5 Simple Steps to Get More Customer Reviews

Reading time: 4 minutes.

When the competition online is fierce, having enough positive reviews may be exactly what will make new customers choose your store over someone else’s.

Let’s agree though—getting customer reviews is a pain in the a**. Today’s email will suggest simple ideas on how to get more positive reviews that will help turn your followers into customers.

Just like running your business processes, gathering customer reviews isn't a one-time task—it's an ongoing process. Be prepared 😀 

1. Use Every Opportunity

If you have any communication with your customers, whether through DMs or texting, take the chance to get testimonials. Use those interactions as an opportunity to ask for a review. You can either send them a link to the site where you need the review posted or take a screenshot of their message and add it to your site.

This kind of review sharing (screenshots with messages) is trending right now as it creates the perception that these reviews are written by real clients. Everyone knows that plenty of websites use fake reviews. It doesn’t just matter to have them—they also need to look genuine.

2. Be Human

If you’re in a service business or talking to your happy customers in real life, don’t hesitate to express how much you value their support. Just explain how their recommendations are crucial to the future of your small business and ask them to leave a review.

If this seems daunting, worry not—plenty of people do this. Also, people love to support genuine people.

3. Offer Them Something in Exchange

Don't underestimate the power of incentives. Offering incentives, such as discounts or freebies, in exchange for reviews can motivate customers to share their experiences.

You can do so by emailing your customers a few days after they have received their purchase or posting on social media, asking them about their experience. Even those big platforms with hundreds or thousands of reviews do this—this is exactly why they have so many reviews!

If you receive a positive review, approve it for your website immediately. If the review is not what you expected, take the feedback, talk to the customer (if needed), and figure out the areas for improvement.

4. Be Resourceful

Don't forget to leverage your existing network, especially at the beginning. Reach out to friends, family, and colleagues and ask them to leave reviews to kickstart your review collection efforts. You can offer them to trial your products or services for free in exchange for a review.

Try going the extra mile—if anyone from your network feels especially good in front of the camera, why not ask them to record a short video review? This new form of review is increasingly gaining popularity and feels the most genuine of all. It’s also content for you to use. Content = $$$.

5. Make It Worth Talking About

People with bad experiences are much more likely to talk about them publicly compared to those who had positive experiences. Why? Not just because of human nature, but also because they actually have an incentive to say something new!

Think about it—just because you shipped your package to your customer on time and the product came in properly packed and in one piece is not something worth talking about. It’s a basic expectation.

Therefore, nothing new to talk about.

Now if it came in broken, the customer is now surprised and pissed—here, we have something to talk about!

That’s why I always talk about making your customers excited about buying from you—it just makes your life so much easier!

As a small business, you have even more opportunities to go above and beyond to wow with a 5-star customer experience. Now that’s something they would happily talk about since most businesses just cover the basic expectations and that’s it.

I’ve Got the Reviews, Now What?

Don’t be timid about it. If you’ve got nice reviews on your website, marketplace, or Google Business profile—share them on your social media regularly too! If you don’t show it, they won’t see it.

By the way, if you think all these ideas are great, but... who has time for them? Remember that a lot of the work can be automated nowadays. One thing that helps me save hours every week is AI. Improving customer experience and setting up templates for your conversations with customers is something AI can be particularly useful for. However, finding the right prompts takes time too.

I recently launched a collection of 12,000+ ChatGPT prompts to make running your business much more efficient. I am convinced everyone would benefit from this list. It’s also ridiculously cheap right now on Gumroad (new account, need to get my first orders for the algorithm to love me 😊), so consider checking it out here: ChatGPT prompts for entrepreneurs & marketing managers.