How to Get Online Reviews Via Text

When consumers start to look for new goods or services, one of the first places they start their search is with their peers – their friends and family. These recommendations have often been called ‘word of mouth marketing’. Basically, if a customer is satisfied with the service they received, they’re going to tell their network about it and pass the word along. Word of mouth marketing was the unwritten secret weapon of B2C marketing for many years, until recently when a new technology emerged that made it easy to see what everyone – not just your personal network – was saying about a specific organization: online reviews. Online reviews are now one of the most critical factors in helping consumers make a purchase decision:

• 81% of consumers look at online reviews as the first step in their buying process
• 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as an in-person recommendation
• 87% of consumers won’t even consider doing business with an organization with poor reviews

Modern consumers aren’t just looking for online reviews. They’re looking for the highest-rated businesses with the most reviews, aka the places they’re most likely to have a good buying experience.

Here are three quick and easy ways your team can drive more high-quality online reviews:

1. Deliver amazing customer service. This is the first step in ensuring your team will receive 5-star reviews every time.
2. Celebrate your good reviews. Respond to every single review and share your best ones on your website, in your store, or in your newsletters.
3. Ask more customers to leave reviews. By sending customers a follow-up text with a review link ready to go, you can facilitate more reviews while making it easy for your customers.

Thanks to the growth of direct-to-consumer text messaging, businesses are getting more responses to survey and review requests than email or phone calls. Sending a review request via text rather than email can result in 35x more reviews. The best part is that using texting to ask for a review hits all of the above points to drive high-quality, 5-star reviews. Sending customers an easy, direct link to a review site or survey shows that you value their time and that you want to make it as easy as possible for them to leave a review, which can increase customer satisfaction. You can thank customers directly over text for leaving a review and continue a conversation offline if their review raised a question or inquiry.

Simply put, online reviews are incredibly valuable to B2C businesses. Increasing your online rating by just a single star can increase revenue by 9% or more. It’s well worth the time and effort to find new and creative ways to collect high-quality reviews from customers, and text messaging is a great way to kick-start this imitative. Your current customers will appreciate your approach, and your prospective customers are sure to notice the rave reviews.

You can learn more about how text messaging can help increase your online reviews – and your revenue – with our newest eBook, 4 Secrets to Increasing Business Revenue in 2020.

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