How To Get More Reviews On Your Google My Business (GMB) Profile
Nick Czerwinski
PPC & Local SEO Specialist
In this blog, we are to cover one of the most important parts of local online marketing and optimize your GMB Listing – Reviews! We will also touch on how to manage your GMB Listing.
Here are a few statistics showing how important and impactful online reviews are for local businesses provided by the 2017 Brightlocal Consumer Review Survey:
- 91% of consumers regularly or occasionally read online customer reviews to determine whether a local business is good or bad
- 97% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses in 2017
- 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
- Positive reviews make 73% of consumers trust a local business more
People read and trust online reviews about your business so it’s important to make an effort to get a lot of positive reviews on your GMB listing.
We recently started working with a tree service company on getting more reviews and they went from 4 to 29 in a matter of months. As a result, their traffic and leads have skyrocketed. Take a look at the image below of our clients listing. They are listed number one on what Google calls the “local pack.” Of the three companies listed, who would you be more likely to call? Click here to read a case study on how we helped this company generate over $500k in sales opportunities.
Additionally, online reviews are known to impact search result rankings, consumer trust, and click-through rates.
- 49% of consumers need at least a four-star rating before they choose to use a business
- Responding to reviews is more important than ever, with 30% naming this as key when judging local businesses
How to Increase Reviews
If you want to get more reviews, it’s important to make it as easy as possible for people to do so. One way is to create a custom link that you can email to customers.
Here is a link that Google provides for how to create a custom link that takes clients to write to the popup window that allows them to write a review
The key to this technique is that it makes it really easy for clients to leave a review. Instead of just asking someone to leave a review on Google, and hoping they can find the right place to do so, you are taking the thinking out of it and leading right where they need to be.
A good idea is to add the link to every invoice and receipt you send to customers. Did a customer of yours pay with a credit card? Ask for their email address so you can send them a receipt for their records. In that email, add the link to your GMB listing (see above) asking them to leave a review! Lastly, send follow-up emails after a week and ask for reviews. Don’t be afraid to ask!
Manage and Respond to Customer Reviews
It’s important to respond to the reviews your customers leave for your business – whether it’s good or bad. This illustrates that your business values feedback from your customers, that it’s responsive, and that it cares – all positive traits.
When someone leaves you a positive review, thank them for taking the time to write a review, for choosing to do business with you, and that you are looking forward to working with them again in the future.
On the other hand, if someone writes a negative review, thank them for offering such important feedback, apologize for any inconvenience, and ask if there is anything you can do to rectify the situation. Everybody has a bad day and potential customers will view your response to this as a positive.
Now that you have plenty of positive reviews, take it a step further and repurpose the reviews from Google by adding them to your website. If your website was created using the WordPress platform, there are several plugins you and can use to have these reviews automatically show up on your website. Having customer reviews and testimonials goes a long way in adding credibility to your company.
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Managing Your GMB Listing
For local businesses, your GMB listing is going to be critical to your online success. It’s not going away and Google is adding more and more tools and features to this platform to make it more effective.
It’s important to stay on top of your listing, add new posts, photos, services, offers, events, manage reviews, etc.. on the weekly basis. Google likes to see updated information and will reward your listing for it.
Also, since other people can suggest edits and answer questions about your business, it’s important to log in frequently to ensure everything is accurate.
**Tip *** Google had made it easy for you to manage your GMB listing on the go. You can download the GMB app on your phone and have the ability to create a post, take a picture on your phone and post it directly to your listing, change business hours for holidays, etc.
This is huge for tree service and landscaping companies. Everyone has a Smartphone these days so you can easily take a picture of your job on your phone and directly upload it to your listing before you even leave the job. Remember, the more photos you post, the more views your profile gets. It doesn’t get much easier to keep your listing up to date than that!
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Conclusion
We hope you found this information helpful and that it helps you grow your local business. We have helped many tree service and landscape companies with their local marketing so if you would like to schedule a time to talk to go over any of this or to talk about our lead-generation service, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
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