You put a lot of time, money and effort into setting up and maintaining your website. This can be a great way to get new customers and to enhance your image. Be sure you believe your green industry business is represented the best it can be through the messaging, graphics, photos, etc on your site.
One often overlooked marketing tool on the website is the usage of online reviews. Potential customers want to know what others are saying about you so get the people talking. My community recently lost a restaurant that served fabulous Chinese take-out food.
A new restaurant opened in its place a few weeks ago so we decided to give it a try. We ordered the same that we always do, Tiger Pork,cream cheese puffs and chicken fried rice. We were very disappointed. Had we gone online and read the only review posted we would have known better. The customer posted a review on the same exact items we ordered and described the order this way: Cheese-less cream puffs, tiger pork had the consistency of cardboard and the chicken fried rice was cold and tasteless. 100% accurate and we wasted $19.75!
You want to get the customers that are happy with your work and you want to manage the online reviews professionally so here are 5 tips:
Earn them.
You must do great work to have people write a review for you. Their name is on the line with their endorsement and they don’t want to lead their influencers down the wrong path and have them disappointed. Exceptional work will likely follow with exceptional reviews.
Ask for them.
Many customers never think of writing a review online. They will definitely thank you in person but providing a written review is a lot like sending a thank you note through the mail. Rarely used anymore so you need to ask for the review. Make it simple for them by providing a link in an email. Field service software has a very easy plug in for making this happen.
Incentivize for an online review.
Consumers today want to be incented when doing business with others. One way to provide an incentive is to get an online review in exchange for a discount on
services. Simply by offering 10% off their next appointment they might jump at the chance to post a great online review for you.
Make it easy.
Make it simple for them by providing a link in an email. Field service software has a very easy plug-in for making this happen. With a service business marketing software, you can send out the follow up email after your service was performed, thanking them for their business and providing a link to the website where they can post an online review. Always have a link on the website so that customers can find where to post their review even if they haven’t had you solicit it.
Follow up with any negative reviews.
Negative reviews can be hurtful to your business IF you don’t address the issue in the public forum. Be sure to acknowledge any negative review with a comment on what you are doing to fix the issue. Take the follow up offline with the individual customer but be sure to address it. An unhappy customer that is treated fairly and whose concern is validated will be a customer for life. Don’t shy away. Make it right!
The local restaurant has to change the recipe so that the food is better tasting, get back to the review writer so that their opinion reverses and that customer will sing the praises of the new restaurant so that the reviews are positive on line. They haven’t learned their lesson yet and if they don’t they may not last very long in our small community.
Do you have any tips for getting online reviews for you company? Please comment below.
Now that you know the importance of sending emails for online reviews, check out this free eBook,Email 101 for Green Industry Business to find out what other areas of your green industry business could use email!
