9 Proactive Ways To Promote Good Online Reviews

Promoting new reviews is a good way to ensure your online reputation is squeaky clean. Considering reviews can form consumers’ purchasing decisions, you should find new ways to increase your online rating. 

But is it enough to just sit back and let the new reviews roll in?

Unfortunately, no. While unhappy reviewers are quick to vent their frustration online, customers satisfied with your service will simply forget to reward you with their feedback. 

So, how can you address this imbalance?

By taking the first step yourself and doing everything it takes to gain proactive reviews. 

Before we show you some tips, let’s take a quick look at the overall importance of your online reviews for the success of your business.

How Important Are Online Reviews?

Modern consumers turn into bona fide sleuths when it comes to finding a product or a service online. In that regard, positive reviews can eliminate any doubts, boost the prospect’s confidence, and drastically speed up the purchase. 

Equally as important, shining reviews play a huge role in your search visibility, especially in local searches (super important for contractors). Responses your customers leave likely contain a few ranking keywords, so if the stars align (and with enough reviews, they will), expect to see a lot of search engine traffic from people who came across your feedback page online.

User-generated content, such as comments on review platforms, also presents a living and breathing communication between you and your loyal customers. When you start responding to feedback and working harder to continuously generate new reviews, it presents an image that your brand truly has nothing to hide and you’re solely focused on improving your products or services.

Last, but not least, both kinds of customer feedback contain real-world insights that can inform your business decisions. For example, if you notice most customers keep praising one particular product, you can promote it with PPC ads, even going as far as using the snippets of a few reviews as a copy. On the other hand, negative feedback, while annoying to deal with, can serve as a way to address some glaring issues with your offering, more so if multiple reviewers hit the same points. 

Ways To Build Proactive Reviews 

Here are techniques you can use to quickly generate proactive reviews and build a consistent stream of customer feedback:

1. Find the right moment

As soon as a customer makes some positive comments to your staff or makes an online purchase, use this moment to your advantage. Since their happiness is at an all-time high at that moment (at least in the purchasing cycle), they’re more likely to leave a positive review. 

This can be an effective method for proactive reviews, but with certain businesses, it may be more appropriate to provide the customers with enough time to experience what they purchased. This could be a day or two, it depends on the type of business or the product. But don’t wait too long - leverage the moment where your brand is top-of-mind and you’ll quickly generate a large number of online reactions.

2. Include a review section on your website

This doesn’t have to be anything fancy - you can include a dedicated space on your business website where consumers can easily share their opinion of your offering. Doing so is beneficial because customers won’t have to go through multiple online channels to find their opinions on your business. 

How can you do this?

We recommend using a review widget or implementing a simple section in your product listings, allowing consumers to quickly scan them while browsing through your “bag of goodies”. 

3. Get in-store signage

If you operate out of a physical location, you can use banners, brochures, or bill receipts to encourage some fresh feedback. QR codes are very effective for this as they can take the customers straight to your review platform of choice. 

4. Ask for feedback in person

Proactive reviews can be easily achieved by approaching the customer at the right moment. If you own a restaurant, for instance, you can ask for a review right after you receive a compliment. 

5. Explain how short the process is

Many customers are hesitant to provide you with feedback online because they assume it will take them too long. When asking in person, feel free to illustrate how long the process is - the customer will be more likely to oblige. 

6. Simplify the process

Proactive reviews generation is all about reducing friction during each step of the process. Provide direct links to platforms where you’re trying to amass reviews, but also don’t stray away from other methods such as the Likert scale or campaign surveys. 

7. Claim a listing on various review sites

Being omnipresent on various review platforms allows you to control which information is displayed and provides more opportunities to engage with your customers. As a plus, every listing you claim is an opportunity to rank high in search results, further increasing your online visibility. 

8. Inspire your audience to leave feedback on social media

Social media platforms are an amazing avenue for businesses to connect with a larger auditorium. But did you know you can use these networks for proactive reviews?

It may require some personality on your behalf. You can make a post where you share one positive review and ask the customers with similar stories to share on some review pages or social media directly. 

9. Automate the process

While methods of building proactive reviews provided above seem simple, you’ll still have to regularly interact with your reviewers and work hard to generate new customer feedback. 

What makes this a lot easier is ReviewArm, an online reputation platform that automates the process and helps you take this effort to a whole new level. 

If you implement all the techniques you learned here, you’ll probably have listings on multiple platforms. Even though this is necessary to boost your reputation, it slightly complicates matters as you’ll have to move back and forth between each site, scanning for new reviews. ReviewArm eliminates this hassle by unifying all the platforms in one dashboard from where you will receive alerts and also be able to respond to each one.

You can also generate new reviews a lot faster. By sending out a review request via SMS or email at a predetermined time, you can build a steady stream of customer feedback without moving a finger. 

ReviewArm also has an AI feature that analyzes the wording in the reviews and automatically generates unique responses. Best of all, the responses always exhibit a human tone, which will impress your customers and prospects alike.

Generate Proactive Reviews With Review arm

ReviewArm is a cutting-edge online reputation management platform that fits effortlessly into your marketing stack and automates laborious review management workflows. Due to its pay-as-you-go pricing model (you only pay for how much you use it), it will scale with your business and support your growth for many years to come.

ReviewArm will grow with your business and continue to serve you well as your number of monthly reviews increases. 

Ready for a test ride? Try the free trial!