Google customer reviews: 4 techniques to enhance your brand image

What are Google customer reviews and why activate them on your Google My Business account?

What exactly is Google My Business?

Before we talk about Google customer reviews, we first need to know where to find them. That's on Google's free local listing tool, Google My Business.

Every business can create a Google My Business listing, which allows your company to appear in the search results. localized research made by Internet users.
A localized search is automatically activated when someone searches for a service or product on the Google search engine. In the first results, results that match your search and are geographically close to you are systematically displayed.

Every Google My Business listing provides information related to a point of sale or a company. You can find :

• Company or store name
• Opening days and hours 
• Physical address or area covered by your services
• Phone number
• Link to your website
• Direct messaging with the company
• Photos of the store, company or products 
• The news
• Google customer reviews 

As you can see, in addition to increasing your visibility on the Internet, your Google My Business listing includes basic information about your company and various means of contact.

It's the place where you can display all the information that helps Internet users come to you, rather than to your competitor! The creation of a Google My Business listing is completely automatic. free of charge. To create a card, follow these steps :

1. Start by logging in to your Google account (or create one if you don't have one), then go to the Google My Business site.
   
2. Create your establishment in just a few clicks. Then request a verification code directly in your new space.
   
3. Optimize and update your Google My Business listing.
   Be active on your Google My Business and bring your listing to life to improve your results over the long term. You can update various elements such as publishing news, announcing exceptional promotions, communicating about new products or services, responding to Google customer reviews, etc.

Google My Business also gives you access to statistics with which you can see the performance of your insert in terms of visibility, contacts, route requests, etc.
That's really interesting! With continuous analysis, you know what actions to take to perform even better tomorrow.

In this article, we focus on Google customer reviews, which are a key element in the company's success. particularly strategic for companies and brands. So it's up to you to create a strategy that easily generates Google reviews on your Google My Business listing, and then manage them properly.

Google customer reviews are essential for your reputation and visibility

Let's start with a few figures to give you an idea of the importance of Google customer reviews. These have a considerable impact on your reputation / visibility and they can also become a real purchase trigger for web users.

• 95% of customers look at reviews before buying
• 72% of customers won't buy until they've read the reviews
• 80% of customers say the number of reviews is decisive when two products have the same rating
• 53% of customers expect a response to a review within 7 days

It's now a reflex for 95% of Internet users: other customers' opinions are consulted before making a purchase on a site, before going into a store,...

Having Google customer reviews on your Google My Business listing is therefore an absolute priority. Other sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisorthat specialize in collecting reviews are not as reliable as reviews on a Google My Business listing. With Google My Business, there are no fake Google reviews, and they can't be deleted. They are therefore credible and serve your image (when it's generally positive, of course) with future customers. Excellent Google customer reviews serve to reassure consumers and encourage them to choose your company or brand. Positive reviews reflect a good customer experience and build reader confidence. In short, the more positive reviews you get, the more likely potential customers will be to visit your website, give you a call or push open the door of your establishment!

E-reputation must therefore be at the heart of your consumer strategy to generate new customers, so it's time to implement a strategy to get more Google customer reviews.

1. How can I get more Google customer reviews on Google My Business?

Are you convinced by the usefulness of Google customer reviews, but don't know how to go about acquiring the first review or more?

It's a well-known fact that it's easier for consumers to express their dissatisfaction and warn others about it than the other way around. The key is to raising awareness and encouraging happy customers to leave their opinion. Very few do so spontaneously, and yet it's these reviews that you need to collect. Here are a few tips that you should put into practice today, and continue to do so in the long term:

• Contact your happy customers and your most loyal customers. They're the ones most likely to take the time to give you a positive review, and they do it primarily to please you.
• Through a post on your social networks or a newsletter, get in touch with your customers or your community and show them that you'd like feedback on the experience they've had with your business. Make life easy for them by giving them the direct link they need to post a review on your Google My Business page.
• Get into the habit of asking each new customer for a review, either by sending them an e-mail after an assignment carried out by your company or a purchase made by your customer, or by calling them. For e-commerce companies, putting up a flyer when a parcel is dispatched is an easy way of automating the process of gathering feedback, and generally has a positive impact!

It is important to reach your customers at the right time to increase your efficiency and turn as many of your customer requests as possible into reviews on Google My Business.
Analyze your customer journey and define an effective strategy that takes into account the ideal timing, convincing copywriting and any automation required to collect the maximum number of positive Google customer reviews.

2. Ask for quality Google reviews

Receiving a customer review is great, but a quality review is even better. Here are just a few of the rules that make Google customer reviews a success more credible and impactful for those who consult them :

• Don't just put stars. Ask for reviews that include stars (as many as possible, of course) and a commentary that includes the various elements below.
• The comment must include specific details, service information, etc. (e.g. name of dish, speed of service, etc.).
• Pay attention to the importance of comment content, which also has an impact on referencing and therefore the visibility of your Google My Business insert. A comment is always more valuable when it includes keywords that are relevant to your business.
• Adding photos confirms that the comment is genuine and gives a glimpse of your product, service or establishment.

3. How do I respond to Google My Business customer reviews?

Responding to Google reviews (and on other platforms) allows you tomaintain a relationship with your customers and create a more personalized contact. At the same time, you show that they are important to you, that their opinion counts and that you do take them into account.

Google customer reviews, both positive and negative, help you evolve and feed your after-sales service, which can easily gather essential information about your customers. This information guides you in the strategic actions you need to take to further improve your services or your product.

The basic rule for Google customer reviews is to respond, without exception, to all reviews left by your customers. If it's positive, and especially if it's negative, this allows you to take care of your communication and your image.

Here are a few rules for responding to negative Google reviews:

• Adopt the right tone: Remain polite, pleasant and attentive to the customer's needs.
• Thank the customer: the information received by the consumer, however complicated it may be to hear, helps you evolve and put the right measures in place.
• Take care with the content: explain the situation so that Internet users understand the context that led to the negative review. If the context justifies it: apologize, explain that it won't happen again and that you're going to improve your product or service.

Responding to a negative review in the right way won't negatively influence the person reading it. On the contrary, responding to a negative review allows you to show how you operate, how you follow up your customers.

To give yourself a second chance with an unhappy customer, you can propose certain actions such as a discount on their next purchase. Anything that shows you're taking the best possible care of your customers, even the unhappy ones, reassures and attracts new customers!

4. Our other tips for managing Google reviews

How do you spot and remove fake reviews?

Watch out for fake Google reviews can damage your online reputation.

Don't forget that your Google My Business listing is often the first point of entry and contact with consumers searching on Google, and that you only have one opportunity to make a good first impression. If you have fake reviews, report it directly on your Google My Business administrator account. However, don't do themistake of reporting real negative reviews !

Here are a few criteria to help you identify fake reviews:

• The same person posts the same reviews on different Google My Business accounts. To check this, click on the person's name and look at their history.
• Negative reviews published at regular intervals
• Duplicate comments with the same spelling from different people
• The level of language used and/or spelling mistakes
• Little detail, too general

Buying Google reviews: a bad idea!

Buying fake Google reviews is not a practice to be adopted and if you do, we suggest you stop right now. It's too much risk for too little return.

In fact, using platforms and buying fake Google reviews is punishable by law. You may also incur heavy penalties from Google such as the total suspension of your business listing. It's no coincidence that the publication of deliberately false reviews tops the list of content formally proscribed by Google's policy.

Review management software to help you manage your reviews

Review Management software is available for save time in your customer review management. These allow you to centralize all actions linked to review management, such as survey creation, distribution, analysis and response management.

There are a multitude of platforms to suit all your needs, including Capterra brings together on its website.

Don't be afraid of a negative Google review!

A negative review drowned in 20 positive comments does not have the same effect as an isolated criticism. A dissatisfied customer whose negative review has been dealt with effectively can become an ambassador.

After responding, contact the customer again to confirm that the situation has been resolved. You'll once again demonstrate your commitment to providing optimum service. Who knows, maybe this behavior will lead to a positive review!