Product Reviews

[IOSC]

Any one have good strategies to get product reviews from customers? Whether general or specific to G+, Yelp, On Page, local review sites, etc?

Thanks

[BlueprintMarketing]

Send out a newsletter 100% white and make sure you double opt in. Using Mail chimp, it AWeber or my fav mill33.com

Give them incentive to speak about your website on your Google plus or any other form. By offering either a contest some sort of a process of any sort. Money off whatever you are selling for an iPad something everyone kind of uses would be a universal gift to almost anybody. For a review of your services. Then ask them to post the an honest review of the best experience they've had with your corporation on Google +. Then have it so one out of X entries wins an iPad or something similar.

Please understand that it is very Gray hat to actually pay people to give you reviews.

So you do not want cross the line into actually paying them for review and all. We just want them to give an honest review of your service and it is okay to actually offer them prize for participating in your review.

I hope I was of help,

Thomas

[KeriMorgret]

However, DO NOT mention Yelp. Yelp does not allow you to in any way encourage customers to leave reviews, even without a contest. Be sure to read and understand the guidelines of review sites before trying to encourage people to leave reviews.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Keri,

Great advice. That's something I do not know thank you for updating me on that as well.

I agree with Keri you have to read the terms of service for every single site you want to promote this time however I do believe that you should check all these things prior to ever running any sort of contest or promotion.

Sincerely,

Thomas

[MiriamEllis]

Hi IOSC,

Great question, and a really important point from Keri regarding never soliciting Yelp reviews from your customers. Their policies and filters are the most stringent of any review platform; Yelp wants all reviews to happen spontaneously.

When it comes to Google-based reviews, the best policy is to take it slow. Avoid sending out email blasts or running campaigns that will generate a large number of reviews at any one time. Google has also upped the stringency of their review filters of late and too great a velocity of incoming reviews can result in review loss for the business owner. Ask, perhaps, 1-3 happy customers a week if they'd like to review you. Then, if 1 or 2 of them do, this will be a gentle acquisition.

Also, take a look at your competitors' average number of reviews. If most of them in your locale have, say, 20 Google-based reviews, then aim for having 30 or 40 on your profile...don't aim for having 200. This is another area in which it is speculated that Google may become suspicious that reviews are being bought or falsely generated by the business.

A read through Google's Review Posting Guidelines will be very important for you:

https://support.google.com/places/answer/187622?hl=en

Another good step is to, again, look at your direct local competitors and see which 3rd party review sites Google is linking to from their Google+ Local pages in the 'reviews from around the web' section. This way, you may discover that, for your locale and industry, Google seems to be trusting certain sites like citysearch, judysbook or insiderpages most. This will signal to you that it's important for you to have customers review you there.

In actually setting about requesting reviews, a good process would be to obtain the customer's email at the time of service. Follow up 2-3 days after a service is rendered with a brief, friendly, well-crafted email, letting the customer know how much you would appreciate his review. You might list a few places (not including Yelp) where you have review profiles and let the customer know that you would like them to pick their favorite platform. While Google and Yelp reviews are typically the most important for local business owners, review diversity is very healthy insurance against massive review loss, should you ever lose all of your reviews on one site or another. Remember, not everyone is going to have a Google account, so leaving a Google based review could be a pain for them, whereas if they are an active member at TripAdvisor, their review their will be easy for them and good for your business.

I recommend you read Phil Rozek's 2012 post on the local review ecosystem to get a quick education on the way in which data is shared between some of the review platforms (http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2012/07/06/the-local-business-reviews-ecosystem/). Great piece!

Hope I've pointed out some helpful ideas for you here. Just remember, a slow, diverse and steady acquisition of reviews over time is a much better strategy than trying to make a big splash all at once.

[IOSC]

I had seen that post by Rozek a while ago, but forgot about it, so thanks.

I think the key here is "a slow, diverse and steady acquisition of reviews over time is a much better strategy than trying to make a big splash all at once"

[MiriamEllis]

Absolutely, and it's my pleasure to help!