big & small marketing ideas

Get More Customer Reviews and Referrals

It is important to be listed on most, if not all, local review sites. Not only does it increase your chances of someone reading a review and then becoming a customer, the more link backs to your website will raise your organic ranking in Google. Here are some ways to not only get more ratings and high customer ratings, but ideas on how to increase the exposure of your positive ratings.

1. Add rating website links to your website.

In an effort to let potential customers see customer unbiased ratings, place links to some of the top ratings websites on your website: Yelp, Kudzu, Insider Pages, Yahoo Local, Super Pages, etc. Make sure to link to your account page, so people can see your reviews quickly and not have to search for them.

2. Twitter and Facebook message.

Send a Private Message to your Twitter followers and Facebook friends to help spread the word about your business by posting a rating at their favorite site (we can also suggest/list a couple of companies) or simply alert their other Facebook and Twitter friends. Sample text: “If you’re happy with -your company-, share the goodness with your friends.”

3. Facebook reviews.

Have a place for people to post reviews on your Facebook page: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web/

4. Ask previous customers.

Simply ask in person or email past and current customers to post a rating at their favorite site. Script could be: “Please help us by telling others what you thought of our service … ”

5. Rate and review request.

Send messages to your favorite customers through Kudzu or other local review site, asking for a review and linking them straight to your Kudzu or other local review site account. See link below. Kudzu lets you track all the emails you send out and see all the reviews. Other ratings companies have similar functionality. https://register.kudzu.com/rateAndReviewMerchantRequest.do

6. Place customer ratings on your site.

You can place Kudzu branded ratings on your site. See link below about how to place these widgets. Other companies have something similar.
https://register.kudzu.com/reviewsWizard.do

7. Show off your reviews.

Place a couple framed reviews on the check-in desk, to help encourage customers to post their own reviews. You could run an ad campaign based on positive customers reviews.

8. Customer testimonials.

Place quotes from happy customers on the website.

9. Kumquat.

Quickly and easily solicit feedback from customers. http://www.hellokumquat.com/

10. Offer discounts.

Each customer review site, from Yellow Pages to Yelp, will have unique service offerings. Sniff around the sites and use the ones that will benefit your company. On Yelp, for example, you can announce special promotions, answer questions about your business and track how many Yelp users viewed your business page.

11. Start a blog.

Blogging communicates your expertise on topics important to your target audience. Each new post boosts your visibility to search engines and helps establish your company as an UNBIASED thought leader within its industry. Effective blog communication works as a long-term SOFT sell technique. Begin posting agnostic-themed articles, limiting biased submissions to no more than 10% of the total. Include posts which talk about subjects related (even loosely) to your products and industry.

Use the website as the closing tool, but develop leads through the blog. Develop an editorial calendar of such themes in order to organize execution. Seek out authoritative industry-related bloggers and develop active reciprocal relationships with each. The goal is to portray your company as an expert relative to its industry and not only your products. Then when you actually pitch to your blog audience, they will put greater weight in your “advice” to buy your product. Once you start the blog, keep going. It’s worse to start and stop, than to not start, as the former loses your company a good deal of credibility.

12. Create an RSS feed for you blog.

RSS (Really Simply Syndication) is a standard way to deliver content to interested visitors after they leave your site. It is used with blogs, news feed and other information sources. RSS feeds have a significant advantage over email, since they are much less susceptible to spam and other web noise.

 

 Got some more questions about customer reviews or how to get a full referral program in action? Let’s talk, click here.

 

 

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