Read: your business has been stalked and is being stalked every day, and what people are finding is either improving or reducing the chance that they reach out to you.
Are your online reviews hurting or helping your leads and conversion?
In a growing business, online reviews are an important lever for both leads and conversion. More than half of consumers won’t use a business if it has less than a 4-star rating (Brightlocal, 2018) while 78 per cent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations (Brightlocal, 2018).
The chances are that you are having more ‘first appointments’ than you realise, it’s just that they’re happening online, without you knowing.
Google recently changed the game
There are a number of ways that you can be managing your online reputation including your company website, LinkedIn profile and review sites such as Adviser Ratings who do an excellent job at capturing individual adviser reviews from verified clients.
But when it comes to your business, recent changes to Google’s algorithm have taken Google Reviews from the category of ‘nice-to-do’ to ‘must-do’. To illustrate this, do a quick Google search for financial adviser or financial planner, as well as the suburb where your office is located.
You’ll most likely see that Google Maps (i.e. Google Reviews) are now appearing just below the ads and above the search results. Most people doing their homework on a potential business like yours to work with won’t even make it past this section. They’ll scan the Google Reviews and prepare a shortlist of businesses to investigate further. Businesses with a high star rating will make the cut and those with low star ratings get overlooked.
And if you don’t even have a Google business listing, what chance do you think you have of getting a call or email?
It has never been more important to project the right image to your prospective clients and with Google’s algorithm rewarding businesses with a consistent stream of positive online reviews, this needs to become part of your business as usual if you want to stay relevant in the eyes of savvy modern consumers.
I don’t believe in ‘silver bullets’ when it comes to growing a business, but Google Reviews are the next best thing. I work with Professional Services businesses who have up to tripled their website traffic by prioritising Google Reviews, many of whom now thank Google Reviews for being their main source of leads.
With the majority of your competitors not prioritising Google Reviews (yet), you currently have a first-mover advantage. The time to stake your claim in the Google Maps rankings is right now.
Here are my best tips for getting more positive reviews on an ongoing basis and cementing your place at the top of Google’s business listings.
How to build a five-star Google presence
Find the right moment
Whether it be after you’ve presented an SOA, at the end of implementing a piece of advice or at the end of your first review meeting, aligning your requests for Google reviews with peak moments of your client experience will increase the chance of getting a response, not to mention a positive one. As much as possible, I also encourage you to build a process and system around how it is asked for, so it becomes a discipline in your business and doesn’t rely on someone remembering to do it.
Find the right medium
Some businesses are successful with asking for Google reviews over SMS, some find it a great call to action at the end of completing a survey, others find it best to ask in person and follow up on email. All of these may work, it just depends on your clients. Test and measure different ways to ask for Google reviews until you find a method that’s successful for you.
Think beyond your clients
There’s a strong chance that there are many people who can vouch for your awesomeness, not just your current clients. Think referral partners, product providers, event attendees, licensee staff and ex-clients. There are many people who have an insight into the great work your firm is doing and can showcase this to the world, with authority. Get in the habit of asking for a review every time you do a great job or hear the word ‘thanks’ from someone in your network. The chances are that they will be happy to support you.
Reply to every review
Google Reviews allows you to reply to each review that is left. Not only is this a nice acknowledgement of the effort someone has gone to for your business, but it also positively impacts how Google ranks your business in their search listings. Even if the review is negative, you score major points for being transparent enough to own your feedback and address it publicly.
The world has changed and people looking to work with a business just like yours are using Google to save time and make quicker decisions. If your goal is business growth, being a ‘best-kept secret’ will do you no favours.
Michael Back, founder and business coach, Human to Human
I’m intrigued by your view that Adviser Ratings does an excellent job when it’s clear that many advisers on its platform ‘game’ the service to attract new leads. They ask a few of their clients to leave 5-star ratings so they can appear as rockstar advisers – check out just how many have 1 or 2 ratings. In the current environment where ethical behaviour is expected (and is a legal obligation) manipulation of ratings/reviews to produce biased and unrepresentative results should be strongly discouraged. Any adviser doing so needs to be called out and asked to demonstrate how their behaviour aligns with the code of ethics.
I think it has to be seen as being another form of advertising – rather than a legitimate review or ratings service – and with any advertising you are not going to say you have a crap product. So ‘caveat emptor’ as we all know those systems can be ‘gamed’. If you invent a system that can’t be gamed, or invent planners who don’t want to embellish their online reviews then you’ll be onto a winner.
Good points above Anonymous. Most prospective clients would use this as a part of their decision making, but certainly not the ‘be all and end all’. Like any part of the sales process, I see it as a piece of the puzzle that requires specific focus from a business.
Most of the businesses I know who have focussed on online reviews have also had to deal with a few negative ones. But if for every 2 or 3 negative reviews there are 100 happy clients, it’s important to make sure the happy clients have a public voice as well.
So focussing on positive ones is about portraying an accurate view of your client experience. If you let those 2 or 3 represent your business publically, you’re sending a negative message of your business that isn’t representative of reality.
Thanks for your thoughts here Anonymous. A few points I would add:
– Unhappy and poorly treated clients have the same opportunity to leave reviews as happy and loyal ones. It’s an equal playing field (i.e. the adviser isn’t a gatekeeper on either Adviser Ratings or Google Reviews)
– The bigger issue I see in our industry isn’t poor advisers gaming the system, but great advisers and advice businesses not communicating that message outside their walls. This is a shame, and also means great advisers are limiting how many people they can help.
– Most people won’t leave a five-star review for a business unless they believe it. Acknowledged there is the odd exception, but the average person would feel uncomfortable lying in a public forum.
Every business’ online reputation exists whether they like it or not. My message is to take control of it and represent your business accurately, rather than leave your Google presence to chance. Real Financial Advice is life-changing, so perhaps this means there will always be a bias towards positive reviews of great businesses. I don’t think that’s a bad thing in helping change the public narrative around advice.