Have you or a friend ever avoided going to a restaurant or buying a product online due to negative reviews? Maintaining a positive review status is a very important factor for your business. In this post, I’ll be talking about how to naturally generate positive reviews for your local directory listings. Directory reviews are extremely important for the success of your internet presence, as well as maintaining and building trust for your brand. A few good reviews could make the difference between a dozen sales and none at all. Directories such as Google, Yahoo and Bing like to rank business listings based on their number of positive reviews. This provides you with an opportunity to dramatically increase your business sales merely by generating customer reviews on your search engine directory listings.
- Ask for a review
- After a job or service is completed, make it part of procedure to kindly ask for a review.
- Print your receipts with a web address to your local directory listing, and have your employees ask each customer to take the time to write a review.
- Give the customer an incentive to write a review
- Setting up a coupon system for reviews can be doubly effective. Enticing your customers with a coupon not only encourages them to write a good review, but also encourages them to come back.
- Ask for reviews on the spot
- Invest in a mobile tablet(s) and make it part of your business process to ask for a review when a job is completed.
Again, I cannot stress enough the importance of directory reviews. Making changes to your business practice in order to generate reviews can make a significant change in your business profits.
Respond to Positive and Negative Reviews
Some directories allow the owner of the directory listing to respond to negative and positive reviews. A simple, “Thank you” to positive reviews can show that you care about your customers. As for negative reviews, it only takes one negative review to steer potential customers away. Respond to negative reviews with an apology and a solution, such as a free service or reduced price. This will show that you work to solve any unhappy customers, and might even encourage the user to delete their negative review.
