You may have heard that it can take months or even years to get reviews on Google. But what if you could actually speed up the process? What if you could get reviews quickly, and on autopilot? This blog post shows you how.
The Google review system is a powerful tool that you can use to increase the online presence of your business. Google reviews are a reliable and powerful way to increase your exposure in your local area and beyond. This is because Google reviews increase your search ranking, so that when people search for businesses like yours on Google, your location will have a prominent position in the search results (ideally the top position!).
Google reviews are more than just a helpful tool for search rankings. In fact, they often mean the difference between success and failure for local businesses. A 2020 survey found that 87% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchasing decision. In short, Google reviews give your business more legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of potential customers.
This blog will give you some insight into how to get Google reviews fast. Along the way, you will find out how easy it is to achieve this goal.
Reviews can give your business a huge boost without having to spend money on expensive marketing campaigns. More reviews mean more exposure on Google, which usually means more leads coming in. They allow you to compete with much larger companies who might have larger budgets, and can afford to pay for ads on Google. With a good strategy to get more Google reviews, the expensive marketing teams running slick campaigns for your competition become less relevant.
The main benefits are:
One of the greatest benefits of Google reviews is that it will increase your local SEO. Google reviews impact Google search results by helping your company rank higher when people search for products or services on Google. As a result, potential consumers will have an easier time finding you when searching online.
Google’s search algorithm focuses on three main signals:
If you have a physical location, like a store, improving your local SEO can also ensure consumers see your Google My Business listing. This means that potential customers will see your business name on Google Maps before anyone else and the listing takes up prominent space on Google search pages, making it very valuable.
Google My Business listings display your name, address, phone number, and Google reviews. After clicking on your address, users get directed to Google Maps for directions. By improving your local SEO, you can also get more customers visiting your store!
The vast majority of people read online reviews before making a purchasing decision. In fact, many read up to 10 reviews before making a decision. The more reviews you have, the more likely people will choose to do business with you.
Consumers ranked the following as their most important review factors when making a decision:
1) Star Rating
2) Legitimacy
3) Recency
4) Sentiment
5) Quantity
When you focus on these factors, your conversion rate will increase and you will sell more of your products or services.
Google reviews will help increase perceived trust and credibility when people search for you online. These are vital factors when customers make a purchasing decision. In fact, 84% of consumers trust online reviews as much as recommendations from a personal friend.
Reviews ensure that social proof and transparency are at the forefront when people search for businesses like yours. To take full advantage of this, make sure you respond to all reviews, good and bad. This will show that your brand cares about customer experiences. Engaging with customers will encourage more conversation, engagement, and will project a positive brand image to potential customers. Spending time connecting with customers after their purchase will show dedication and will help increase brand loyalty.
Google reviews, both positive and negative, will provide you with valuable feedback for your business. This feedback will give you valuable insights into how your business is perceived, and the experience your customers have when doing business with you. You can then use these insights to make improvements to your products, services and processes. You will even get insights into how your employees are performing in customer-facing roles, and what can be done to improve the customer experience.
It’s important to consider every negative review as a chance to improve. Respond to these reviews publicly, and always try to offer a clear resolution to any problems. By doing this, you show current and future customers that you are listening to their feedback, and want to improve their experience.
Responding to negative reviews can help you repair relationships with individual customers, and can even give you an opportunity to get an edited review that is more positive. You will also show potential customers that you value your relationship with your customers.
Before you get started, you will need to set up a Google My Business account. If you’re just starting out with Google reviews, you may need to create or claim your business profile. If you already have one, you will want to make sure it’s verified. To get your business verified on Google, you need to verify your business by mail or one of the other methods that Google allows. Usually, Google will send a letter to your business address which contains a unique code that you can use to verify the business.
Next, you should get familiar with Googles Terms of service. Here are some key area’s to consider within their policies:
When trying to get more Google reviews fast, don’t ask your employees to leave reviews. Specifically, this Google review policy states;
“Maps user contributed content is most valuable when it is honest and unbiased. Examples of disallowed practices include, but are not limited to:
A good rule-of-thumb here is to make sure that all the reviews you get are from genuine customers without a conflict of interest.
The exact wording of this policy is simple;
“Don’t offer or accept money in exchange for reviews.”
This policy is often confusing for people because discounts may be considered money. It’s best not to offer any type of reward for reviews in order to stay compliant.
Google updated its review policies in 2018 to stop “review gating.” The policy itself states:
“Don’t discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.”
Basically, all of your customers should have equal opportunities to leave a review. You can still ask happy customers for reviews, just make sure you are giving all of your customers an opportunity to leave reviews.
By this point, you likely realize how important Google reviews are for your business, but you may be wondering how to start. The steps below will guide you through optimizing your listing for the best results, and putting systems in place to get Google reviews fast, and on autopilot.
Once you have claimed and verified your listing, you will need to make it stand out. Start by making sure all your business information is correct. This includes adding your contact information, selecting primary and secondary business categories and writing a business description. In the description, try to use a few keywords that people search for when looking for businesses like yours on Google Just don’t use too many, as google may view this as ‘keyword stuffing’ and it won’t help your listing. Use the keyword 3 times to be safe.
Next, you will want to upload high-resolution photo’s. Form best results, images should be at least 720 pixels wide by 720 pixels tall, and either PNG or JPG. Add a cover photo, your logo, and a few pictures of your location, staff and offices. Many businesses neglect this important aspect of their Google My Business listing. Listings that contain pictures get 42% more requests for driving directions and 35% more clicks to their website.
A great way to get some free marketing material for your listing is to use the Google My Business Marketing Kit.
The marketing kit helps you create personalized marketing materials for your business. It includes, posts for social media, promotional images and other content to boost the performance of your Google My Business listing. You can edit the content to match your branding and customize the output to suit your needs.
Now that you’ve got your Google My Business listing optimized, it’s time to start collecting more Google reviews for your business. You should be proactive and make an effort to ask all your customers to write a review for your business.
Many businesses struggle to do this manually because of the time it takes to reach out to customers individually. This is why it’s so important to have a review management platform that can get you more google reviews without the need for manual work. You need to make the process easy for your business, and even easier for your customers.
To put this into perspective, 77% of customers say they are happy to leave a Google review for a business, but only around 10% actually do it. This is because many consumers believe the process to be difficult. They aren’t sure how to leave a review or navigate the necessary steps, so it’s just not convenient for them to leave a review.
Once your business listing is claimed, and you’ve taken the time to optimize it, you should start actively collecting Google reviews. You should make a proactive effort to ask all of your customers to write a Google review for your business. You need to ask your customers to leave Google reviews, and make it easy for them to do so. In fact, up to 76% of consumers will leave a review if they are asked to.
An online review management platform will automate the invitation process and make it super easy for your customers to leave reviews. The goal is to make the process as frictionless as possible. When you automate the process, you no longer need to rely on employees to awkwardly ask your customers to leave reviews. You will have a system in place that generates Google reviews on autopilot.
The best review management platforms use SMS messages as the primary method for review invitations. SMS has a much higher engagement rate compared to traditional email-based platforms. This means you get more responses and receive more reviews.
Modern is an all-in-one platform for review management and marketing. Our platform will help your business get more reviews, send SMS and emails to your leads and customers, build websites and landing pages, take payments and so much more!
Book a demo today to see how businesses are being revolutionized.
Getting more Google reviews doesn’t have to be complicated. Here is a simple step-by-step method to start getting more Google reviews fast. The steps in this section will utilize the Modern platform, but if you have your own system, you should be able to set something similar up, but may need a few extra steps.
First, you need to connect your Google account to your review management platform. On Modern, just head to settings -> integrations and click the ‘connect’ button. Once you have connected your Google account, you are ready to start setting up your review campaigns.
This step is optional. You could just send the customer straight to your review page, but a landing page often works better, especially if you would like to ask your users a few questions before sending them the review link. Using Modern, you can choose from a few templates. Simply choose the page you like and edit it to fit your needs.
If you want to get more google reviews fast, an well written email to your list is one of the best and quickest ways. Simply ask your customers to leave feedback, tell them why it’s important to you, and send them the link to your landing page or GMB review section. Just keep the email short, personal and authentic.
We’ve found that sending out a text blast to your entire list is not a great idea. You will want to target the customers that have had recent interactions with your business or have recently responded to your marketing texts. It’s important that texts feel conversational to the user, so if a customer hasn’t received a text from you in 6 months, and you suddenly send one asking for a review, they will know it’s just a text blast and won’t feel valued.
If you’ve followed the steps above, you should have your first few reviews under your belt. Now it’s time to automate the process. By automating your review generation process, you will get consistent reviews and maximize the benefits described at the start of this article. There are a few ways to do this.
First, you will want to create an email footer that includes your review link. If using Modern, just choose one of our templates and use it when sending out your marketing emails. This will ensure that all your emails going forward will contain an opportunity for customers to write a review.
Next, create a workflow that triggers when a customer purchases a product or has been using your service for 2 months. This is easy to do with Modern. Simply select one of our workflow templates and edit it as needed.
If you would like to create a custom one, here is how to set one up that triggers when a customer makes a purchase.
Note: The trigger doesn’t have to be a purchase. You can choose whatever makes the most sense for your business.
Congratulations! You have now automated your review requests. Whenever a customer makes a purchase, the system will wait 7-days and then send out a review request. No more manual sending or wondering if your employees are asking.
As long as this system is running, you will consistently get Google reviews from your customers. As we mentioned earlier in the article, this will improve your SEO, build social proof for your business, and make sure that your business stands out. If you want to be better than the rest, use Modern.
Our growth-focused marketing platform gives you everything you need to win. Get more reviews, collect online payments, send SMS or email campaigns, and centralize your communications — all from one easy-to-use platform. You can even build a professional website, accept online bookings and automate tasks!
Book a free demo today, and we will show you exactly how we are revolutionizing small business marketing!
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