By Julia McLaughlin
Positive ratings and reviews are extremely valuable in the real estate industry. Home buyers are online looking for available properties and guess how they begin their research? Reviews.
A home is the largest financial decision a person makes in their lifetime and reviews are the perfect way to build that trust and credibility that aspiring home buyers are looking for.
Reviews are a powerful force when it comes to driving new business. Do you have processes in place to collect reviews on a regular basis within your real estate business?
If you haven’t already, ensure you are asking all your happy clients to leave you a review in places such as your Google my Business listing, Zillow and rate-my-agent.com.
From there, the ways to recycle these reviews for marketing purposes are plentiful!
Let’s delve into ways that you can be getting more reviews for your real estate business and using these to boost your marketing efforts.
Put a Process in Place
Putting a process in place to ensure you are asking all your real estate clients for a review is a great way to ensure you aren’t missing out on valuable reviews.
The best practices include, combining verbally asking your client in combination with a follow up email or text message.
We recommend waiting until the end of the process either at the signing appointment or the closing to make the ask. Many real estate agents offer a closing ‘thank you’ gift and at this time mentioning that you ‘value their business and would be grateful for a review’ would be a great incentive for a review.
Ensuring that you promptly follow this conversation up with an email or text message is a good way to boost your chances of getting one.
Make the Process Simple
Many times your clients want to leave you a review but there are a few factors that can prevent or discourage your clients from leaving one.
Just like you, your clients are busy and might not have the time to figure out how to leave a review online. Perhaps they want to leave a review but they got busy, or there may also be some confusion about how or where to leave a review.
Unless you make the process super simple for your clients, chances are they won’t take the time to leave you a review- Even if they had a great experience with you!
It’s your job to make this process super simple for your clients! As previously mentioned, the most effective way to get a review from your customer is by sending them an email or text review request. However we recommend ensuring this message contains a link that easily guides your customer through the process of leaving you a review on the platform(s) that you would like a review on.
A simple message asking ‘How was your experience?’ with a link guiding your customer to the ‘leave a review’ page on Google is a pretty effective method. Did you know that text messages have a 98% open rate and a 45% response rate making them a pretty effective way to collect valuable feedback from your customers?
However you choose to contact your customers, just make sure you remove the friction from the review process and you will increase your odds of receiving them- A review management software can help streamline this process too.
Recycle Your Reviews
Reusing the reviews you receive on 3rd party sites such as Google or Facebook is a great way to use client generated content that can help sell your services. Recycle these reviews on your website under a call to action button, and sprinkle them throughout other pages of your website, such as the about us and testimonials pages.
Reviews also make a great addition to any printed marketing material you hand out such as brochures or door hangers.
Next, take these reviews and design them into an attractive post (we suggest using Canva) and post them on your social media accounts!
Automate the Process
Did you know that by utilising review management software, such as Review Robin, there is a way to put your review requests on autopilot? This makes the process of sending review requests effortless and ensures you never forget to ask a customer for a review. By setting up automation this helps free up both time and mental space and allows you to focus on other tasks in your real estate business.
You can easily hook into software you use everyday (such as Quickbooks) which can automate the process of sending review requests out to your clients. Reviews can sometimes be a numbers game and it’s important to request a review from all your clients to help boost your odds of getting more reviews.
Search Engine Optimization
Did you know that reviews help boost your search engine optimization? Getting reviews on your Google My Business listing is a great way to not only stand apart from your competitors, but reviews are favoured in the eyes of Google and are one element that they take into consideration in their ranking algorithm.
Additionally, According to the Google My Business Support page, businesses are encouraged to “interact with customers by responding to reviews that they leave about your business. Responding to reviews shows that you value your customers and the feedback that they leave about your business.”
When Google says respond to reviews- Respond to your reviews! This response can also help showcase your exceptional customer service skills and reinforce your brand to any potential clients reading your reviews in the future.
In conclusion, reviews are a powerful tool you should be utilizing in your real estate marketing toolkit. By putting some simple processes in place you can ensure you never forget to ask a client for a review again, and then utilize those reviews to help boost your marketing efforts.
Ideas to Increase Reviews
Choose a review gathering platform to send people to
When you ask, provide writing prompts suggestions about what to write
Start the review request process from the first meeting
Ask for reviews when they are happiest with you, not just at the end
Use "Write a Review" prompts on your correspondence with them
Send them a request a month after they move in
Ask via email and text
Ask once, remind twice, then leave it alone
Ask if they will give you a video review to use
Use your reviews in your social media, with a request to write a review
Write them a review, if they own a business
Bad review - No problem. Click here to discover how to manage a bad review
Do you have any ideas to share with people about how to ask for a review? Share it in the comments.
How do you Mitigate the Damage of Bad Reviews?
In 2007 when I was posting reviews on epinions.com, reviews were written mostly for products. Today, according to Bright Local's 2013 Customer Survey - 76% of consumers read reviews on any product or service, before they make their final buying decision. Click for stats
Reviews are taking over from advertising and marketing as the go to source for trustworthy information on a product or service. What does that mean for your company? It means that you are no longer the only person telling your story to the marketplace.
HomeStars.com enables home service companies in Canada to build a positive online reputation by collecting reviews from their customers in one place.
We all know that unhappy customers will tell as many people as they can. Today, thanks to the Internet, that means the world. Make sure you have a large source of 'good' reviews online and that you reply to those unhappy reviewers in a professional manner.
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