How to Ask for Reviews (And Get Them Really Fast) Part 2
In part 1 of this articles, I gave you suggestions for building up the number of reviews you have for your business. Here are a few more.
Asking for Reviews in a Text Message
Text messaging has become an increasingly popular form of marketing, and you can use it to ask for reviews too.
Text messages have nearly a 100% open rate. If you’re already sending text messages to your customers, then following up a purchase with a request for a review can be a great way to generate more reviews.
Since it’s a text message, it should be brief. You can try something like this:
We hope you’re happy with your purchase. Please leave a review on Google and let us know how we did!
Here again, you should be wary of linking directly to your Yelp page. You may want to add brief instructions like the ones mentioned in the section about emails to help customers find your review pages.
Asking for Reviews on a Receipt or Card
Not everybody is comfortable asking for a review in person. Whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or you’re shipping products to customers at home, including a card or a note on your receipt can encourage them to leave a review of your business.
You can use a tool like Canva to create and print message cards that ask customers for reviews. You can even put the URLs of your review pages to make it easy for customers to find them.
If you own a restaurant, another option is to give your patrons a comment card when you deliver their bill. While they’re not the same as a review on Yelp, you can aggregate the comments and feature the ratings on your website.
Receipts are another option. You can program your receipts to include a brief message at the bottom asking customers to write reviews.
Asking for Reviews on Social Media
Finally, you may want to ask your social media followers to review your business. Facebook reviews are important for local businesses since many people use Facebook to search for businesses near them. You have the option of asking for reviews in a Facebook post or using a chatbot in Facebook Messenger to ask.
Keep in mind that you’ll still need to be careful about linking out to your Yelp pages from social media. You may link directly to your Google page.
If you decide to use a chatbot, you may want to consider setting up a survey directly within the chatbot if you want to collect reviews to post on your site. Otherwise, you can simply ask people to leave a review elsewhere.
One final note about reviews. While it might sound odd, customers are more likely to trust businesses that have some negative reviews. It’s not realistic for any company to get 5-star reviews across the board. That said, you should respond to negative reviews and do your best to make the customers who leave them happy.
