Getting positive reviews for your restaurant, retail store, or bricks-and-mortar business is one of the best ways to grow your business and build a consistent customer base. When seeking a new product, restaurant, or service, people are typically willing to go the extra mile to shop at a location that’s been recommended by a friend. In fact, when comparing two options customer reviews are often the tipping point. They offer validation that the business is superior and customer’s experiences have been great. Use these four simple ways to get more reviews from customers for your business:
1. Offer Discounts or Bonus Offers
The most straightforward way to get reviews is by offering a discount or special reward in exchange. It could be as simple as giving them a 10% discount when they prove they wrote a review online. This is a great tactic because it encourages the customer to purchase in order to get the discount. You may also offer a bonus or free item. For example, a restaurant could offer a free slice of cake for a customer review. A lawyer could offer a free printing of documents that they would ordinarily charge for. These little things result in big payoffs for the company and take little effort by the customers.
2. Leverage your Wi-Fi Landing Page
Customers that visit your business love taking advantage of your free Wi-Fi. Rather than driving your customers to a generic Wi-Fi login page, create a custom Wi-Fi landing page that makes it extremely simple to leave a review. Additionally, a custom guest Wi-Fi- landing page that matches your restaurant’s branding will enhance the customer’s experience.
As they visit your landing page, you can leverage your Wi-Fi analytics to learn as much as possible about these customers. The analytics will tell ryou popular visit times, demographic information, dwell time, first time users, repeat users, average value of customers and lifetime value of customers among other tools. Equipped with this data, you’ll be able to implement more effective marketing strategies and become more efficient in targeting them and encouraging them to make more online reviews.
3. Encourage Social Media Recommendations
Sharing the experience of visiting your location on social media is another fantastic method to boost your reviews. The customer can take pictures and caption them to share with their friends and family. Platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat, Pinterest and others make this process extremely easy.
Companies that have accounts on all of these platforms can advertise them at their location or in online ads. Consumers become followers and then tag your business when they recommend it. The online platform makes it easy and fun for them to do so.
4. Advertise on Leading Review Sites
The top review sites including Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google Local, Angie’s List and Consumer Reports all have ways to advertise and promote your business. These locations are meant for people that are already interested in reviews. They are the target audience that is more likely to write reviews themselves. If they have experience with your firm, they may see your ad and take the opportunity to review the firm. If not, they may visit your company, purchase your services and review at a later time because they have proven to be the type of people interested in reviews.
Efforts to get more reviews for your business shouldn’t be short-term. It should be a consistent initiative. Customers trust recent reviews over old ones. By leveraging online mediums like your Wi-Fi landing page, social media, advertising, as well as in-store incentives, you’ll be able to build a solid base of loyal customers.{{cta(‘f5bf467c-b07f-4dbc-af08-162dd4e93b82’)}}
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