How to Increase Online Reviews by Incentivizing Your Customers
Article Contributed by: Cindy Mielke
Accruing online reviews is essential for both brick-and-mortar shops and online businesses of all types. Online reviews, or lack thereof, can make or break your company's credibility.
Unfortunately, getting customers to leave online reviews isn't always easy and presents several challenges.
If you incentivize your customers to leave online reviews for your products and services, the chances of participation are much higher. By offering rewards, you can encourage more people to leave reviews.
Here’s how to use incentives to get more online reviews and build a sterling brand reputation.
Why Online Reviews Are Important for Your Business
The benefits that a sizable collection of online reviews can provide for your business are extensive.
Trust: Online reviews provide social proof and build trust among prospective customers. Positive reviews prove the quality and reliability of your products and services.
SEO: Reviews help to improve your search engine optimization. Google specifically considers reviews to be a significant ranking factor. This means more reviews will grow your visibility in search results.
Feedback: Reviews often contain actionable feedback from your customers. They highlight your strengths and weaknesses, which gives you a clear picture of where to improve.
Competitive advantage: Companies with positive reviews often have a competitive edge. Prospects are more likely to choose a business with a strong online reputation
Consumer decisions: Many consumers rely on reviews to make their decisions. They trust the experiences of other customers far more than regular advertising.
Credibility: A collection of positive reviews builds your brand's credibility and authority in your area of the market. It tells potential customers your business is reputable and safe to buy from.
What Is an Incentivized Review?
An incentivized review is an online review written by one of your customers in exchange for an incentive, reward, or prize. Incentivized online reviews help you build trust, better SEO results, direct feedback on your products and services, and much more.
When incentivizing reviews, it's important to be transparent about who benefits from the situation and in what ways. Ensure your customers understand the terms and conditions of the incentive and do not demand a positive review. Doing so can undermine the trust and credibility of the offer and run the risk of breaking the rules of the platform you’re using to promote.
Ways to Incentivize Reviews
Depending on your business type, there are many ways to encourage your customer base to provide online reviews.
Discounts and coupons: Consider offering your customers a discount or coupon they can use on their next purchase. This will encourage them to leave feedback and purchase again.
Free products and services: Offer your customers a free sample or trial of your product or service. This enables them to try your offering and may produce a positive review.
Contests: Run a contest where your prospects and customers can enter to win a prize. This sparks interest, increases engagement and sharing, and encourages reviews.
Reward points: Have a loyalty program where your customers can enroll and earn points or rewards. Then they can spend points they earn on prizes you dictate in advance.
Exclusive access: Give your customers exclusive access to new products, services, or features. This makes them feel appreciated while incentivizing feedback.
Gift cards: Offer gift cards in various denominations and at multiple times of the year. This also encourages repeat purchases and use of your services all year round. There are businesses you can partner with to make creating and distributing gift cards quick and easy.
Personalized gifts: Send thank-you notes or small gifts to customers who leave reviews. This can make your customers feel appreciated.
Referral programs: Build a referral program where customers can earn rewards for referring friends or family members who leave reviews. This may encourage word-of-mouth marketing and expand your customer base.
How to Promote Your Incentives
Promoting the incentives you plan to provide in exchange for online reviews requires a strategy that is composed of transparency, authenticity, and compliance with specific guidelines.
Leveraging various marketing channels such as social media, email, website banners, blogging, and targeted campaigns can help spread the word about your incentives. Use compelling messaging highlighting the benefits of participating in the review program to attract attention and encourage engagement.
However, it’s important to communicate the incentives you are offering to ensure they align with the policies of the platform where you are acquiring reviews and the platform where you’re promoting your incentives. Transparency builds trust with consumers and avoids the potential for penalties.
It's also important to maintain your authenticity throughout the process. Emphasize the value of real feedback while offering incentives as a token of appreciation to those who participate.
A digital marketing company can help you build out your incentive program and increase its visibility.
Getting Started
There are many ways to get started on your incentivization campaign, but the most important thing is that you get started in the first place. Choose a starting point that makes the most sense for the amount of resources you have to commit to the project as well as the vision of your business. From there, you can scale up and iterate until you get the results you’re looking for.
