With Google Business Reviews being a major part of online reputation management, businesses are on pins and needles; first to garner reviews and secondly, to garner positive reviews. This calls for a smart strategy to kick-start gathering good Google reviews for business. Not only that, but you also require a smart approach to handling negative feedback so that your business comes across as a responsible and trustworthy entity.
In this blog, we’ll delve deep into the intricacies of Google business reviews and understand how to combat them. So make sure to read it till the end…..
What Are Google Reviews?
Google reviews refer to feedback shared by people describing their experience with a business or about a product on a Google Business Profile or GBP (aka Google My Business) listing. This is the first thing that a person willfully reads when wanting to make a purchase or invest in your services. It has a direct impact on creating a positive or negative business image in the prospect’s mind. Reviews are also visible on Google Maps.
That’s why every business owner must ensure that quality services/products are provided to garner positive reviews on Google. But there is more to it? Read further to know…..
Google Reviews for Business: Why Do They Matter?
Online reviews affect the purchase decisions of every 7 customers out of 10, Backlinko reported in a recent publication. In addition, the majority of people go for checking Google reviews before visiting/buying from a local business. Furthermore, the benefits of Google reviews are surprisingly performance-oriented for businesses:
- Gain More Traction
One of the biggest benefits that hail from Google reviews for business is attracting more audience and converting them faster. Most customers make up their minds about whether to get in touch with a business or not after going through reviews on Google. Having positive feedback as reviews will help you build trust and credibility, thus acquiring more interested prospects.
- Boost Your SEO
Now that’s what you’re interested in, right? Reviews are on Google’s parameters of allotting rankings for Google Local 3-pack business listings and Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business). This made these reviews an important part of search engine optimization and Google itself confirms that reviews play a crucial role in affecting the local search rankings of a business– as it stresses relevance, prominence, and distance.
This is to say that businesses that haven’t made efforts to collect Google reviews are lacking a huge exposure. Reviews boost business presence not only on Google’s search engine but also on Google Maps and Local Finder.
- Boost Social Proof
Reviews act as a powerful tool to boost the online and social visibility of businesses. Along with Google Reviews, businesses can leverage local business directories like Yelp to foster their appearance in local searches.
A shining proof of satisfaction with remarkable business experience is what influences the purchase decision of your audience.
- Improve Products/Services
Google reviews aren’t just a tactic to appear in top searches, you also get negative feedback that tells you what inferior qualities your products or services have. When people share their critical remarks, their pain points must be noted, genuine compensation must be offered for the loss and you should apologize for the same in that review reply as well.
- Get Ideas For Content
Online reviews also help you access what people are talking about, what they are interested in, what unique qualities they are looking for in a product/service, and what difficulties they wish to get a solution for. With all of this, you can uplift your content creation strategy by focusing on areas your audience is keenly into. For instance, if a customer doesn’t know how to use a K-cup machine, you can create a step-by-step tutorial guide blog covering this topic.
Strategy To Reach Your Audience For Google Reviews
With Google being one of the most prominent search engines, and platform users look up to when they want to discover what reviews people have given a business/product previously, it has become an inevitable part of ORM strategy. No wonder, its impact speaks volumes for itself when people out there can directly search Google reviews for business search by name.
Here are a few tips to get positive feedback from your customers–
Google Business Profile (GBP) is a must
Raking in Google reviews without a Google Business Profile or GBP listing is like squeezing water from a stone. That’s why you must first claim a GBP listing for your business in the first place. To do so, you need to register your business with Google (that’s free of cost) via this link by providing a few business details:
- Business Name
- Address
- Working Hours
- About
- Contact Number
- Appointment Link
If you already have a business listing on Google, you must get it verified.
Tell them the process of leaving a review
It is necessary to be familiar with the process of ‘how to write a Google review’ so that you can explain if your customers are really happy and satisfied with your services/products. You can’t just say– please Google it, that would sound really awkward, and worst case scenario– you might miss on a valuable appreciative comment.
- Search for the company name on Google Maps.
- Scroll down a little to locate the Review Profile section or click on Reviews.
- Finally, you’ll see the Write a review option, click/tap on it.
- Now write your feedback, give the stars you want to, and hit the Submit tab.
You can even take a print of these steps or forward these steps to your clients if you genuinely ask them for their contact information.
However, these days you don’t want to bother your clients that much and still wish to get their pleasing reviews. Well, that’s possible with a link (refer to the very next point).
Make it effortless for customers to share reviews
Sharing a link that directly lands the customers on your Google Business Profile listing increases the chances of getting reviews. They simply visit the link, share what they feel about your product/services, and submit it faster. To generate links for Google Maps reviews:
- Open Google Maps and search for your business listing, click on it.
- Click on the Share icon.
- Select a platform via which you want to share Google reviews for business link, and enter/select the contact information as required. Or copy the link and share it with your customers.
This can save your customers time and, at the same time fetch you a genuine response. It’s impressive too for your customers as they will feel that you wish to cut down the intricacies of the process.
Businesses can also leverage this technique to share other review sites (for instance– Ambitionbox, Clutch, GoodFirms, etc.).
Email Marketing is the key
Certainly, email marketing is a strikingly essential component of your strategy if you’re after ways to improve Google reviews for the business count. Apart from asking your customers to leave a review in-store, you can remember them for the same via emails.
Emails (personalized) marketing campaigns have a 26% open rate as of now, Forbes reports. This indicates carefully curated emails can significantly impact your business connection with your audience. Make sure that you share all the necessary details in the email and keep it to the point. Also, ensure you provide a Google business review link in the mail so that your customers can directly land on your GBP listing for writing the review. Explain the process in an easy-to-understand and short manner.
Remember to thank your customers
When your customers have taken out time to appreciate your services/products, it doesn’t seem nice that you overlook it without even saying a thanks. Online or offline business relations must be respectful and as gratitude, your small response saying “Thanks for your valuable feedback!” can result in repeated clients. In addition, if reviews go under recency, Google also starts to forget your business– and that’s what you don’t want anytime.
Filter out spam reviews with responses
There might be instances when fraud people or some jealous competitors can play this wrongful tactic of leaving a negative review on your business profile on Google. Just don’t sit idle about it, rather address this issue with full professionalism.
If you’ve come across such fake feedback, you must respond back to it with diligence. Ask them about the time they received the product/service to check their credibility. Share if there was any misconduct on their part that led to some unavoidable circumstances. This will not only save your business image from drowning but also make your prospective customers aware of such comments.
- You must also mark such Google reviews for business as spam.
- Tap/click on the comment that you wish to mark spam.
- Click or tap on three vertical dots.
- Now click on Report Review.
- Click on Spam and then click on Submit.
You can also copy the link after the second-last step and send it to your known ones to mark the review spam.
What Kind Of Reviews Are Important To Google?
With time, Google my business reviews algorithm is picking up distinct customer feedback. That’s why it becomes imperative to focus on the quality of the review rather than the numbers. This is to say– 1 quality review that has a mention of a “specific service or functionality of your product” is much more effective in gathering credibility than a mere “nice place to hangout.”
Being specific about how your customers feel about your product or service works more in your favor because-
Google doesn’t have the epitome categories for a few businesses or a particular service/product. That’s why it relies on customer feedback whether it has a mention of a service/product category or not. Take this for example– there are a plethora of services in digital marketing like– Facebook marketing, backlinks generation, content creation, global SEO, and page speed optimization. Now which service served a particular customer with amazing results is what your customer should write about.
Google will pick such reviews to show in the top 3 results in the review summary. In addition, it’s an exceptionally diligent way to include keywords in your reviews, which will ultimately increase your business visibility.
Track Your Google Reviews for Business
Tracking reviews on Google is as important as it is to get Google reviews for business. This is so because they affect the online reputation of your business and as you already know– business visibility on Google. Most small businesses utilize a manual approach to monitor and handle Google reviews. Whereas, big organizations use review management software for the same.
With proper knowledge, anyone can handle twisting situations of online reputation. However, you can think of joining hands with an online reputation management company.
If you have someone who could assist you in fetching reviews in large numbers without any compromise on their quality, you would be on cloud nine, right? Mind Mingles is always ready to ease your pain of building and maintaining a spotless business reputation online.
As a trusted online reputation management company we deploy both human expertise and advanced tools. Our years of experience have taught us how to deal with the intricacies of online reviews and we have helped various businesses safeguard their brand reputation with our ORM services.
Conclusion
Google reviews for business are quintessential. They are what the world’s no. 1 search engine and your prospective customers check, the former one for allotting rank in online searches and the latter one does so for inspecting past customer experiences, before reaching out. Reviews can make or break your online business reputation, this is the reason why companies are looking for strategies to reach out to their customers to get their feedback. With a diligent review-gathering approach, providing appropriate and timely responses, and constant monitoring, businesses can improve their GBP listing visibility, attracting new clients.
