Hello Big Ponders!
This week we’re helping you to increase the trust and confidence you communicate through reviews.
Google reviews can make a HUGE difference to how you are perceived. Creating a process to manage your reviews is another relatively easy win.
Again - no tech knowledge needed. We will walk you through it in this new video clip.
Let’s dive in.
Click to watch the video.
Here’s the video chat transcript in full. Enjoy!
Video Chat Transcript
Andrew: Hi there. My name is Andrew McGarry and you're watching another Big Pond Digital video chat. With me today is Ari Pournaras and we're going to follow up on the previous video where we talked about getting value out of Google my business and this one is by customer review tips. And if anybody knows a thing or two about getting customer reviews and helping local business, it's Ari. So first question, how do we get more out of Google reviews? Ari, over to you.
Ari: So two really quick ways of actually doing it is sharing your profile, your review profile with potential customers and clients and then following up and trying to build up as many reviews as possible. And so this is really quick and easy. Anybody can actually do that. And you essentially grab the link from your Google My Business. And once you have that link, you can email it or text it to clients and ask them to leave a review. And that works a lot better than just asking them to Google your business on Google because, you know, other businesses might come up, you might get a little bit messy, but this is a really clean and simple way to do it.
Andrew: Right? Yeah, that makes sense.
Ari: Yeah. This is basically a screenshot of me, Googling our company. So you just click on maps. And then the next one, you get this panel where you just copy the link and that's you. Easy, simple. And so you get the link and you just email it to your existing clients, new clients, anybody that's willing to actually leave a positive review.
Andrew: Okay. So if you have customers, you want them to leave reviews, that's the icon where you can get the link from.
Ari: Yes. The second tip is if you can, ask clients that are willing to give you a review to describe the service within the review. So essentially all you want here is somebody to... A lot of people might just click on the five star rating and that's that. But what you want is for them to describe the service a little bit in more detail, maybe a couple of sentences. And what that does is if you... if they reference a relevant keyword within the review, it sort of helps your overall profile rank in Google. And so that's an important one. Sometimes it can be a little bit tricky, but if you've got somebody that's willing to give you a review, just ask them to write a sentence to describe the service. That's as easy as that.
Andrew: Right. Yeah. So, for example, if you think that the optician did a great service, you mention the fact that they're an optician in your review.
Ari: Exactly. And this is an example that we use for it for a dentist. And the term is 'dental implants Glasgow'. And you can see that we've highlighted the keywords that Google references within the, within the panel. And so all that, all that stuff is important. You want them to leave reviews in the first place, but if they can be descriptive a little bit about the service, a sentence or a couple, then that's ideal.
Andrew: Yes, it makes sense.
Ari: So yeah, to summarize, you get the link from your listing, email it, text it to your customers and you can also include it in your email signature, share it on Facebook, Twitter and other social channels. And the important thing is here to actually follow up too, because when you ask for a review and sometimes... in most cases people won't go out of their way to leave a review straight away. So people are busy. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Two or three times. And I think anything more than that can get a little bit annoying, but two or three times to get that review. And then you can reply to it just by downloading the free app on your phone and just in your own time. Just replying to the reviews keeps your profile fresh in Google.
Andrew: Can I ask, when you say the free app, is that a Google app or which app are we talking about?
Ari: So that's the free Google My Business app. If you search for that on the App Store and you should be able to download it, sign into your profile and just manage your Google my business profile through that, reply to reviews, and you can even enable messages if you want to do that thing too - to get messages from your customers. But yeah, that's just an easy, a simple way of doing that. The more you keep up with the reviews, the more you build up your profile on Google. And that leads to more traffic, which leads to more phone calls, leads and sales.
Andrew: Great. So to recap on that quickly folks, you can download the free Google My Business app, you know, use it from your phone or your tablet. You can manage the whole thing from there, as Ari said. It's free, it's simple, it's easy to do. And we all know the value of of reading reviews, helping us understand if this is a product or a service that we're really interested in.
So thanks, Ari, for for sharing your advice today. That sounds like it's a really valuable tip for for businesses. And hopefully we'll do more in this series where we can describe, you know, more options that businesses have to take advantage of these kind of free options that can help you promote your business and hopefully improve your perception and how people think about, you know, that you are a five star business and that people should check you out. Okay, folks, that's all from us today. Thanks very much.
Tell Us What Challenges You Are Facing
Want more advice? Call us on 01292 844899. If you’re in a hurry, email claire@bigponddigital.co.uk and let’s set up a chat.
Until next time - good luck!
The Team @ Big Pond
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