When someone asks you, “What do your customers think of you?” What is your answer? Do you share with them how much they love your product or service? Do you share with them how they happily refer their friends and family?
As a business owner, you probably have 100 and maybe even thousands of customers who LOVE your service. When looking for new prospects, how do you share the passion of others? How do you get the word out beyond “word of mouth” so potential new customers know that what you offer is great?
Now more than ever, to provide balance to your online marketing efforts, you need to focus on collecting reviews (ie testimonials). Regardless of your industry, this is becoming a key part of increasing local rankings and turning that lead from “I think this is good” to “I HAVE to buy”. Since many people are quick to complain and slow to compliment, it’s important to collect positive feedback from those who truly support your business.
To begin putting the power of word of mouth reviews to work for your business in the online world, I encourage you to consider the following.
- Yelp – Once this site only dominated restaurant reviews and now it has expanded well beyond that. Yelp has a powerful set of features (including Facebook integration) that encourage your customer to share their experience. As a business owner, you have the power to announce special offers, message your customers (respond to reviews publicly or privately), and more. Creating a profile here is a powerful first step in allowing customers to endorse your business.
- Facebook Reviews Tab – While new to the “reviews” game, it’s quickly becoming a standard for businesses on Facebook. Facebook reviews tab is FREE and used as part of your business page. One of the best parts of this particular tab is that it is exposed to Google. This means that if someone types in “Reviews of your company”, it very well could appear in the top 10 results.
- google places – Google has further leveraged its powerful search platform in the local market. In addition to collecting reviews from third-party sites, you can also rate businesses through its Places platform. As a business owner, you can define everything from business hours, specialties, and even photos of your office. Having a profile here provides the added benefit of being able to appear in local searches!
We can’t stop people from complaining about a bad experience (even when you go the extra mile for someone, they might still complain), but we can let people see that 99% of people have a great experience with your business.
Opening a profile on each service will not get you a flood of testimonials, it’s just the beginning. Make collecting testimonials and reviews a part of your total online marketing strategy. Discover how to do testimonials TO marketing system with my energized FREE marketing manifesto.
