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Asking Customers For Google Reviews Examples Included
Asking Customers For Google Reviews – Examples & How To Do It
To start this conversation off, the first thing we need to understand is why is it important to be asking customers for Google Reviews in the first place.
The most obvious answer for most business owners is, we just need more reviews!
If you do a search for your ‘Digital Doorway’ and don’t find yourself in the map pack and your competitors that are having success reaching the map pack have more reviews than you do, it’s a pretty straight forward assumption that the number of reviews might be one reason why they are beating you out.
Getting more and increasing your review count is just one part of the equation in why you need to be asking for Google reviews.
Let’s Dig into it, I’ve got examples, templates and even a couple FREE tools to get your Review Grade UP & simplify this whole process of asking for Google Reviews – Read on!
Reviews & Reputation Management Are One of the Top 3 Marketing Problems For Local Businesses & Contractors
That’s right, if you are reading this, you are not alone. It turns out lots of business owners are thinking about reviews and reputation management.
It might interest you to know that the average consumer spends 13 minutes and 45 seconds reading online reviews before making a decision to contact your business or take that next step in their customer journey. That’s not some random stat that I just made up either, you can check it out for yourself over on Bright Local.
So, with everyone checking you out before you even get a chance to speak with them, investing in your ‘Digital Doorway’ by building a good review game is a strategy guaranteed to deliver a healthy ROI.
Review Content Builds Your Keyword Profile Naturally
When you ask your customers to write a few sentences about their experience that would tell others what they liked most about doing business with you, the keywords your customers use will naturally help both prospective customers and search engines to better understand what your business is all about. This is HUGE!
Google loves themselves so much, not kidding – it’s kind of weird but they prefer content written on their own assets over every other source, including your website. That gives the content that is shared in reviews and your responses to those reviews a lot of weight.
So while lots of reviews is great, it’s the content that goes into those reviews that actually has a bigger impact on ranking your ‘Digital Doorway’.
What’s Your Review Grade – Click To Get Your SnapShot Report – It’s Like a Report Card For Your Business
The Steps To Asking For Google Reviews
The process for asking for and getting more reviews is actually pretty simple. If you follow these steps I can promise you that you will get more reviews. Check out our client Ken Mullen, an N-Hance franchise owner in Cincinnati. He is almost always the highest ranked Franchise amongst his peers. If you don’t follow these steps, I can’t say what you will get – so be like Ken, just do it!
Step #1: Ask Permission
This is the most important part of the entire Review process and needs to be done before you send out a single review request email (more on that in a second).
You need to ask your client for permission to send them an email.
Here’s why, we are all looking for quick emails to delete and clean up our inbox. So when you ask permission, a couple things happen. Your client will be expecting an email from you and they will be less likely to delete it and more likely to respond because they told you they would.
Come up with your own permission script but I usually recommend this conversation take place at the conclusion of the job or transaction with the person who completes the sale, reviews the finished goods, gets the contract signed or takes payment. When the transaction is complete before you say, have a great day… say something like.
Mr/Mrs Customer, reviews are so important to us these days. If I send you an email with a link to our review site would you be able to take a couple minutes to write a few sentences to tell others what you liked most about doing business with us?
Tailor the pitch to fit your business and services, but make sure to ask and when they say yes, send them the email right away. Hit the iron while it’s HOT!
Alright, that’s it. Easy right?
Step #2: Send A Pre-formatted Email With Links
Now no one has time to be writing all kinds of emails or figuring out how to format links, so either build a template or use our simple automated tool we call, Customer Voice. It is part of our Local Business Online Toolkit that you can use for FREE when you access our Snapshot Report below.
I will share tell you more about Customer Voice in a minute but first let’s look at some examples of emails asking for Google Reviews:
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N-Hance Wood Refinishing – Specialists in Kitchen Cabinet Refinishing
Ken actually sends this template from his phone when he is finishing the sale and doesn’t leave the kitchen until they get the email. Here is the actual copy of the email he sends after asking permission when the job is complete:
Subject Line: [NHANCE] We Think You Are Awesome!
Body:
Thank You – We Appreciate Your Business!I wanted to take a moment and say ‘Thanks’ for doing us the honor of becoming an N-Hance customer. We are grateful for your business, and we want to make sure you love the RENEWED woodwork in your home as much as we enjoyed working for you! Customer satisfaction is very important to us and if for any reason you feel you are unable to give us a 5 out of 5 rating, I would like to hear from you so I can make things right. You can reach me by replying to this email or calling me directly at (513) 467-9663. If you feel we did provide you with a 5 star product and service, we would like to ask a favor. We would like your help spreading the word about our business on your Social Media Networks, it will only take you a couple minutes… it would mean a lot to me because Online Reviews have become so important these days! Here are a few steps you can follow that we would sure appreciate! 1. CLICK HERE TO VISIT OUR GOOGLE BUSINESS LISTING… Log into your Google Account, Please give us 5 Stars and write a Positive Review of your experience with NHance. 2. CLICK HERE TO VISIT OUR FACEBOOK REVIEW PAGE… Log into your Facebook account and Please ‘Like’ our page, Please give us 5 Stars and then write a few comments to let people know what you liked most about our service. If the options above are not your preferred method of communication, please share with your friends and family off social media as well. If you know someone that would like to speak with us, we will be more than happy to contact them. Just email their contact information to us. Sincerely, |
To make sure you keep getting these emails, please add cincinnati@nhancelocal.com to your address book or whitelist us. Want out of the loop? Unsubscribe. Our postal address: 301 S. Miami Ave Cleves, OH 45002
|
104 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Star Google Reviews isn’t too shabby – Keep up the Great work Ken!
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This second example is from a Hair Salon that we just set up this past week.
They were so confident in their relationships with their clients and ability to ask permission that they just went straight to the point and asked for the review.
Subject Line: We Think You Are Awesome
Body:
This example and the next one below come from our Customer Voice tool, which delivers beautifully formatted emails with a couple key options.
The first thing that is cool, if the person receiving the email is already logged into Google, that’s the only button we give them on this first email, because that’s the one that counts. We will send a follow up email thanking the for the review and offering up Facebook or other other review sites as a secondary option.
The second thing that is cool, is if they aren’t completely happy and click the Contact Us button, the review goes to our internal review site where we hold back all reviews that aren’t 4 stars or greater… Tricky right?
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This last example comes from a home improvement company that we work with.
We are encouraging them to ask for more reviews because they are lagging behind the industry standard so we put together this template for them using our Customer Voice app inside of our Local Business Online Toolkit .
Subject Line: Thanks for choosing us!
Body:
——-
Regardless if we use plain text links like the first example or something prettier with images and icons for links, we always recommend sending people directly to the exact spot where they can fill out the review, like you see in this next image.
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Step #3: Responding to Reviews
Now that you have figured out how to get reviews, you need to respond to them when they come in and it’s ultra important to do this in a way that you can inject your brand terms and keywords into the reply for Google to see.
In the example below, both the customer’s review and the response have both brand terms and keywords used throughout, this is GOLD folks!
Brand Terms Used in Review Example Above: N-Hance, N-Hance Wood Refinishing of Cincinnati
Keywords Used: oak cabinets white, kitchen, paint your Oak kitchen cabinets, kitchen cabinet refinishing services
If you can find away to finesse the name of your business once and a couple keywords into the response, that is fantastic.
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The other thing you want to do is thank them the customer.
Think of your perfect customer when you are writing anything about your business. Put yourself in their shoes and read what you write as if you were your own customer – that’s who you are writing for, not just the past customer to thank them but for the future customer who you want to do business with.
NOTE ON NEGATIVE REVIEWS
Over the years I have talked to lots of business owners who remember that one BAD Review, it’s like it just burns their A$$ and when you ask about it, you can tell they have been stewing on it for years.
The best defence for these is a good offence.
When you have 20,30,104 great reviews, one bad egg doesn’t spoil the whole carton.
People can generally pick out the crazy people who scathed you with a one star review for some reason that only makes sense to them.
If you get a negative review, bury it with a hundred great reviews – it’s the only way to do it.
Never take the fight to the customer! In other words, if you do get a negative review, do not engage the person more. Simply apologize and tell them you are sorry they feel that way, offer again to try to help if possible and if it is the first time you are hearing about it, drop everything and reach out to them to try to fix things up so they are happy.
If you can pull someone back from the dark side, they will be a happy customer for life.
This is something that I can’t stress enough, I have been involved in too many cases, after the fact, trying to clean up a mess that could have been avoided by just saying sorry and moving on. Trust me when I tell you, saying sorry and refusing to climb down into the gutter with some unreasonable person isn’t for their benefit, it is for YOURS!
I probably should have lead with this but the most important part of reviews is to make sure you are doing an impeccable job of what you say you do in the first place. I only want to work with people who want to be the best in the business, so that almost goes without saying to me… but really people – under promise and over deliver and always treat people with respect while making them feel special.
My Dad always told me to do more than your paid for as an investment in your future – great advise for any business owner.
Customer Voice: Make Asking Customers For Google Reviews Easy
At this point, I promise I haven’t held anything back.
There is enough information in this article, including creative ways to ask for Google Reviews, asking for a review template and three solid examples of asking customers for Google Reviews.
Remember what I said off the top, that reviews are one of the top 3 challenges for business owners? That’s why it has been built into our Local Business Online Toolkit, it’s too important to put off another day – make today the day start building this part of your ‘Digital Doorway’ and you are literally minutes away from connecting with customers to ask for reviews.
To Automate this process once and make repeating it easy, scroll to the bottom of the page and fill out our FREE Snapshot Report to get access to your very own Local Business Online Toolkit and the Customer Voice App.
Then come back and take 10 minutes to follow this process to set up your Review Template.
1. Start by logging into the Business App. (Click the Start Sending button below)
2. On the dashboard, select the Customer Voice Product from the left side menu.
3. On the Customer Voice Module, Click Templates from the left side menu, then Click the 3 dots beside ‘Default’ on the ‘My Preferred Sites Review Request’ and select Edit Template.
4. Customize the email that you will send to people to ask them to write a review.
Change the subject line if you wish, make sure you add your email address to Reply Email so you don’t lose any replies. Then customize the header image and copy as you see fit. You don’t have to go crazy here but you can thank your clients and ask them to write a review. (Don’t change any of the short codes or the contact us button – I will talk about those next)
Click preview to see how the email will appear and the close and continue editing if neccesary and make sure you click save to save your changes when done.
5. With your email template set up, click on Settings from the left side menu. Under Preferred sites, you should see Facebook and Google both checked if you have connected those accounts. I recommend checking the box for Google Review Prioritization as this will guide them to write a Google Review first. Click Save!
6. Click Confirmation Messages and you can change the copy reviewers will see after they have left a Positive or Negative review.
Note on Negative Reviews
The reason we have the Blue Contact us button for less than perfect reviews, is these take the reviewer to our internal review page to give a rating and write their concern. These come to you prior to being displayed on Google or Facebook uness they are 4 Stars or above where the reviewer is given the option to also post it to your preferred sites. This is a Big Deal in maintaining your reputation.
7. Time to test your template. Click the ‘Send Request’ button in the bottom right corner.
8. Enter your own information. Their are a couple fields that may be helpful in tracking who responds to your requests and who is asking for them. Tags are meant to identify groups of people. You can skip that for this test, but in the future you could group customers by service, products, however you like. Employee first and last name will track which employees are using the tool, you can assign this task to one person or make people responsible for their own clients. It is up to you. Lastly, the clients phone number is optional, you can upgrade to PRO and purchase an SMS package to send reviews by text message if you think this will increase your response rate but for most, email works just fine.
Click Send and go to your inbox to see how it looks and click the the button links to see how they direct clients directly to the review section of your preferred sites. Make changes to your template as neccessary and you are ready to go.
There you have it, fresh off the press for 2021 – Asking Customers For Google Reviews Examples and How to Do It.
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