Generating reviews for your local business

When you run a local business (that attracts clients and customers in one specific geographic area) it’s important to have quality reviews that reflect your services and/or products. This will happen organically when your clients rave about your high-quality service and there are also a few things you can do to “invite” people to leave you a review.

In this episode we cover:

• Why reviews/ratings are important

• Some ideas for inspiring people to leave reviews

• How to stay consistent with your reviews.

Listen to this episode below:

First, let’s talk about why are ratings and reviews important? When it comes to doing Local SEO, Google and humans definitely want to know what people are saying about your business. This is a ranking factor that can change how you show up in Google Maps and other local directories (like Yelp). 

Don’t worry about negative reviews though - this is part of the picture and is expected. Getting a couple of negative reviews and responding to them professionally actually makes you look really good. 

So how do you go about asking for reviews, directly or indirectly from your clients? The key here is we want to make it ultra-easy for people to leave you a review and picking the timing for asking for a review will help.

Here are some ideas to get started:

• Automatic thank you email after purchase/interaction - if you are able to capture your client’s email, there are some creative ways you can automatically ask them for their option (as well as rating) right after their latest interaction with your service. If you are a therapist or counsellor and they come to see you each week, then obviously you don’t want to send them a weekly email but this could be in the form of a monthly newsletter where you update them on your practice, as well as invite them to leave you a review in Google Business Profile. Again, these emails can directly or indirectly ask for this and you can send them out to a bunch of clients who you know already know/like/trust you. Some clients might even feel inspired to leave multiple reviews so don’t be afraid to ask several times. 

• Email Signature - sending emails with your clients regularly? Or do you have a weekly newsletter that you send out each week? It is so easy to add a clean email signature right under your name that links to your Google Business Profile. This takes less than 2-minutes and can be an ongoing reminder to your clients when they are ready to leave you a review.  

• Print out a sign for in-store location - if you have an in-person store location, it’s a great idea to print out a Google My Business and/or Yelp sign so that people know they can find you there. While they are waiting in your office, they can pull out their phones and quickly leave you a review. 

• Thank you packages - This one is a bit more elaborate but can be very powerful. Sending a thank you package to your clients is always a nice touch and adding a card or message that also allows them to leave you a review can catch them at a great time as well. You can also personalize this so that they get something on their birthday or during the holidays. 

All these ideas work and it’s about creating a system that allows you to be consistent with these processes. 

How are you feeling about the ratings & reviews going to your business? I’d love to know in the comments below. 

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