The importance of customer reviews and how to get them

The three big factors that JRA focuses on improving for our customer’s are their AdWords results, their organic placement, and customer reviews. Improving AdWords and SEO is expensive. To do a good job you would spend at minimum $2,000 a month to improve AdWords and SEO. However, simply getting good reviews and more reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, Angie’s List, Home Advisor, Thumb Tack and more can increase your business tremendously. The best part, it’s free! Almost nothing in this business works well when it is free. Getting lots of good reviews is free (or darn near close to it) and can have a huge impact for your business.

So, how exactly do you get better reviews? It’s a multi step process.

     > Get lots of customers

        > Obviously if you don’t have the jobs then you won’t have the opportunity to get lots of reviews. You need to be on AdWords and doing SEO. However, Adwords will run you out of house and home if you try to self manage. You will get lots of clicks for things you don’t do. Just kiss that money good bye. You also need to be getting exposure through every avenue you can.

     > Do great work

       > Show up when you say you are coming. Give them a firm price up front. Work quickly and carefully. Sweep up when done. Do all the little things and the big things right. You won’t get good reviews if you don’t do good work, obviously. And customers are really much more likely to post a review if you do an excellent job.

     > Ask for the review

                      

        > Studies have shown you get over 80 percent more reviews when you ask the customer to leave a review. Some providers are hesitant to do this as they feel they are coming off pushy. Nonsense. You have just done this customer a huge favor, something they are glad they didn’t have to do. You have done a great job. Many customers want to do whatever they can do to help you. So after you accept payment ask the customer something like this: “John, thank you so much for your business today. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to be able to send you an email with links to leave us a review. Would you be willing to let us know and other potential customers know how we did today? Would that be OK?” If they say yes then respond back and say, “Excellent, John. I look forward to reading what you have to say.” That last little bit is very subtle. But that last line is huge. You have thanked them for a service they have not yet completed. They will be much more likely to follow up and actually post the review now.

     > Have a standard email and follow the rules

       

      > You need to have a standard email you send to your customers that thanks them for the business and asks them to click on a link of their choice below to post a review. Yelp doesn’t allow you to ask a customer for a review or send a link so don’t. Google used to allow you to only send links to customers that ranked you highly. They no longer do that now. You must send a link to all customers once you have asked them to rate your service. There used to be some services you could use that would send customers who give a negative star rating to a feedback page and send customers who are happy to Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc. Google no longer allows that.

     > Reward team members for getting reviews

       > Once you are off the truck one of the hardest things is getting your team members to ask the customer to leave a review. You might need to reward them for getting reviews otherwise they will quit asking for them.

Once you have great reviews the chances of a customer booking goes way up. It is a great way to increase the results you are getting from AdWords and SEO. Many customers will click on your ad, view your site, go back to Google to then look at reviews, and look at your organic placement as well. If you have a good website, a good Ad, and good organic placement you still might miss out on a lot of customers who want to see proof that you do good work. Testimonials on your website won’t cut it. You need Google reviews, Yelp reviews, and reviews on other advertising platforms that you use. Just because you have a great site doesn’t mean you will get the business if you don’t have the great reviews. However, if you have great reviews but your site isn’t as good you could still very well get the job. I don’t recommend that route but it is used as an example of how important reviews are. 

Close those deals guys and let’s blow up your business in 2018.

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