
We approach referrals in a humanized way. We don’t ask a question that we don’t know the answer to, we don’t ask just for the sake of asking, and we put out clients first before asking.
We do referrals very different that you might have been taught.
The thing is… Reviews are not like referrals. People do not wait around thinking about all the moments in their day that they could leave you a review.
You really need to ask for them at the right time, with the right intent if you want to add growth and numbers behind them.
But if you ask, and you are not getting the response you want, or clients are just forgetting to do this kind act, this is normal.
The best way to fix this on your own is making it as easy as you can for them to leave a review. Leave direct links to where you want the reviews, and add very simple 1,2 or 3 steps to taking the “thinking” out of the way for them.
If there is friction, they won’t do it. Even 2 seconds of friction.
2. Get better reviews from your customers
Reviews are the written referral that oozes trust. But like one of our clients said to us one day.
“You need to provide a service worthy of a great review“.
What makes this possible?
One of our clients is booking plenty of work from clients that are finding her from her reviews.
They received a email from their lead, which said…
“I was searching online and you had so many lovely reviews that I decided you were the one I wanted to work with”.
People were finding her because of all their reviews.
The customer obviously read each of the reviews and found “their situation” in the words of the other reviews. Customers want to feel like they are in the right place.
Our clients get reviews often and exceptional ones because they are asking the right question at the right time with the right intent.
Remember Day 2 on ranking?
Ranking and reviews all play together in Google’s secret way of trusting or not trusting you.
If Google trusts you, it shifts your profile up higher.
For us, reviews are more than just a written referral, but it also has an incredible way of creating marketing moments and opportunities for new prospects to look your way.
Especially right now and for times like this.
In your corner.
Darryl and Jodi