When I started New Life Bath & Kitchen in 1979, word-of-mouth referrals and traditional offline advertising, like signs, door hangers, and mailers, kept the phone ringing. I was actually one of the few contractors in my area that had signs on our truck, but now that’s pretty common practice.
Fast forward a couple decades and our business relies heavily on the Internet and our website. They serve as advertising tools to help us acquire new qualified leads. We still use traditional offline advertising, but the channels we use to reach new customers have certainly evolved over the last decade.
A notable percentage of those leads come from customers finding our profile on social networks like Houzz, Yelp, Porch, Thumbtack, and Angie’s List.
Up until a few years ago, positive feedback from our clients was simply added to a testimonials page on our website. Over the years, we’ve come to realize the importance of earning online feedback across social networks. After experimenting with different approaches on the networks, we found the approach that matters most to our business.
Are Reviews That Important?
This is a tough question that may vary from business to business. One survey found 88% of participants have been influenced by an online review when making a buying decision. We know from personal experience that customers who find us on Yelp and other social networks are reading our reviews.
It’s also worth mentioning that the number of positive reviews you have on Yelp, Houzz, and other platforms is factored into how highly your business appears in their organic, non-paid results.
Evaluate Which Social Networks Matter Most
Almost every third-party platform has the option for your customers to leave reviews, and they actively encourage it. The conundrum is, which websites should you have satisfied customers leave feedback? We knew we needed to be selective and strategic.
To add to the confusion, the number of online profiles you can create as a contractor seems almost endless and includes Thumbtack, Angie’s List, Porch, HomeAdvisor, Google My Business, and so on. If you have an established presence on a social network that’s already driving qualified leads, I’d recommend starting with those. If you’re looking to branch out, identify the two or three that constantly appear in Google for keywords related to your business.
To clarify this point, to the right is a screenshot of a Google result for the search “Kitchen Remodeling San Luis Obispo.” You can see that Yelp, Houzz, and Angie’s List are all highly listed on this search result.
Develop a Repeatable Process
Once we understood the importance of online feedback, it was time to develop a repeatable process. For us, it was trial and error.
Approach 1: Creating a Reviews Page
After we had solidified our list of priority networks based on search results and actual qualified leads, the next step was to develop an easy way for the customer to leave a review. To solve this problem, we created a reviews page on our website.
We have logos and links on this page that take our customers directly to where they can leave feedback on their experience with our company. While the process of emailing each customer with a link was repeatable, it wasn’t necessarily scalable.
Approach 2: Utilizing Our Email Marketing Platform
In an effort to develop a scalable solution, we decided to create a version of our reviews page in MailChimp. The process involved pulling customer emails from our CRM on projects that were marked as complete, and sending out a batch of emails to those customers.
We did see some new reviews come in, but felt we could be doing better.
Approach 3: The Personal Touch
The final (and most successful) approach was to train our team to let customers know that we’d appreciate feedback on their experience with our company. It made sense to have the people working directly with our clients let them know that we’d truly value their honest opinion on how we performed to their expectations.
Respond to Your Reviews
In addition to it just being good practice, most networks recommend that you respond to your reviews. Make sure you are monitoring your profiles and can respond promptly when a customer leaves online feedback. Making this a practice allows you to personally thank those who took the time to discuss their experience with your company.
Lessons Learned
By not asking for a review on a specific network, you’re allowing your customer to leave online feedback on the platform they’re most comfortable. The reality is not everyone is active on Yelp and not everyone has an account on Houzz.
In fact, on Yelp, a review from a new user account will likely end up in the dreaded “not recommended” category, which does not count towards your rating and is hidden on your profile. However, a client may have a Facebook profile, a Houzz account, or a Gmail address (required to leave a review on Google), so providing options will give you the highest acquisition rate.
Don’t Pay or Offer a Customer Compensation or a Review
During our initial meeting on the most effective approach to earn online reviews, one idea was thrown out to provide our clients with some type of compensation. In digging a little deeper, we discovered this is really frowned upon and can land you in hot water if you’re caught. In fact, for Yelp, it’s technically against their terms of service to even ask for a review--although they do encourage you to add their badge and link back to your profile.
Wrapping It Up
While everything I’ve discussed has worked to some degree for our companies, I’d encourage you to take what we’ve learned and develop a customized solution that works for your business and your satisfied customers.
