Creative Ways to Ask Your Clients for Reviews

But how do you accrue online reviews, especially if you want to avoid encouraging negative reviews from people that did not enjoy your product or service (and some people just won’t, no matter what you do or how well you do it)?

Here are five ways to elicit the kinds of reviews you want and need:

Ask Your Customers Who Were Skeptical About Buying Your Product

Start by asking your email list, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, etc. which of them was skeptical about making a purchase. You’ll probably get plenty of responses. Then, ask those people what they thought once they actually took the leap and made the purchase. If they were pleased with the purchase, ask them to tell their story. Stories from people who were hesitant to buy at first can be extremely convincing for other potential customers or clients who are experiencing that same hesitancy. The moment someone says, “I was skeptical about buying but am so glad that I did!” everyone else who is skeptical about buying will become much, much less skeptical.

Actually Care About Your Customers

Do you really care about them? Do you really care about whether or not your product or service is meeting their needs? Do you know your customers well enough to answer that question? In some ways, you want to be like your customers’ mothers. You know them well enough to know what they need and want and how to service it up to them. When you do this, you will automatically attract more positive reviews. When you treat your customers like you were their loving mother, taking care of them, rather than treating them commodities, you get a crazy amount of word-of-mouth advertising and you encourage people to go and leave reviews naturally, simply because they are so satisfied with your service.

Related: Why Online Reviews Are So Important to Your Business in 2016

Give Something Valuable Away for Free

What do you do if you do not yet have enough customers or clients to naturally accrue social proof? Give something away for free in exchange for an honest review about you and your business. The fact that the item the person is reviewing was given to them freely makes it much more likely that they are going to leave a positive review, and the fact that all you are asking for in return for this valuable thing for free is a review, you’re going to get far more reviews than you would just sitting around, waiting for them to roll in naturally.

Just Ask for It

Have you ever tried just asking your customer/clients for a review? Most businesses haven’t even thought about it, especially if you labor under the belief that when you send out an email or message to your subscribers/followers, you are annoying them. Of course, you have to gauge how effective this is going to be on the individuals you are asking, and you certainly do not want to ask the customer/clients that have had a negative experience with your brand or business, do reach out to those customers, especially repeat customers, that seem to be loving what you have to offer them.

Think About Timing

There are better times to ask for a review. If you sell something physical, you probably do not want to ask for a review until after the item has been delivered to your customer and they’ve had a chance to review it. A good example of “timing” when it comes to reviews is with mobile games. Most mobile games are programmed to ask you to leave a review after you’ve beaten a level or the entire game. That way, they know you are actually playing the game and you’ve just had a success inside the game, making you more likely to leave a positive review. Don’t rush this process—you want your customer/client to be in the right mood when you ask for that review.