Trying to convince online customers to choose your business is hard. First, you need them to find your business. Then, you need them to see your business as credible and trustworthy enough to choose you over your competitors.
Your Google reviews make a world of difference. A business with lots of positive reviews gets more visibility and inspires trust in new customers. A business with few reviews, on the other hand, is easily overlooked.
But how do you get more Google reviews?
Discover the practical, policy-compliant strategies that will help you increase your reviews, respond effectively, and grow your ratings ethically.
Why Google Reviews Are Essential for Your Business
Often, when customers are looking for a product or service, one of the first things they do is read reviews. They want to know which businesses they can trust to provide a positive customer experience. Around 95% of customers use online reviews to help make their purchasing decisions, so having lots of positive reviews can help sway them to buy from your business over another.
It’s about trust, first and foremost. Just looking at businesses’ websites, it’s hard to tell which ones are reliable and which aren’t. Every business presents itself in a good light. Customers want to hear the truth from other people who have been in their position, so they know what to expect before spending money. That’s why they read the reviews.
Reviews act as social proof—evidence that other people are buying from your business and are (hopefully) happy with their experiences.
Beyond trust, Google reviews also impact your local SEO. More reviews can help your business rank higher in search results, putting more eyes on you. Greater visibility means more opportunities to connect with interested customers. Try local service ads to get in front of even more customers.
Best Times and Methods To Ask for Reviews
The simple answer to the question, “How do I get more Google reviews?” is to ask for them. Customers may not know that you’re hoping for more reviews until you make that clear. Of course, asking customers for anything can be uncomfortable without the right approach. You just need to put some effective habits and systems in place to get more reviews flowing in.
Start by thinking about when you’ll ask customers for reviews. Some of the best times include:
- Post-purchase: Ask for a review right after the customer completes their purchase or a short while later, once they’ve had time to experience the product or service.
- After positive feedback: If a customer thanks you or compliments your products/services, that’s a great time to ask for a review.
- After positive customer service experiences: When a customer contacts your customer support team and ends up satisfied, capitalize on that good feeling and ask for a review.
You can ask for a review in-person, digitally, or both—just don’t get pushy. One or two requests are enough to get customers who want to share their experiences to leave a review. Any more would be frustrating and ineffective.
Train Staff To Ask in Person
It takes some practice to get good at tactfully asking customers to leave reviews, so provide training for your staff. Be clear about the wording you want employees to use. Make sure they understand the policies that prohibit businesses from offering incentives in exchange for positive reviews.
You may get a better response to your in-person review requests if you have a QR code available. The QR code can direct customers right to your Google listing, so it only takes a few clicks for them to leave their feedback. You want to make it as easy as possible.
Use Email and SMS Follow-Ups
Beyond in-person requests, you can also create very compelling requests in SMS or email follow-ups after purchase. One advantage of these digital methods is that they’re easy to automate. Just decide on your review request message and use an online tool to automatically send it to each customer a set amount of time after they buy something from your business.
Include a link in the email or text that takes the user to your Google listing. These automated follow-ups make it easy to get more Google reviews for your business by connecting with customers at the right moment.
Simplifying the Review Process
If you want your customers to leave Google reviews, you need to make it as easy for them as possible. Any extra steps or points of friction will get in the way of customers submitting reviews.
Focus on simplifying the process with tools like:
- Direct links to your profile in follow-up texts or emails
- QR codes in person that link to your profile
- Buttons on your website that direct customers to leave a review
Responding To Reviews To Build Trust
Increasing Google reviews is just step one in any good reputation management strategy. A profile with lots of positive reviews is great for SEO reputation management, but you can do even better by responding to reviews.
Don’t only respond to positive reviews, though. Sharing a professional, helpful response to any negative reviews you get is incredibly important. It gives you a chance to turn the unhappy customer's experience around, for one. But arguably more importantly, your response shows potential clients that you’re engaged and committed to customer service.
Personalize all of your review responses to emphasize authenticity. Your responses will encourage even more feedback, since they show other customers that you’ll probably take the time to respond to them, too, if they share their experiences.
If you can't remove a review that seems overly negative or even in violation of the platform’s policies, making your stance clear in a response may help mitigate the damage to your reputation.
Avoiding Google Policy Violations
Google has clear policies about what is and is not allowed in reviews. It may be tempting to buy reviews to help make your profile seem more appealing, but that is absolutely not permitted.
Writing fake reviews, buying reviews, or even offering incentives like discounts to get customers to share reviews all violate Google’s policies. Google removes any fake or misleading reviews. If Google determines you’ve been violating the policy, you may also face restrictions like not being able to receive new reviews or getting a warning on your Business Profile about the removed fake reviews.
Manipulating your reviews is bad business. It can result in penalties on your Business Profile and damage your reputation. Yelp's review policy is similar to Google’s, so you don’t want to risk penalties there, either.
Stick to ethical practices to get more reviews. Don’t forget to do some Google Business Profile optimization, too, so your profile is set up for success.
Tracking Progress and Measuring Success
A CRM system or automated tool makes it easier to track, request, and analyze reviews efficiently across multiple platforms.
Use online automated tools to monitor review growth, ratings, and engagement metrics. Analyze your metrics to better understand what’s working and what’s not. From there, you can optimize your review strategies for better results.
Boost Social Proof and Your Online Presence With Reputation Management
Reviews are like currency for businesses online. The more genuine positive reviews your business accumulates, the more likely new customers are to see and trust you.
Keeping up with requesting, analyzing, and responding to reviews can quickly become its own full-time job, though. That’s where Optimize Digital Marketing’s reputation management services come into play. Our expert team will handle all these tasks for you to strengthen your brand’s online reputation while you focus on running the business.
Contact us today to elevate your online presence.
