how to get google reviews for local businesses

How to Get Google Reviews: The Complete Guide for Local Businesses

by Reviews

How to Get Google Reviews: The Complete Guide for Local Businesses

In 2019, Bright Local conducted a study that states 82% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, with the average customer reading at least 10 reviews before feeling they can trust a business. Another relevant statistic states, “Research shows that Google is the fastest growing online reviews platform in the world and is acquiring new reviews at a much quicker rate than its closest rival, Facebook.”

To put it simply, online reviews are influencing how and where consumers decide to spend their money and Google is where most people find these reviews.  

Table of Contents

How Do You Search for Service Providers?

If you think about it, I’m sure you have been through the process yourself. You need someone to fix a leak in the kitchen sink, so what do you do? Most likely, you head to Google and in the search bar type something like “plumber las vegas”. Then you find yourself scrolling through the Google search results in the map pack and instinctively start assessing the best candidates for your job. Looking through average star ratings, good reviews and bad reviews you finally come to a decision. How many of you can relate?

Jamie Pitman, Head of Bright Local’s content team, writes, “Online reviews are as powerful as word of mouth recommendations that add credibility and trust to your brand.”

Important Questions to Keep in Mind

Understanding the importance of online reviews, here are a few questions you should be able to answer:

    • What are people saying about your business online?
    • How can you prompt someone to leave a review on their experience with your business?
    • How can you get more reviews?
    • How can you increase the number of positive reviews while reducing negative reviews?

If you’re looking for the answer to any of these questions, read on to learn more and find out how to address these pressing questions for your business. 

How to Get Google Reviews from Customers in 3 Simple Steps

Now that we know that reviews play a critical role in consumer decisions, and that Google is where most people find reviews, let’s discuss how to get a Google review for your business.

Step One: Have Happy Customers

First things first. You need happy customers!

We cannot stress that enough.

While that may not be surprising to you, if you spend enough time reading reviews online, you’ll find businesses that don’t seem to understand this. Now is a good time to acknowledge a simple fact: most consumers only feel compelled to leave reviews when they have a negative experience. This means they are more likely to go out of their way to leave a negative review, rather than a positive review. So, if your customers are not happy, you’re going to get a large number of negative reviews, and very few positive reviews. Not only will a bad experience most likely lead a customer to leave a bad review, that bad review could deter potential customers from choosing your services.

But you’re reading this article to learn how to get positive Google reviews, so let’s get back to that!

You need happy customers because happy customers will leave positive reviews about their experience with your business. These reviews are the kind that you need, and that consumers love. However, getting these reviews depends on the quality of service that the consumer experiences. The better the service, the more likely your customer will be to leave a review and mention something positive about their experience with your business. It’s not just about getting the review; it matters what they say in the review.  Remember, consumers do not just look at overall star ratings, they read online reviews.

Step Two: Ask Customers to Leave a Review

In a perfect world, a customer would leave a review with no prompt or request on your end; but as discussed above, this is most likely to happen for negative reviews, not positive reviews. The best way to get positive, 5-star reviews is to simply ask for them.

There are plenty of ways to ask for reviews. Asking customers in person while still on-site along with reminders through email, calling and text messaging are some of the most effective ways to prompt a customer to leave a review and provide feedback in general. Do not rely on just one method of reaching out to your customers; take advantage of a variety of communication channels to ensure you are reaching as many of your happy customers as possible. 

Step Three: Show Customers How to Leave a Google Review

When asking happy customers to leave a Google review, don’t assume they know how to do it. Rather, provide an easy step-by-step guide with screenshots that they can follow.

If you are asking for reviews in person, you could have the step-by-step instructions printed on the backside of a business card for customers to refer to. That same information can be included in an email, text message or be explained in a conversation over the phone. Once you document out the process the first time, you can use it in a variety of ways to help improve the chances of receiving positive, 5-star reviews from your happy customers.

Here’s step-by-step instructions on how to leave a Google Review for your business to use:

    1. Open your internet browser.
    2. Search Google for “[Insert Your Business Name Here]” (or provide them the link to your business listing on Google).
    3. Click on the “Write a Review” button, found by scrolling down to the review section on a business’s listing, or by clicking on their reviews in Google Maps.
    4. You will need to be signed into your Google account to leave a review. If you’re not signed in, Google will ask you to sign in via a pop-up.
    5. After signing in, you will have the option to select the number of stars to rate your experience with our business and write out details of your experience(s). Five stars is considered “excellent” and one star is considered “poor”.
    6. Click “Post” after selecting a star rating (and leaving a written review, if you choose).

[BONUS] Step Four: Respond to All Customer Reviews

Ready to take your Google reviews to the next level? Respond to every Google review your customers leave, good or bad. It’s a simple step that takes only a few minutes and shows potential customers you take your business seriously.

What’s worse than a negative Google review? A negative Google review with no response from the business. When a potential customer sees a negative review with no response, it signals to them that the business doesn’t care, or doesn’t take customer feedback seriously.

Other Considerations on How to Get Google Reviews

Even with everything discussed above, there are still a few more considerations you will want to make when it comes to getting Google reviews. Here are two important things to keep in mind:

Request Reviews in a Timely Manner

Strive to prompt customers to leave reviews right away with a maximum of three to four days after the customer utilizes your business. If you fail to reach out in a timely manner, you run the risk of customers losing enthusiasm around their experience with your business.

Be Aware of Other Review Platforms 

While Google is the fastest growing review platform out there, it is very important to maintain a well-balanced review profile by also encouraging customers to leave reviews on other review platforms that are pertinent to your business. According to the study referenced earlier, 70% of consumers look at multiple review sites before choosing a business to contact.

What Should You Do Now?

Now you know how to get your happiest customers to leave amazing 5-star Google reviews for your business, and drastically increase your average star rating and review count. However, the most important step is to implement this process in your business today!

If this process sounds overwhelming, we understand! If you don’t have the right tools and processes in place, then this can feel like a lot. Fortunately, at KAHA, we are a team of digital marketing experts. We have 15+ years of experience helping businesses grow through meaningful digital marketing. We have the system and tools already assembled, ready to be implemented in your business today!

Why Partner with KAHA to Get More Google Reviews?

At KAHA, we understand the importance and need for businesses to have first-rate reviews in order to be competitive. Online reviews are becoming much more significant in influencing consumers of where to spend their hard-earned dollar. Building credibility and a reputation of trust through online reviews, such as Google, is more important now than ever.

We provide an online review service that effectively prompts customers to leave reviews and educates them through an easy-to-follow guide. Our process is fast, simple, and can be done from a phone. It can also be leveraged to get 5-star reviews on every review platform that is relevant to your business.

Our online reviews service gives you the process and tools to:

    • Ask customers to leave reviews, while in person or via your website, email or text message
    • Educate customers on how to leave reviews, with step by step instructions for each review platform (not just Google)
    • Monitor your reviews in real-time, so you can respond to all customer reviews
    • Let your customers choose which platform they review your business on
    • Help you request reviews in a timely manner, and automates follow up to help get more reviews
    • Help reduce the number of negative reviews by helping customers contact the business first to resolve the issue
    • Automatically share your best reviews to your website or Facebook to build social proof

Interested in Working with KAHA to Get More Google Reviews?

Let us help you generate, monitor, and showcase online reviews in a smooth, simple, and effective way. Our services are competitively priced and easy to use. Learn how to transform your online reviews with KAHA and book your FREE strategy session ($1,000 value) today!

SPEAK WITH A strategist
how to get online reviews

How to Get Online Reviews: A Battle-Tested & Proven Process

by Reviews

How to Get Online Reviews: A Battle-Tested & Proven Process

We often get asked by business owners how to get online reviews for their business. The process is actually really simple, but if you don’t understand how to do it, it can seem complex. So, we wanted to breakdown the most effective processes that we not only teach our clients but also implement for them.

What’s the process? It’s simple. And you can implement it in your business today!

The most effective process we have found to get more real five-star reviews for your business is… asking for reviews via email.

Why? Well, if you stick around till the end of this article, we’ll not only tell you why, but we will show you how to get more real five-star online reviews for your business using email, starting now! Even better, we will show you how to automate this process for your business.

Table of Contents

Before we jump into the process and details, we want to share a case study. This case study is based on recent results from one of our clients. Yes, real results achieved during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

A Case Study on Getting Online Reviews for Your Business

In this case study, our client is a home service business. While businesses are all very different, we’ve seen similar results using our process across industries and markets.

Here’s a quick overview of their results:

    • Received their first review (five-star, by the way) in less than two hours of implementing our process
    • Received three reviews (all five-star) on three different platforms in the first 24 hours, having only emailed eight recent customers (a 37.5% conversion rate!)
    • Received eight reviews (all five-star) on three platforms (Google, Yelp and Better Business Bureau) within five days of implementing our process

Here’s some additional context on this client. Although they had been asking for reviews, they were not seeing great success in getting clients to leave reviews. In fact, before implementing our process, their most recent Yelp review was two months old; and Yelp is their most active review platform. They went from struggling to get any reviews, to getting eight real five-star reviews in less than a week. Knowing and implementing a proven process allowed this business to grow their overall reviews by 20% in less than one week. And, their overall star rating has improved across the review site platforms they’ve chosen to focus on!

In fact, before implementing our process, this client had zero reviews on their Better Business Bureau (BBB) profile. This meant that they had a zero-star rating. Not because they were a bad business, but simply because they didn’t have a process to get customers to leave reviews on the BBB site. Now their Better Business Bureau profile shows how great of a company they are. They now have three five-star reviews, and an overall five-star rating on their BBB profile with glowing reviews from really happy customers.

Why Online Reviews Matter for Your Business

You may have noticed that we focused on a few key points in the above case study: overall star rating, number of reviews, recency of reviews, and utilizing multiple top review sites. We focused on these because the data shows they are important to consumers. Here’s what you need to know:

    • 91% of consumers read online reviews about local businesses
    • Most consumers look at two or more review sites before making a decision
    • 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation
    • 73% of consumers think that reviews older than three months are not relevant

How to Get Online Reviews via Email

Asking for reviews using email is a great approach for businesses for several reasons. Studies show that 91% of consumers open their email every day, and 58% of consumers say they check their email before they do anything else online. Additionally, another study found that 76% of people that are asked to leave a review end up doing so. Given this information, we personally favor email when asking for reviews for several reasons.

Here are a few reasons why:

    • It’s easy for your business to implement (and you can automate it)
    • Many people feel uncomfortable asking for a review in person
    • Customers often forget to leave reviews unless they are reminded
    • You can link directly to review pages in your email, making the process easier for your happy customers to leave online reviews

When it comes to asking for reviews via email, you have a few options such as email blasts, personal emails, or automated email sequences. An email blast is when you simply email your entire email list and ask for reviews. Personal emails are when you reach out to customers individually with a personalized email and ask for reviews. Automated email sequences are our favorite because you can reach out to your entire email list while making the emails feel personal, which increases the odds of getting more real reviews from happy customers.

Automated Email Sequence

When businesses hire us to help them get more real five-star online reviews, the first thing we do is setup an automated email sequence. It’s not just a recommendation. It’s the cornerstone of our proven process to see success.

Why?

First, they’re automated. This means you (or your team) don’t have to remember to send them. And you don’t have to take the time out of your day to do it. Second, it’s a sequence, meaning your customers will get multiple emails reminding them and asking for reviews, increasing the chances that they leave a review. Lastly, you don’t have to worry about it. Getting more reviews for your business is practically done for you.

Speaking of “done for you”, is it okay if we overdeliver in this blog post for you?

Keep scrolling to see the automated email sequence we use to help our clients get more real five-star reviews for their business. Yes, you can copy and paste them if you want!

Our Battle-Tested & Proven Automated Email Sequence for Online Reviews

That’s right.

This is it—our automated email sequence we implement for all of our review clients to help them get more real five-star reviews on the review sites of their choice.

As noted earlier, you are welcome to copy and paste these templates to use for your business. Consider it our gift to you!

Why?

Because KAHA was built with one focus: helping small and medium businesses succeed.

We believe that in any exchange with KAHA, business builders, operators or owners need to walk away feeling like they got more value out of their time with us, than the time they invested with us. Especially when you are giving your time to read or consume our content.

Here you go:

Email #1 (Sent as soon as possible)

Hi [first name],

Thanks for choosing [business name]. I’d like to personally invite you to share your experience.

Your feedback not only helps us, it helps other potential customers. It takes only a moment and would mean the world to us:
[“Review Us Now” button]

Or browse [review page link]. Thank you for your business and support!

Email #2 (Sent three days after Email 1)

Hi [first name],

I’m just writing to follow up and see if you had a chance to complete a review of [business name].

Your feedback means a lot to us—it helps us to better serve you and helps potential customers learn what we’re all about. We’ve made it easy so it will only take a moment of your time:
[“Review Us Now” button]

Or browse [review page link]. Thank you for your support!

Email #3 (Sent seven days after Email 1)

Hi [first name],

I hope you’ll still find a moment to share your experience of [business name]. Your feedback not only helps us improve our business, it helps potential customers.

We’ve made the process quick and easy to save you valuable time:
[“Review Us Now” button]

Or browse [review page link]. Thank you for your support!

Level Up: Automate Getting Online Reviews

You didn’t think we forgot, did you? Sure, we gave you the automated email sequence we use, but we didn’t tell you how to automate it in your business… yet! We keep our word, so keep reading to learn how to automate getting online reviews for your business.

It all comes down to having the right process in place.

Here’s a simple process you can implement today:
1. Setup an automated email drip campaign in your email tool to ask customers for reviews
2. Use our email templates above to setup your three-part email sequence
3. Have the “Review Us Now” button go to a landing page where your customers can select which review site platform they want to review your business on
4. When they click the review site, have it link directly to the page where they can leave the review (without having to click “write a review” on the site)
BONUS: To increase the odds of them leaving a review, provide instructions for each review site on how to leave a review

This process outlined above only requires one tool: an email automation software or tool (examples: mailchimp, drip, constant contact, etc.)

Want the Easy Route?

If this process sounds difficult, time consuming, or more work than you can handle right now, don’t worry! We have you covered at KAHA with our reviews service. We offer an easy to use software solution that does everything we described in this article, and more:

    • Automates email requests and follow up for reviews
    • Directs customers to a landing page with all of your review site options
    • Provides them instructions on how to leave a review on the review site of their choice
    • Links them directly to the “write a review” page to reduce steps/clicks and improve the chances of them leaving a review.
    • Plus, much more!
    • To learn more about our service, check out our online reviews service page, or schedule a FREE call with us.

About the Author

Ryan Chaffin is the founder of KAHA, and has 15+ years of experience helping businesses with their digital marketing efforts. Recently he helped a company increase their website visitor traffic by 18,900% and increase the percentage of web visitors that convert to leads by 600%, meaning the total combined effect generated 1,134x more leads than the company was previously generating. That strategy is what Ryan and the the KAHA team bring to our clients everyday.

Ready to Get More Google Reviews on Autopilot?

Let us help you generate, monitor, and showcase online reviews in a smooth, simple, and effective way. Our services are competitively priced and easy to use. Learn how to transform your online reviews with KAHA and book your FREE strategy session ($1,000 value) today!

SPEAK WITH A strategist