Customer Reviews and Testimonials are a Game Changer
According to BrightLocal, 85% of all consumers trust reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations.
the single most trustworthy, and credible source of advertising out there.
In this video, we’re going to talk about the difference between testimonials and reviews and how each of these play a very important role in your business.
Now, one of these also has a big impact on your SEO.
Stay to the end of this video to learn how to get reviews and testimonials for your business.But before we jump in, make sure to hit the SUBSCRIBE button and ring the bell to get notified every week when we post new videos.
Hi, I’m Kirsten with Six Figure Business Coaching and there are five key things that we teach our clients to focus on every week, and one of those is getting testimonials and reviews.
If you focus on getting testimonials and reviews as well, it will take your business to a whole new level. Let’s define a testimonial and a review. Testimonials are gathered, owned and managed by the business that provided the service or the product. Reviews are collected and managed by a third party without the business being involved in the process.
So let’s just talk about that definition a little bit. So if you think about it, testimonials come to you from your client directly. So let’s say they sent you a very nice note when they gave you the check or they sent you an email and said how fabulous you were, or you ask them for a testimonial and they give you a testimonial. These testimonials are then used on your website and on your marketing materials. But again, you control them as the business owner. You control them, and if you think about it, most of us are not going to take a testimonial from a customer that’s really unhappy, right? You never see negative testimonials on people’s websites. So, as you can see, there’s some bias there.
As the business owner, you determine what testimonials you use in your marketing materials. Now reviews, on the other hand, because they are collected by a third party, whether that’s Google or Facebook or Yelp, they control everything. So you have zero control over it and this kind of ‘levels the playing field.’ It makes it seem more fair and equitable and honest. So again, you don’t have the opportunity to just show the ones that you want to show and we’re gonna get a little bit more into this, but that’s why reviews are actually more valuable for your business along with some other reasons.
Reviews influence which businesses show up when consumers search for a business like yours. In fact, reviews are considered to be one of the most important ways to increase your SEO rankings. Google takes reviews from Facebook, Yelp and Google to determine which business it should pull up. So the more reviews you have, the more likely Google is to find you, and the higher it is going to rank your business.
According to MOZ’s Local Search Ranking Factor survey, online reviews are thought to make up 10% of how Google and other search engines decide to rank search results. Think about that, ‘10%!’ That’s how important it is to get reviews for your business! If you plan to improve your SEO using reviews, leave us a comment below and let us know.
So, both testimonials and reviews give your business credibility, but as we have said, reviews are a little bit more important because they help with SEO and face it, we all look at reviews. If you know you’re going to buy something on Amazon, you’re definitely going to look at; how many reviews are there? What are the good reviews? What are the negative reviews? And that helps you determine if you’re gonna buy that product. Well, it’s the same for your product or service.
People want to read reviews. They want to know what experience other consumers had with you. So the more reviews that you get, the better off you are. But there’s also something else that reviews do. Reviews also allow you to build a relationship with your clients. When someone leaves a review and you comment, you thank them for it or you ask them a question, you’re responding back to them and even if someone left you a negative review, because I know that’s what everyone is worried about, ‘if I set myself up to get reviews, what if I get a negative review?”It will be absolutely soul crushing! It will end my business! It’ll all be over if I get a negative review!’ and that’s simply not the case. If you get a negative review and you handle it professionally; you apologize, you take accountability, you let the consumer know what you’re gonna do to make it right, you do all of those things, when people read the negative
review and then they get to read how you respond, that also helps them build a relationship with you. If you handle it really well, it makes them go well, ‘that person takes responsibility. They stand by their word. They make things right.’ Even a negative review gives you an opportunity to showcase who you are and what you do, all about your integrity and how you do business.
So reviews gets to showcase your personality in a lot of ways. So that’s something that people often don’t think about when you think about reviews. Okay, so you’re a believer.
You know that you need to have testimonials and reviews. How do you get them? So we’re going to talk about reviews first. The easiest way to get a review is to send a link. So, if you want a Google review, send them a link to leave you a Google Review. If you want a Facebook review, send them the link to leave a Facebook review. One thing that’s important to know, though, in order to leave a Google review, they have to be logged into their Google account. I have some clients who work with older customers, and not all of them are very tech savvy, so sometimes that’s a little bit harder. So, she often ends up with more testimonials than reviews. But you never know, and you can always explain to them how to do this. If someone says, “Well, I tried to do this, but I didn’t know how,” have the instructions typed up and tell them how, or you can just say, “You know, if you can’t log in, no problem, could you just email me a testimonial? You want to make it really easy for your customer to leave you a review or give you a testimonial.
Now, another big question is, ‘when do I ask for a review or a testimonial?’ When the customer is happy is the best place and you know your sales process and there are lots of different points in which, in the process, you know your
sales process. And there’s often multiple points in that process where the customers happy.
So, for example, let’s say you have a listing. You’re a real estate agent. You have a listing. As soon as they get a contract on that listing could be a great time to ask. You don’t have to wait for the closing to happen. But again, at closing is a great time to ask if you didn’t ask sooner.
If you’ve left someone’s home because you’re an interior designer and you just got through designing the property and they’re hugging you, they’re happy, that is a great time to ask for a review and explain to them that you’ll send them a link to leave you a review. So, if you could have a conversation with the customer it also gives you an opportunity to figure out how comfortable they are with technology.
Now, at any point in the process, ask, ask, ask for reviews. Again, don’t feel like there’s one magical point. Most of the time, our customers are happy with us throughout the whole process, and there’s usually some really good high points in the process where they’re thrilled. That’s always the best time to ask. But what we find is people put off asking out of fear. ‘Oh, maybe that’s not the right time to ask’ or ‘oh, maybe I should wait till the very end’ or ‘oh, maybe we should wait till they pay me at the end’ or ‘oh, maybe I should wait for a month after we finished working together,’ right? We make excuses for not asking. So what I would recommend is draft a few emails that you could easily send out at any point in your sales process to ask for reviews and put the links in there. Decide where YOU want to get your views. Do you want them all Google? Do you want them on Facebook? Do you want them on both?
If you’re a local business, I highly recommend that you do Google reviews as much as possible. If you’re building an online business, Facebook reviews are amazing, but it doesn’t hurt to have both. If you enjoyed this video, we would love to jump on a call with you and talk to you about how we could help you build your business by getting great reviews and all kinds of other tricks and tips to growing a six figure business. There is a link below to book that call, and we’re looking forward to speaking with you.
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I’ll see you in the next video, and until then, dream BIG.
