As a small business owner, positive online reviews are worth their weight in gold when it comes to attracting customers to your business and increasing sales. In fact, more than two thirds of Australian consumers (68%) read online reviews about products or services they’re interested in.
As well as convincing customers to choose your business, reviews help you rank in local search results when people search for something related to your business in your area. In other words, good reviews not only build your credibility but also make you more visible to potential customers in the first place.
If you already have online reviews for your business, that’s a great start. But how do you get even more value out of them? Let’s take a look.
1. Share reviews to your social media profiles.
Testimonials, reviews and positive experiences make impactful social media content and provide validation that your product or service has been tried and recommended.
With this in mind, a simple and easy way to highlight reviews is to share them on your social media profiles. You can make a review more eye-catching by creating a visual graphic with a review and sharing it organically, or even include testimonial quotes as part of a paid social media ad campaign.
2. Add reviews to your website.
With so many customers heading to your website before making a purchase, it makes sense to add any stellar reviews to your web pages. You can add reviews to your homepage, feature testimonial quotes on various pages of your website, or create a landing page dedicated to great feedback from happy customers.
As well as leaving a good impression on website visitors, reviews can improve your website’s SEO performance by ranking for review-based keywords, for example ‘best plumber in Parramatta’, ‘emergency electrician in Camberwell’ or ‘reliable mechanic in Fortitude Valley’.
On top of that, reviews can improve your website’s E-A-T quality score. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, and it’s part of Google’s algorithm that evaluates the quality of a webpage’s content and how it should rank.
3. Respond – with a small reward.
Following up on a great review with positive reinforcement helps establish customer loyalty and encourages other customers to follow suit.
Respond to customer feedback and as a thank you, offer a small reward such as a discount on their next purchase, a voucher or a freebie. Not only will your customer feel cherished but other members of the public will see your response as well, which can do wonders for your brand image.
4. Put on your marketing hat.
You’ve already found a very happy customer, so it won’t take a data analyst to tell you that they’re more likely to purchase from you again – or to at least refer a new customer to you – over a stranger on the street.
With this in mind, you could suggest a similar product they might like, tell them you’d love it if they told their friends and family or suggest signing up to a newsletter so that they don’t miss out on new products. Tailor your suggestion to their review but don’t overdo the sales pitch – keep it sincere and thankful.
RELATED: Customer retention and loyalty tips for family-owned businesses.
5. Ask for even more feedback.
Don’t miss your opportunity to ask for just a few thoughts from a satisfied customer. Let them know you’re happy they loved your product and took the time to review it, then ask if they have any suggestions for how your product or service could be even better.
Constructive feedback may help you find new ways to improve the customer experience that no one might have bothered to mention otherwise. This is a good way to leverage positive reviews that may have been made a while ago.
6. Optimise your response for search.
When responding to a review, try to include a few relevant keywords as naturally as possible. For example, you can thank them for their feedback, then mention the company name and how you’re glad that they think you offer the best [service] in [city/town].
A positive review with a keyword or two already included, coupled with a keyword or two of your own, could help your rankings.
7. Add review schema markup to your website.
Schema markup is code that you put on the HTML of a web page to give search engines more information about the content of that page.
When schema markup is added to a web page, it typically creates an enhanced description, commonly known as a ‘rich snippet’. Rich snippets increase the likelihood that people will click through to your website.
Review schema is a type of schema markup that lets you display the average rating and reviews of your business as rich snippets. You can learn more about how to add this to your website in our free schema markup eBook.
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