How to Get Google Reviews

Are reviews important? Any company that has stronger reviews than its competitors is bound to receive a sales boost. For these businesses, growth begins with establishing a good reputation that leads to an increase in footfall.

So how do you get your business on to Google reviews? How can you encourage your customers to leave you a 5* rating? Here are some answers to these important questions.

Setting up

Google is by far the most dominant review platform. Its reviews appear when looking at businesses on Google Search and Maps, telling customers which business of every type is the most well-liked and which is the closest.

If you’re wondering how to get Google reviews, the first thing you’ll need to do is register with Google Business. After verifying your account and inputting information about your business such as the address, opening hours and contact information, your business will appear on Google Maps.  

In registering, you’ll need to agree to Google’s terms of service. These terms state that in your hunt for positive reviews, you cannot pay or incentivize customers to review them. You can only ask for them, so be sure to follow their rules.

Once on Google Business, customers will be able to review you on their platform. But there are other benefits to being on Google Business. Google provides users with a marketing kit including posters, stickers and social media posts with links to your reviews page. You can print these and place them in windows and on counters as well as printing or sharing your best reviews. This is all free and designed to help you get more reviews.

How to get customers to leave reviews

You’re on Google Business and you can see your beautiful business on Maps. Now you need to find out how to get customer reviews on Google and have a strong, high rating. The most basic step you can take is to make it as easy as possible for anyone to leave a review. This means doing as much of the work for the customer as you can.

Google’s marketing materials provide readymade resources with the links a customer needs to reach your reviewing page. If you don’t want to use those, or you use other platforms as well as Google and want to share this information, you can create your own materials and ensure they have links on them.

Make leaving a review as easy as possible for the customer, as they may not want to pause their day to review your business while they are out and about. If they can take a card or know where to go to place a review later in the day, it increases the chance they will place the review.

The email receipt is another useful way of making this process easier for the customer. Epos Now’s email receipt functionality can send the review link directly to the customer's email when a purchase is made so they can place a review the next time they stop to check their email in the comfort of their own home. This way they do not need to find the website as you’ve done it for them.

Website review requests

Many businesses are now turning to the email receipt instead of the paper equivalent, but even if the customer prefers the paper version you can print the link on the receipt or direct them to your website.

If your business has a website, you’ll be able to create a Google reviews widget or a CTA (call to action)^[1]. A widget is a pop-up box that will allow visitors to see your rating on Google and quickly place a review if desired. A call to action is a statement designed to encourage or persuade someone into action. Either of these on your website will help in the pursuit of reviews.

This can be done on social media as well. Sharing links or putting them in your bio is easily done. Placing the links in as many places as possible makes your review page hard to miss so exploit every avenue you have available to get the word out.

Marketing campaigns

With email receipts, newsletters, contests, and gated online content, there are a number of ways you may obtain customer emails. You can ask each customer if they would like marketing emails and you can email the review link out to those that said yes.

Especially if you’re an older business just starting out on review platforms, you may be asking yourself how to get positive reviews online. But you have likely already built up a lot of good relationships with customers that would be happy to give you a boost. Marketing emails and social media campaigns are not to be sneered at and can produce good results.

The phrasing of these requests is crucial as it may influence the feelings the customer experiences as they write the review. Asking for anything they liked about their experience and any thoughts they have is a balanced way of asking for feedback.

Suggesting they mention a staff member they spoke to is recommended as people will often become attached to a business through your staff members and any pleasant conversations they have on-site.

Keep your message short and include any other news about the business so there are other points of interest and ensure you personalise each message. Or if you’re not a fan of these emails yourself, simply place the Google review link in your email signature and every happy customer you contact will have a chance to review you.

How to get more reviews once you’re up and running

Once the reviews start flooding in you’ll want to keep it that way. You’ll soon find yourself jumping on to Google to see if any more have come in and how they’re influencing your star rating.

This isn’t such a bad habit. When thinking about how to get reviews for your business you should consider the responses you give to those reviews. Respond to all in quick time whether they gave good or bad reviews. Good reviews should be given a warm thank you message to show your gratitude that someone visited, had a lovely time, and took a moment to make this public.

Those that give negative reviews often don’t want that review to be the end. These are cases where something went wrong and mistakes were made, but such customers will expect this isn’t how you usually conduct business. Reaching out to them and offering them reparations in the form of a free meal, a voucher, or a simple conversation can make all the difference. Many will go back and edit either the message or the rating, and your actions will show everyone that you care that people enjoy visits to your establishment.

Charm with your customer service

You may think it goes without saying, but when it comes to reviews your product is more important than anything else. This is what’s being reviewed. If you receive poor responses, read the messages and see what it is that customers aren’t enjoying about your service. 

If staff members' names are mentioned this is something you can quickly put right. Working on your team’s customer service skills can help create bonds between business and customer. People will come back to speak again with staff members they feel a connection to.

Customers are especially likely to revisit and review when they feel business responds to their needs and they have a voice, so if you listen to their feedback and shape your business around what they like you’ll soon find both product and staff get golden reviews.