One Simple Strategy to Get Great Google Reviews

Don’t get screwed – get reviewed!

Google reviews can make or break your business, making your online reputation your most valuable marketing asset, and customer reviews drive that reputation.

The single best thing that you can do for your business is to identify your happiest customers and get them to write a review.

Here’s how: survey your customer list, send an email with a link to Survey Monkey. Use the subject line : “(your company) Your Opinion Matters!”.

“Hello! Your opinion matters to us and I was hoping you would complete this short survey about your recent experience – it should take less than 2 minutes to complete. Thanks for your input!” Using ‘your’ creates a little more connection, that, along with the ‘thank you’ – and keeping your word about ‘under 2 minutes’ -will increase your response rate. Personalizing the greeting and subject line also helps, you can get email software to do that.

So, set up a survey on SurveyMonkey .com ; multiple choice questions but keep it short; 5 or 6 questions.

The two questions you Must ask are;

Based on your overall experience…how satisfied are you with [Business Name]?
(Completely Satisfied, Very Satisfied, Satisfied, Somewhat Satisfied, Not At All Satisfied)

Based on your overall experience…how likely are you to are you to recommend [Business Name]?
(Definitely Would, Probably Would, Maybe, Probably Not, Definitely Not)

This allows you to find your customers who are completely satisfied and would definitely recommend your business. These are happy customers who are pre-disposed to give you a good review; they’re happy customers who just took a survey and told you so.

Now, followup with a quick second email;

Hi Bob – can I ask you for a favor?

In your survey (thank you!) you said you were happy overall and that you would definitely recommend [Business Name].

Would you mind sharing your experience in an online review? It would be really helpful to other customers [or patients/clients/etc.].

The easiest way is Google: [Direct Link to Google review box]

Thanks in advance!

– Mike

Conversational, short and direct. By being personal and expressing gratitude, you’re creating more of a connection, by reminding them how happy they are, you’re triggering a desire to be consistent. Letting them know that other customers will benefit from their review adds yet another to respond.

Always thank your reviewers publicly (and address anyone who had a less-than-stellar experience).

Google reviews are the most important barometer of your awesomeness in search results, and there are others; Yelp and Facebook. You can run similar strategies there as well; with a few key differences. We’ll dig into that, next time.

There is some very interesting Neuroscience and behavioral influence research behind these strategies and what makes us tick. I’ve benefitted greatly from the work of Robert Cialdini and Roger Dooley, if you’d like to learn more, they are a great place to start.

Finally, adding the link to google review makes it relatively friction free request. To make a custom link, sending people directly to your review box, use the tool on our blog (if you’re watching this anywhere else, go to Social Jumpstart .com)

Until next time; keep using every simple marketing thing that you can to help you;

Meet People, Talk to People and Sell Them Something.

PS – We do like to drink our own Kool-Ade around here, so …

“I’d like to ask you a favor, if you’ve enjoyed our work or benefitted from out trainings, would you please write a quick review? It would be helpful to many other people and we’d be most grateful.

This link will make it easy:

http://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=ChIJn1zrkESXhYARutkeb0i6TQU

Marketing Cheat Sheet