The Food & Beverage industry is the one who really benefits from using reviews to garner much more customers to their business but having 5-star reviews can definitely benefit all. A good review confirms that your business is okay to work with, while a bad review tells people to find another option. Good reviews also help you rank higher in search results (both on search engines and specific platforms), while bad reviews will make it harder for people to find you. Whether you like it or not, reviews can have a big effect on your business.
With so many different review platforms, and so many huge review platforms like Yelp, Google, Trip Advisor, how can you worry about getting reviews on ALL of these platforms?
The real question you should be asking yourself is: Where are all my customers actually coming from?
Although it doesn’t hurt to use review monitoring software to keep tabs on as many review platforms as possible, we suggest you focus on your target’s review platform. For example, if you’re being found on Yelp, focus a lot of time and energy on Yelp.As a business, the first thing you do to get started is by claiming your listing. A verified listing tells people you’re a legitimate company, and it’s a legitimate place to learn more about you.
Here are a couple of guides and registration pages of major platforms to get you started.
What’s The Next Step
Get your review link. Go to that page, copy the URL from your browser, and paste it into the message you send to customers when you ask them to give you a review. Although we shouldn’t continually ask for reviews because we all want genuine feedback that’s organic, sometimes people forget and we provide a small reminder. Positive reviews should happen organically and never ask or bribe customers to leave reviews but you can always attract and encourage people by putting a link to your page on your website, email signature, social media, etc.
As much as we’d love only positive reviews by our customers, there will always be some customers who were not as satisfied and will leave a negative review. What can you do?
Yes! As a business owner, reply to these reviews. Many review platforms provide an option to respond to reviews privately or publicly, which gives you an opportunity to not only resolve the issue, but establish goodwill with your customer. There are also instances that people leave bad reviews for the sake of harming one’s reputation and although these may be difficult to alleviate or remove, we suggest contacting the review platform directly and asking it to be removed.
For example, Google doesn’t know who your customers are and they won’t accept an answer like “this wasn’t a customer” as an acceptable reason to remove them. Sometimes, you’ll need to share your dilemma and give light to the negative review instead. Explain the situation and give your side of the story and have your already-loyal followers their chance to decide on how they feel about the review. There’s a great example on MOZ that shows one company’s great response to a negative review that was solely out to harm the company.
How To Get 5-Star Reviews
As much as we’d all like a surefire way of attaining 5-star reviews, there’s really only one person it’s up to and that’s our customers.
Provide something amazing – If you want someone to say good things about you, you first have to give them something good to talk about. Create experiences that will amaze your customers. Our customers have the control of writing us the review, but as businesses, we have the control of shaping their view towards us.
After you’ve shaped their perception of you to simply amazing, as we’ve stated before, provide for them the means of leaving you the review. Be active and engaging in the review platforms you’re in and be as pleasant as possible to shape their perspectives into positive reviews.
Final Thoughts
Reviews are as essential to a business as they’ve ever been and we now have the means to take control of our destiny by engaging with these reviews and asking for others. Don’t leave the scene thinking that it will happen by itself. Being proactive and seeking out ways to shape your own reputation is critical if you’re business is to strive to the next level.
