What customers say about your business is one of the most important factors potential clients look at when making their purchase decisions. Studies have shown that 90% of all potential clients and customers read online reviews of a business before even visiting them. One of the most important venues for garnering reviews is Google, as it directly contributes to your business’ online search ranking and visibility.
At Vortex Digital Business Solutions, we understand the importance of instilling credibility in your potential clients. In this month’s Marketing Blog, we will go over why Google reviews are important, and how you can gain more!
Why are Google Reviews Important?
When Google is determining search engine rankings when someone searches for your business or services related to your business, your Google Business reviews play a large part in where you end up ranking. In Google’s documentation, they say that more positive reviews will improve a business’ local ranking. It also increases visibility in search engine results pages, as users are more inclined to view a business with a large amount of reviews versus another with less reviews.
Another benefit is that setting up your Google Business account and garnering reviews is completely free: it only costs the time you need to devote to it. If done correctly, the ROI of a successful review campaign is immense, and can help your business convert more clients.
How to Get More Reviews
So if reviews are so important, how do you get more?
Vortex Digital has set up successful review campaigns both for our own business and many of our clients. Over the years, we have found these methods to be the most effective.
Request a Review Through Email
A large part of your business’ marketing strategy should be building and maintaining a strong email database full of the contact information of your previous and prospective clients. Once set up, we can leverage this database to garner reviews from your happy, past clients. Simply create an email that respectfully asks for them to visit your Google Business page, and emphasize how much you would appreciate it if they were to leave a positive review.
Our last review email campaign we set up for a client generated over 14 positive reviews in under an hour. Always remember one of your most important resources are your past customers.
Review Postcards
A second venue for generating reviews is by designing and distributing a postcard. This could be a small card, around the size of a business card that you hand out to clients or a 4×6 postcard, that contains instructions on how to leave a review, and how much it would mean to you if your client were to leave a positive review.
These cards could be kept at your front desk, included in any orders you ship to customers, mailed out to their homes, or more.
Postcards are a great, memorable way to generate reviews, and add a personal touch to your existing marketing strategies.
Create a Review Page On Your Website
Another great way to generate reviews is to create a page on your website dedicated to guiding users to where you need reviews the most.
This page would act as an extended version of the postcard, with a statement explaining how important online reviews are, and how appreciative you would be if the user would leave a positive review. The page would contain links to your Google Business, Facebook, Better Business Bureau, and any other important aggregators.
Lastly, the page would be hidden from normal users, meaning that you need to directly type in the URL to visit this page. This allows you to control who sees it, and guarantees that you will only receive positive reviews.
This method is effective because it makes leaving a review as simple as possible. One of the most common reasons customers don’t leave a review is because it takes too long, so the easier we can make it for them, the more reviews you will get.
Once the page is made, you can incorporate the link into your other review generating campaigns for ease of use.
Do you want to generate more online reviews for your business and increase your organic ranking? Contact Vortex Digital Business Solutions today through phone or email.
