In This Article:

Summary:

Tradie’s grow off word of mouth and in a very competitive online market rely on reviews from past customers to stand out and build trust with potential new clients. There are many different platforms that you can use to gather reviews like HIpages, TrustPilot and Facebook, but a free, easy way is to just use your Google Business Profile. If you don’t already have one, check out this article and go make one. In my opinion it is invaluable to tradies who are looking to appear in local search results.

How Reviews on Google Business work:

You just go to your Google Business page by googling your business name. Find the review section and there is a button called ‘get reviews’. Copy the link this button gives you and send it to your past customers. When they click the link it will allow them to quickly leave a rating, some comments and even images.

How to Get Reviews from Your Past Customers:

Up to this point you may have handled jobs for hundreds of customers, that is a lot of potential reviews just waiting to be collected and shown off. Sit down for a couple of hours, write out a short text or email and send it out to your past customers telling them that you have recently started to get online and would really appreciate their feedback. Most will remember you and be happy to leave a review. Don't be disheartened if you don't get all of them, people are busy and leaving reviews is not common for most people. You have all of your future jobs to keep building reviews from and putting yourself back in front of your past customers is always a good thing as they have you fresh on their mind if their friends ever ask for a referral.

Here's an example of what you could write:

Hi [name], it’s [your name] from [your business] here. I hope you are going well, we have just created a Google Business profile and we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review from the work we completed for you. It really means a lot and should only take a few moments. You can leave a review here: [link to your reviews].

How to Make Asking for Reviews More Simple:

People are usually quite happy to leave a review but there are factors that will get in their way. If it is too hard or convoluted they will just give up when trying to leave one, if they aren't tech savvy they may get lost clicking links and a big one that I find most new businesses face is that you have to actually ask for a review if you want them. There are only a handful of people out there that know the value of reviews to your business and will leave you one off of their own bat, the rest are all moving on with their busy lives immediately after you leave. So here are some great ways to manage asking for reviews and making the whole process more simple.

  1. QR Codes:

    Turn your review link into a QR code, it’s easier than you think. There are many websites that you can use to create one, I’ve used https://www.qr-code-generator.com/ before but you can google ‘QR code generator’ and find many of them. You just input your link and download the image. You can put this on your business card or invoice to give to customers or keep a screenshot of it on your phone that you can get them to scan at the end of your job.

  2. Follow Up Texts and Emails:

    After you have completed your work, you can follow up with a quick text or email making sure that everything was still going well with your work and asking for a review with the link right there. It is great customer service that will leave a lasting impression on them that you care and will also trigger them to leave a review, especially if you asked them previously and they had forgotten.

The sooner you ask for a review the better. They will have the amazing work that you did still fresh in their mind and will be far more inclined to leave a great review than a few weeks or months down the track.

Respond to Your Reviews:

When customers leave a review make sure that you respond to them. Leave a reply thanking them for their review. If your customers see that their feedback is being valued, then you may make other customers more comfortable to leave reviews in the future. It is also a great trust-builder for potential customers reading the reviews to see how much you appreciate your past customers

Dealing with Negative Reviews:

Take a deep breath, this is in the public and can be seen by anyone who comes across your business online. It may be from something out of your control, someone who decided that they don’t like you or even a competitor but it's not worth harming your reputation even further with an aggressive response. You should still respond, just to show to potential customers that you are making an effort to make things right with this begrudged customer. Acknowledge the ‘issue’, apologise, take responsibility and offer a solution. Even if you are right, the internet is never a good place to start an argument. No need to go far in-depth either at the risk of appearing defensive, but for the sake of your reputation this is a great way to respond and prove your professionalism. If you can, invite further communication offline where you could rectify the issue and ask for them to remove the review. If the review is fake or you know it to be a competitor, then do not reply or simply reply with a statement saying that you haven't completed work for this person and make sure that you report the review to Google. They remove spam and false reviews regularly.

Final Words & Advice:

I hope this helps you to start building up some reviews. I personally know of people who have built up 20 reviews in a week and were noticing the boosts in calls as a result. Whether you have 5 reviews or 500 I hope there was something that could make your life collecting reviews easier. There are certainly ways to automate the review process, but I won’t get into that here – especially for smaller businesses where it isn’t yet required. Let me know if you would like to learn about automations and I can write another guide there.

If you have any questions don’t be afraid to contact us or join our Facebook Group where I write guides like this and answer questions for local tradesmen that are running into trouble with getting online. This is a really simple way to manage reviews and your reputation online and if done properly will really set you apart from the competition.

Need Some More Help?

We make websites and help tradies to get online, learn more about our Web Development Services here and contact us if you would like some help building a website for your business.