3 Steps to Get More Reviews on Google, Facebook and Yelp

If you receive a negative review on Google Business or another site, it can be damaging to your business. However, 68% of customers read less than 6 reviews. 90% read less than 10. This means, though you can’t remove the bad review, you can essentially push it out of sight by getting more positive reviews. With the following strategy, you can get more online reviews on sites like Google Business, Facebook, Yelp and other sites in three easy steps.

Get More Reviews on Google Business, Facebook and Yelp in 3 Easy Steps

Step 1: Make a Plan

A plan of attack will help you stay on track and keep your campaign streamlined and cost-effective.

First, prioritize where you want to get more reviews. You might start with the platform showing bad reviews, so you can get them out of the way. Or you might start with the most common. The majority of customers look at Google Business reviews first, though Facebook and Yelp also play an important role. Other sites may be more relevant for you, like TripAdvisor for hospitality businesses, or Angie’s List for contractors. Many niche and industry-specific review sites exist, so make sure you consider all your options carefully. To see if a site is worth your time, see if your immediate competitors are using it. Also, try searching as your customers would, and see which sites come up most often.

Next, organize your resources and decide what you will need in order to reach out to customers and gather more reviews.

Here’s what you’ll need:

An online review platform that can quickly and easily gather reviews in one place, like Boast. With the ability to integrate with social media, email automation software, and your website, Boast will save you a lot of time at the next steps.
An easy-to-use email automation platform, like Constant Contact or Mailchimp. You don’t want to be writing and sending individual emails to each customer.
A list of customers to contact. If you don’t have their emails yet, you might start gathering testimonials in your store and gather emails so you can follow up. You can also try other ways to promote your testimonial campaign.

See how you can get more reviews, manage bad reviews and promote your business

Read the Business Owner’s Guide to Online Reviews

Step 2: Set up

Now that you have all the ingredients to get more reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp or another site, it’s time to start the recipe. With a little prep work up front, you can automate a good deal of this process and save hours of time in the long run.

One of the challenges in gathering reviews for third-party sites is it’s difficult to tell when or if customers respond. You also can’t know if these reviews will be good or bad. Gathering reviews on a platform you control allows you to better monitor your campaign. Once you have a reliable way to gather and organize your testimonials, you can start expanding to other sites and get more reviews on Google, Facebook, or Yelp.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Testimonial gathering landing page. Boast makes it easy to set up a landing page where customers can submit video testimonials. This way, you can gather the reviews all in one place, see exactly who responded, and approve only the reviews you’re looking for.
Automated email campaign. Once you have your landing page set up, you’ll need to ask customers to participate. With automated emails, you can send requests, reminders, thank yous, and more without spending hours on individual emails. Try these email templates to get started. This will also help you expand your reviews in the next step.
Test. Before you send your emails, make sure your landing page and your emails work like they’re supposed to. Be sure to check on your laptop as well as your smartphone.
Send!

Step 3: Expand

Now that you have a collection of good reviews from satisfied customers, you have a few options to get more reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp or other sites. Keep in mind that you can place testimonials strategically around your website as well. When you gather testimonials with Boast, you can also download them to use in any other promotional materials (with your customer’s permission).

Try the following options to expand your testimonials to other platforms. Consider your customers’ responses, and the platform you’re working with to choose the strategies that are best for you. You might send these requests in automated follow-up emails, using custom fields to personalize the email.

Download the testimonial, send it to the customer, and ask if they would submit it to another platform. Google, Amazon and some niche review sites allow customers to upload videos.
Submit the video review yourself to your Google Business profile, Facebook page or Yelp profile. This will be one of the first things that customers see when they search your business. Use some short text on the thumbnail image, like “Why Customers Love Our Business,” to make it clear the video is a review, and to encourage others customers to click.
Pull text snippets from the testimonial, and ask customers to submit these text reviews to Yelp, Google, Facebook, or another site. This allows customers to submit a review with a simple copy/paste command and a few clicks.
Use Boast’s integrations with Facebook to add the video testimonial to your page with just a few clicks. Use the integration with YouTube and add key SEO elements to make the video appear at the top of customers’ searches. Remember that Google owns YouTube, and often puts video results higher on search results pages.

No matter which strategy you choose, be sure to: get your customer’s permission to use the video, thank them, provide them with incentive or rewards where possible, and show your appreciation for their participation. Remember that your customers have many demands on their time, so they may need multiple reminders as well as incentives to participate.

Remember to check back in with your customers regularly to keep your testimonials and reviews current. Also, remove the customers that have already submitted testimonials from automated email lists. You may have to execute this strategy more than once to get more reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp and other sites. However, once you have all the pieces in place, it will be easy to repeat the process. Using this process, you’ll also have an archive of video testimonials that you can use anytime, instead of surrendering these reviews solely to third-party sites.