Reviews & Net Promoter Scores: How to ask for them and how to elevate the best feedback for your small business

We all do it when we want to make a purchase, big or small. “Have you had any of these beers before, which one did you like most?” “Or I need a new office chair, do you like yours?” “Or how was your experience with your mortgage lender?”

It’s much easier to trust our friends and family, and even strangers, than the businesses themselves. Which is why reviews and Net Promoter Scores are so critical to your small business marketing success.

(What’s a Net Promoter Score, you ask? It’s a super simple question that fancy researchers use to understand your company’s customer relationships: What is the likelihood that you would recommend this [product, service, or business] to a friend, family member or colleague? It’s basically the equivalent of the red, yellow, and green buttons on your way out of the airport bathroom reporting how clean it was. It’s the easiest way to understand your value without asking customers to write a long review, fill out a survey or come in for a qualitative interview. Your NPS is just the result of asking lots and lots of customers that singular question. Back to the good stuff.)

Reviews Are Important For Your Small Business

Traditional advertising is becoming less credible when people are exploring products and services to purchase, which is why influencer marketing and other modern marketing strategies are booming.

So many people use reviews as a way to validate their purchase instincts so it’s important you have lots of positive reviews of your business. 

One challenge is that people often only write reviews if they have a bad experience, which stinks for any business. We can counter that by constantly inviting our customers to leave us positive reviews to demonstrate to potential customers that we’re actually really great, even if that one person didn’t love us.

Additionally, reviews in some places like Google Business Profiles actually show up in search results making them great tools for findability.

How To Ask Customers For Reviews

You don’t necessarily need to aim for 5,000 5-star reviews and zero bad ones because people may doubt the authenticity of the reviews. If you’re getting zero 1-star reviews, you’re likely already a community favorite and well known for your excellent products and service. 

You want honest reviews from real customers who share details about what they loved and what they didn’t. All of it is helpful. For example, if someone says they didn’t love the sauce on their burger, that may be fine for someone who usually orders it without sauce anyway.

When’s the right time to ask? Immediately after a purchase could be a great time to ask for a review of a service or event. But if someone purchased an item, they’ll want to use it before giving a review, so perhaps a week later via an automated email is a better fit for your small business.

You could also post on social media, inviting folks to leave a review at the link you provide or add a link to your website footer for folks to leave reviews.

Consider not just where you want reviews most, but also where your customers may find you. We love the idea of having a robust Google Business Profile with hundreds of glowing reviews, but if most of your customers find you on Facebook, then that’s where you should focus your efforts. And counter to most of our advice where we say start small with one platform and grow from there, it’s likely that you’ll need to encourage reviews everywhere and anywhere. Yelp, Trip Advisor, Facebook, Google, Better Business Bureau, Glassdoor, your industry-specific directory, etc.

While you can certainly incentivize customers to leave you reviews, you need to be somewhat cautious about it. Your reward should be offered for the review regardless of how positive or negative the star-rating and comments are. Otherwise, you could get in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission.

Managing Your Small Business Reviews

Like almost everything in marketing, there’s maintenance. You should reply to all reviews, raving, neutral, and embarrassing. However, when replying to the bad ones, it’s important to be humble and not debate with the point of view of the reviewer. “Thank you for the feedback. We will do our best to ensure our future customers have a better experience. We hope you’ll give us another chance someday” works just fine.

If a review is inappropriate or irrelevant, you can ask Google or your other review platforms to take a look and possibly remove the review, but you can’t and shouldn’t do that for simply bad reviews.

Reviews can also be a helpful tool to discover what’s working well and what might need some improvements in your business. Use this as strategic intel for improvements and growth, not a popularity contest or a way to prop up your confidence.

But you certainly should share the best ones on social media so more folks see them! Toot that horn, friend!

You may even find opportunities to turn some reviews into full-blown case studies or video content for use in your marketing. Highlight your best customers, products or even staff this way.

The first step is to look into your current reviews, then look for ways to get more positive reviews in the future. You got this!