Don’t worry – this post won’t take long.
As silly as the question might seem to some, we do get asked, “Why don’t I have more reviews?” from time to time. It seems a surprising number of people assume reviews are supposed to happen on their own. And when they don’t seem to be getting any, or as many as they’d like (as if their monthly allocation is somehow not being credited to their business), they wonder why.
Well, as you may or may not know, your reviews are supposed to be generated by those who have done business with you or have had a personal experience with you in a business-related situation. You might get a review for your business from a customer as the result of a good or bad experience. But you might also get a review from a prospective customer who had a bad experience just trying to do business with you, but never having completed a transaction.
Reviews are supposed to happen “naturally”, but as we all know, from a “customer” point of view, even when we feel compelled to write a review most of us (more often than not) blow it off and procrastinate or forget about it altogether.
That’s why you don’t see hundreds if not thousands of reviews for any given business, even though many have hundreds or thousands of customers over the years.
As a result of this many businesses feel compelled to create their own reviews. And why not? You certainly deserve them, right? A lot of customers, clients or patients have given you compliments. You know what they’ve said and those were honest kudos.
Why not put them online yourself?
The problem is that even if you recreate those testimonials/reviews/praises as reviews, they aren’t coming directly from the person who originated them. That makes it a falsification. And that can get your site pushed way off the business listings or even banned from them altogether.
Yes, there are some holes so deep you will not likely ever dig out of them in this lifetime.
When faking anything we cross a gray line dividing the land of bad and good, wrong and right, manipulative and not. And because reviews are so important in the eyes of other consumers (and your competition who feel you should play fair) it’s critically important to keep them as honest as possible and ensure each comes directly from the person who truly originated it.
It is a perfect system? Absolutely not. Your competition can fake reviews and post bad reviews about you.
Will they get caught? It depends. The systems used to detect faked reviews are not yet perfect and anyone willing to go to more extreme measures can certainly do that.
But it’s not quite like Black Hat Search Engine Optimization where those willing to break the rules on purpose accept in advance that they are ultimately ‘burning’ resources for a quick ROI until they get caught.
Reputations can’t easily be replace with a new version. They have to be repaired and sometimes only a lot of time and a lot of dust will do the trick.
This is why businesses need to take reputation issues much more seriously that they are now. It requires a conscious and intentional effort.
We have processes built into Reputation Maximization that can reduce and prevent some of those problems and issues, but the focus should be on getting so many more great reviews that the bad reviews – real or faked by others – are insignificant.
This is why having no reviews at all, only a handful of reviews, or sporadic reviews at best leaves you wide open for the worst imaginable situation. You are at the mercy of random chance, just waiting for one or more customers or competitors to start hacking away at your reputation.
So why don’t you have more reviews?
There are 4 common reasons why you don’t have more reviews:
- Not correctly valuing reviews – thereby not being motivated to do more to get them.
- Paranoia and being scared of reviews – afraid of getting any reviews thinking it could motivate someone to post bad reviews.
- Not knowing how to correctly get reviews – the second roadblock after Reason #1 above that prevents most businesses from getting more reviews.
- Believing that any attempt to intentionally get reviews requires begging or demeaning oneself or business.
Most businesses appear to over-value the few reviews they have. And for most it’s a false value they assign because of one or more of the 4 reasons above.
Another reason the false values for reviews can set in is because the business owner or marketing person hasn’t gone online to see the environment in which their presence is being compared to competitors by prospective clients. This is an increasingly important thing to do as the online review environment is constantly evolving – especially due to its value and importance.
This real-world observation usually makes it painfully clear that having a handful of reviews (or less) does little or nothing to position a business as an ideal choice for consumers in the throes of their decision-making process.
Where your reviews are being found is also important – especially based on what you are selling and to whom. Some reputation management services will suggest that they create a web site for your business and then load it with your reviews.This is not a buyer specific approach at all and we believe the search engines are already aware of this attempt to manipulate them.
We don’t believe creating a web site specifically for a single company’s reviews is a good idea for a variety of reasons:
- It’s obviously contrived and somewhat artificial. While the actual reviews may be honest we believe the overwhelming majority of consumers will see through it because the unavoidable questions are “Why did the business need a separate review site to begin with?” and, “What’s wrong with getting reviews where all the other businesses have them?”
- It’s not the best use of resources and at some point this type of site will not be effective at ANY level. Google is highly sensitive to anything that might even be a vague attempt to manipulate their search results. They could (and we suspect eventually will) remove these types of site from their index altogether, if they haven’t already started doing that.
- There are just plain better ways to get your businesses great reviews without sacrificing how you sleep at night. And if you are ok with creating your own review site, you should be losing sleep because that could blow back in your face and you won’t fully understand or appreciate the reasons why.
It really boils down to this singular idea. Earn your reviews. Provide outstanding products and services to the degree that people are compelled to sing your praises. Motivate people to action. Inspire them!
Easier said than done? Maybe for some who don’t want to go the extra mile, but maybe not for others who do everything they can and just need a little more help pushing it over the edge.
People are busy. You must remind them and nudge them from time to time. If you’re really as good as you claim, they won’t mind. In fact, many will appreciate the reminder because they want to give something back.
Fantastic businesses are rare. Most expect the rewards of success just because they can unlock a office door, turn on a light and pay phone bill for their company. It doesn’t really work that way.
There’s too much competition – both already existing today and from those who are coming up behind you that you don’t even see yet. Too many businesses take too much for granted. There’s no entitlement in having a successful business and getting more reviews.
Sadly, to answer the original question that provoked this post, the reason many businesses don’t have more or don’t get more reviews is because, in actual fact, they DON’T deserve them and they don’t earn them. It’s that simple.
And in like most standard sales training, when you want the sale, you sometimes have to ask for it. Reviews are often no different. There’s no shame in asking for something the other person want so give or provide. Once that they understand their opinion helps motivate you to do your best, most people gladly and enthusiastically give you all the reviews you need.
There’s one more step after you start correctly valuing reviews, stop being scared of reviews, and know how to correctly get reviews on a regular basis. It’s using your reviews as part of a Reputation Maximization marketing program to get the absolute most results from everything that goes into getting those reviews in the first place.
Let us know when you’re ready to find out how to do that for your business.