How you can excel in online reviews
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| He knows that you know that I know that you know |
Reviews, testimonials, endorsements – is this something that you could do better? If there is room for improvement, creating a sustainable action plan will help you sell more – without any major marketing investment.
It is my belief that this process can be summarised in 3 basic steps:
1) Prioritise where you want to be reviewed (external, third party review platforms). The variables are your industry type and whether you are targeting consumers or businesses. However, the key here is to prioritise 1-2 trusted, third party websites. Here are some examples:
Business: Marketing consultant in Leeds
www.linkedin.com (endorsements and recommendations) – a natural choice, as your connection base builds, the social element of LinkedIn will amplify any positive feedback that you receive.
www.google.com/local – the corner stone of local SEO, you can gain added search engine visibility by having more (natural) Google reviews than your competitors
Business: UK national multi location car dealership
www.yelp.co.uk – have a Yelp profile for each location – 2 benefits: Yelp is a Google review partner (SEO benefit) and the new Apple Maps takes a feed from Yelp against its business listings. I love Yelp.
www.judgeservice.com – get a Judge Service profile for each location – the major benefit being that the site has a specialism in automotive.
2) Set a low monthly review target. Your prospects will want to observe the date and time of reviews and will be impressed with up to date feedback – it simply more relevant to their personal buying process. 1-2 old reviews on a website that are a few years old can come across as a token gesture.
3) Get someone to help out. Getting the reviews in on a regular basis in low volumes is a discipline that may not be viable. Be honest – if you are not going to sustain the discipline – then outsource it. This can work fantastically – a third party’ market research analyst’ (could be an intern or YTS employee) emails customers with a mini survey and collates the responses. This resource can invite them to publish the review either on your website, a third party review site – or both. They won’t hesitate about annoying people with s small, rational request – they will just do it.
I have carried out this work for a customer and the beauty is not only its simplicity but is its effectiveness. I sent out the following brief note to X of the company’s existing customers and got a fantastic XX% response rate:
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| Outsource review outreach – the result was amazing content |
Comments welcome!