What to Expect When You Ask for a Review
How can B2B businesses manage expectations throughout their review generation campaigns?
It happens all too often. You recently ordered a pair of leggings online. Now, that company is emailing you, asking you to rate your purchase in a review. You’re wrapping up at the eye doctor, and before you even leave the office, you get a notification. It’s a text, asking you to leave a review of your experience. It seems that we are inundated with these requests constantly. Be honest with yourself. Unless you’ve had the best experience or the worst, there’s little motivation to actually leave a review. More often than not, you’re likely to hit the “delete” button and move on with your day.
But as a B2B professional, you find yourself on the other side of the fence. You know well there’s a plethora of reasons that your business should be actively seeking out reviews. So your team is doing just what it should and asking clients to leave a review. However, when you check your profile, the number of reviews is far less than the number of clients you’ve reached out to. What happened?
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Customers Read Reviews More Than They Write Them
The truth is, most people don’t regularly leave reviews. Studies will show that despite the majority of customers reading reviews, around 38% report never leaving reviews. That may make you go into a frenzy and feel the need to reach out to more customers, but remember that you don’t want to spam them.
That statistic may have you feeling defeated, but it’s important to not let this deter you from your efforts. According to a study from Power Reviews, 97% of consumers consult product reviews when making purchase decisions, which means collecting reviews is still important and highly necessary to stay competitive. This study also found that while fewer consumers are willing to take the time to leave a review, the number of just how few are shrinking. Today, 50% of consumers are willing to write reviews for products they’ve purchased, which has risen from 42% in 2014.
Another study from brightlocal reveals that different factors may help customers be more likely to recommend your business on review platforms, such as whether it’s new, family-owned, or the obvious–your business truly went above and beyond.
Manage Expectations From The Get-Go
When you reach out to your customers for reviews, remind them there’s an incentive to gain from it because it helps them in the long run. Stellar review generation tactics mean communicating that these reviews will help you improve your business–which is good for them.
If you’re kicking yourself for not having thousands of five-star reviews, take a deep breath. Your business isn’t doing anything wrong. Review generation is a process, but it doesn’t have to be a difficult one. By staying patient and trusting the process, you’ll make progress and rake in reviews in no time. Trust us, it happens to us too.
About the author
Rebecca helps keep all things content running at UpCity. Prior to joining, she was a magazine editor at an agency for several award-winning publications based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and a content specialist for several brands within the SMB/B2B landscape. She also has significant experience in digital content creation, most notably targeting hunters and anglers (despite being a vegetarian) during her time at Gander Outdoors. Rebecca has also worked in PR, covering a diverse terrain of products and events, including the promotion of local musicians and music festivals and the latest craft beer offerings from local breweries.
