It should come as no surprise that customer reviews are an essential piece of running a successful and credible business, especially if your business can be found online. Whether your business is a B2B, B2C, D2C, or C2C, acquiring customer reviews needs to be a priority in your marketing strategy. If your customers are searching for your business online, more than likely they will be seeking out what previous customers have to say about you. In a potential customer’s mind, they don’t just look at the rating, there is also a correlation between the number of reviews your brand or product has and their perceived reputation of your brand. In fact, according to research conducted by BrightLocal, 60% of consumers feel that the number of reviews a business has is critical when deciding whether to give them their business. Getting more customer reviews truly is not very difficult – it just takes a little effort. Here are a few tips and strategies for acquiring more customer reviews for your business
Make it easy for customers to leave reviews on your website
First and foremost, you need to provide a seamless experience for customers who are actively wanting to write a review for your product or business. There are several tools and platforms that you can integrate with your website that make it easy for users to leave reviews and also for you to showcase your reviews. We’re a big fan of using Yotpo’s easy-to-use widgets on our clients’ websites. Yotpo allows you to implement custom prompts on your site so customers can easily leave feedback. It’s important to showcase your past reviews too when asking for new reviews.
If you’re not ready for a reviews tool like Yotpo, there are plenty of other places to collect reviews such as Google, Facebook, or even Yelp. Just be sure that you make it clear on your website how and where users can write reviews.
Automated Email & SMS Follow-up
Sending automated emails and/or SMS messages is an effective method of collecting customer reviews. This method allows you to send customers a request for a review at the right time based on when they last purchased from you or interacted with your business. This also saves you the time that it would take to manually ask your customers for reviews. Tools like Yotpo and Klaviyo make it easy to send customized emails triggered by specific customer events. For example, if a customer purchases something from your store, your automation flow can send a personalized email one week after their purchase date requesting their feedback on whichever product they purchased.
Provide an incentive
People love rewards, especially when the rewards equate to discounts, money or free stuff. A great tactic for getting your customers to leave you more reviews is to reward them for reviews. This can be done in many different ways. One way is to simply give your customers store credit for writing reviews. Many brands will advertise that they will credit your account with some predetermined monetary amount for each review. This not only increases your chances of getting more reviews but also creates some loyalty and incentive to come back and make future purchases with their earnings.
Contests are another great way to earn more customer reviews. In this case, each review might translate to a contest entry. For example, “Write a review for your last order and be entered to win a $200 shopping spree to XYZ store.”
Last, incorporating your customer reviews with your loyalty program is a successful way to get more five-star reviews to showcase. Customers love brands with rewarding loyalty programs. You can simply set up a rule within your loyalty program where each review is worth a certain number of points or rewards that can be accumulated and used for a future purchase. This is also a great way to keep your loyal customers consistently engaged with your brand.
Surely by now, you understand how important customer reviews are for the longevity and success of your business. By using these proven tactics, you’re sure to be swimming in five-star reviews in no time. If you’re still not sure where to start or want to chat about how to start acquiring more customer reviews, let’s talk!
About BuzzShift
BuzzShift is a digital growth strategy agency with a focus on mid-market, scaling purpose-driven Brands. By combining the ideologies of branding, performance marketing, and retention agency, we can create memorable experiences with measurable results and build long-term success for our clients with scalable, sustainable growth. Learn more about BuzzShift.
