There’s no surprise that getting reviews is vital. But responding to them is just as important, and unfortunately most people don’t.
So make sure to respond to all the reviews.
And have your staff or delivery people ask questions whenever they're talking to customers:
“How is your food?
I’m glad to hear that. It would be awesome if you could leave a review for us. “
And if you want to be bold, when customers are there ask them to leave them a review because it helps your place.
Most people will say yes, it’s something that makes them feel appreciated - you show them that their opinion is important for you.
When they agree, tell them:
“If you give me your phone, I'll show you how to do it right now”.
99% of the time they just hand over the phone, and then all you do is Google search for your business.
Click on “leave a review” and then hand it back to them. They fill out the review and post a photo.
You want to have a photo in there too, and a few sentences - not just a line of text. Text alone is not that powerful.
So the review ranking would go like this:
1st place: 4-5 sentences + a photo
2nd place: 1 sentence + a photo
3rd place: photo without text
4th place: 4-5 sentences without photo
5th place: 1 sentence without photo
6th place: no text and no photos
And then you want to make sure you have a post - you can even take photos with your customers and say thank you for their visit and kind words.
New vs Old Reviews
86% of consumers are looking at the reviews left in the past two weeks. They want to know how you’re performing now, they don’t care about last year.
But don’t totally ignore your older ones. There’s another important group of consumers, who filter for your best and your worst reviews.
They’re looking for how you respond. 95% of users are reading your responses, particularly to the bad reviews.
Older reviews are also feeding keywords into the database.
Being mindful of how you respond, and how you encourage your happy clients to leave reviews for you will drive the words that appear there.
Be careful! You can’t explicitly ask for specific reviews. That’s directing, and that goes against Google’s guidelines.
Google wants what the real experience is, and if they catch you directing people - you’ll get suspended.
The way you can help your client is by telling them why reviews are important and try to do it on the spot while they are face to face with you at your local business.