CALL US We know that online reputation management has become increasingly important to business conversion success. We’ve also discussed why online reviews are so important.
So hello, why aren’t you doing it? Here are 3 possible reasons:
- You’re lazy – Your SEO team has told you steps to take to be successful yet you just don’t bother to implement anything until after someone has said something bad about you online.
- You’re shy – You know you need to ask your happy customers for a review but you just feel weird about it.
- You’re too busy – You are working as hard as you can to just keep the lights on and the customers happy.
On the surface, a few of these seem like pretty good excuses. But if any of them apply to you, you’re missing the big picture. The reality is that you have to make time – even if it’s just a little time – to manage your reputation online and ensure long-term goodwill toward your business.
One Thing to Do Right Now
Copy and paste this into an email template on your computer. Customize it however you like, but do this today and start sending it out to customers.
Dear (Customer Name),
Thanks so much for your visit/purchase/etc. today. We hope you were happy with your experience and we wanted to personally thank you for choosing us.
Would you be willing to do us a small favor? We’d greatly appreciate you clicking on the link below and writing a quick review of your experience with our business. It doesn’t have to be anything lengthy, just your honest opinion of how we are doing.
Link to Google Reviews Page (if you don’t have a Google Places page set up, do it now or ask your web team to do this for you)
Thanks again for your business and we hope to see you again soon.
Sincerely,
You
One option would be to email your customers right after they leave your place of business. You could also choose to “check in” on their purchase or service a few days afterward. This is a good approach for online retailers or other businesses where there is a time gap between the purchase and receiving the product or service. But here’s an added wrinkle for online retailers: if you want your customers to review you on popular sites like BizRate.com and ResellerRatings.com, you’ll need to integrate a link to these sites in the thank you page of your shopping cart. The added work is often worth it, as these sites (along with a few others) are relied on by Google when developing star ratings.
Asking your customers to review you online is free, and having more customer reviews sends strong social signals that your business is one that puts customer service first. Whatever your reason might be for not doing it at present, it really is time to get over yourself.
