Generate User Reviews

If you are doing any kind of Social Media Marketing, no matter what size your company is, you should know how important it is to leverage reviews in both online and offline marketing efforts. Some studies are showing that 72% of consumers trust online customer reviews as much as a personal recommendations. Who’d have guessed, huh? Obviously any reviews no matter how or where it comes from can help to get customers to make buying decision.

There are of course a few areas that can make you get a little worried about reviews. There is of course the fear of negative feedback. Then there is the fear of time needed to develop and implement a successful reviewing tool while obtaining trustworthy, relevant reviews.

To help you, here are a few ways to help you get user reviews without really trying too hard.

1. ASK YOUR FANS: 

It’s not against the rules to ask. Really, just ask the 3 F’s (family, friends, fans) to make their love of you and your services known to the world, via a formal review. After all if you can’t as your 3 F’s who can you ask?

2. FOLLOW UP A POST-SERVICE/PURCHASE:

There’s a key time frame to follow up with a customer who has purchase a product or service from you to allow you to ask for a review. I cannot tell you what that is because it is different for every kind of company category, but one exists. You might need to test different time lengths to find what the optimal follow-up period for your business is but then you will know and you will never have to miss an opportunity to send a follow-up email, letter or phone call asking how a customer’s experience was.

3. ESTABLISH A PRESENCE ON MAJOR REVIEW SITES:

Yelp, Google Places, Yahoo Local, Merchant Circle, Storeboard, Citysearch, etc. are all good trusted sites to get and posts reviews. Or at least they want you to think so. Now I’m not argue so go get your company listed with a profile, then keep it updated and respond to all user comments both good and bad. These review sites also impact SEO, so by establishing a profile, your company can gain greater visibility, attract more hits and, hopefully, more reviews.

4. MAKE IT MULTI CHANNEL FRIENDLY:

As those in the online space are well aware, mobile and tablet usage is gaining traction. To ensure that customers visiting your site, regardless of the kind of device they are using, can easily access and enter their reviews, you need to make it multi channel friendly. Need help with this, call us and we can make it happen.

5. CREATE USER PROFILES:

As ego-driven people, we tend to act or as the case may be, write differently if we know someone is watching. By not allowing anonymous reviews, customers are not only likely to give more accurate reviews, but also more helpful ones because their name is on it (literally). In the B2B world, user profiles can also create an opportunity for user promotion, as a reviewer they can enter their company name as the user name and get a company plug.

6. PUBLISH REVIEWS FOR THE PUBLIC:

There’s no sense asking for reviews, if other people cannot see them. Additionally, those who previously read reviews that encouraged them to make a purchase, are more likely to come back and review their own experience.

7. OFFER DIFFERENT WAYS TO REVIEW A PRODUCT/SERVICE:

Not all of us are great writers. So the problem is if a customer , who isn’t great writer, could give you are great review you might want to offer them an option of multiple choice questions in order to rate your product or service on a scale of 1-10, this way all those non-writers will be able to leave an favorable opinion.

9. OFFER TRIAL PERIODS:

If you want reviews, but don’t have any customers, to leave them, one tactic is to offer trial period for your service. Do not make the condition that they have to review your service in the end, but offer the service and hope your quality offering and your follow-ups brings them back to give you a positive review.

10. WORK WITH A REVIEW AGGREGATOR:

There are companies out there that help companies generate reviews through referral engines (like us). They help to take the guess work out of the process by sending follow-up emails on your behalf, working with your social media profiles and offering customers a follow-up options to your business.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Social media can be made to be better. It just takes a little work. Now you know a few more tricks of the trade.

And if you want your business to be more and have more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

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howard@larsonassociates.ws

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P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.