Customer Reviews

How Customer Reviews Help Lead Generation & Why They’re Important

Customer review are absolutely vital for lead generation! Customer reviews are one of the most effective ways to generate leads for your business. In fact, according to a study by BrightLocal, 85 percent of consumers said they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Before we deep dive into this article, we shall set the scene with two key questions. Do customers read previous customer reviews? And if so do negative reviews stop some customers from purchasing?

Customer reviews are a tough one as they are completely opinion based. We have all been to that restaurant with not the greatest trip advisor rating and had a good time. So with that in mind do customer reviews help lead generation? Let’s find out!

Reviews and Testimonials

Reviews and Testimonials are one of the most basic ways to generate a positive outlook to your brand. Asking customers who you have worked with multiple times, or given a quality service is a small thing but can be very important to your business.

Most customers will read previous reviews of a business before deciding whether or not to engage with them. Now, reviews are mainly opinion based so need to be taken with a pinch of salt. But what cannot be ignored is their power.

If you want to see the power of how a customer testimonial could help you business check out these 11 examples of businesses who have benefitted over the past few years. 11 Examples of Great Customer Testimonial Pages

So, why are customer reviews so effective at generating leads?

Customer reviews do all of the following:

Show social proof
Make you stand out from the competition
Increase organic traffic to your site
Build trust with potential customers

…all of which help you generate more leads!

There are a few more compelling reasons to get your marketing team focused on generating positive customer reviews:

1. Customer reviews show social proof.

When potential customers see that others have had a positive experience with your business, it can help them feel more confident in doing business with you.

Customer reviews provide social proof and can help persuade potential customers to take action.

2. Customer reviews help you stand out from the competition.

If your competitors don’t have customer reviews , it can make you stand out to potential customers, who will notice this and be more likely to choose your business.

Customer reviews let you prove your worth as a company over the competition- if others are saying positive things about you, there’s almost certainly a good reason for that!

3. Customer reviews increase organic traffic to your website.

Positive customer reviews can drive more people to visit your site, which is particularly helpful during peak buying season. The more visitors on your site, the more leads you generate naturally.

4. Customer reviews build trust with potential customers.

When people see that other consumers have had a positive experience with your business, they’ll feel better about giving their contact information in exchange for special offers.

Positive customer reviews build trust with your customers, which can help you generate more leads for your business.

For these reasons and more, customer reviews are an effective way to generate leads for your business.

5. Building a customer review strategy.

So if you have read the parts of this blog about making the effort, and how reviews can affect your brand, then you are probably wanting to know how to create a customer review strategy. Some basic ideas to consider are:-

Create different spaces to leave reviews (website, underneath blogs, product reviews and social media)
Create incentives– Give your customers a discount, or ask them to leave a review to be entered into a competition
Respond to every review- Easy and simple, no matter if they are positive or negative
Give customers a positive review- A different approach, but can help to gain a review back
Share positive customer reviews- Demonstrate the great work you are doing, and what customers are saying about you.

Most companies will use a mixture of all of the above in their strategy, but the key is to be consistent and make sure no matter if they are positive or negative all reviews are accessible.

Is it worth the effort?

Regardless of whether customers do decide to listen to or read the opinions of others, having positive online reviews and testimonials does affect the way in which potential customers will view your products and services. For most companies it’s an area that is heavily neglected.

Customers will be quick enough to write and post bad reviews, but when it comes to positive they are not as forthcoming.

The ways in which reviews or testimonials could help a business are as follows:-

Build the flow of leads- Positive reviews will attract customers, and chances are if they have read positive things they will use your products/services either now or in the future.
Raise conversion rates- Most customers will read the reviews and testimonials of previous customers before contacting/purchasing your products or services. If you have an extensive amount of positive reviews, customers are more than likely to purchase due to the confidence it will place with your business. Create confidence to attract more people, and improve your conversion rate.
Vast amounts of positive reviews will outweigh the occasional negative- Unfortunately the realisation is that at least one customer during the time your business is operating will leave a bad review. Accept it, and do not worry about it. This is why asking for reviews from customers who are happy with the service is so important. Ultimately this will help to counteract any negative issues that may potentially be posted.

As you can see from the three ways in which reviews and testimonials can affect your business, spending time and effort on them is very important.

It gives off a positive impression of the business, and if in the worst case you do receive negative feedback it will not affect the business in a detrimental way.

To Conclude

To conclude, it’s easy to see why customer reviews can be such an effective way of getting leads for your business.

Customer reviews can show social proof, increase organic traffic to your site and build trust with potential customers which all help you generate more leads! Finally, customer reviews are a great way to show off your business and help grow your customer base.

Customer review and testimonials are very important to a business to create a positive impression, however it is a task that is overlooked. Ask customers who have worked with you for a long time or have had a great experience from working with you to leave you a review on Google Reviews or Trust Pilot or even a testimonial for your website.

This can definitely help to generate more leads in the future.

So with reviews in mind, want to know how to generate more leads? Check out our blog on just that! How do you generate new leads?

View Lead Genera’s reviews.

Lead Genera works hard to generate results for each and every one of our clients, so we are fortunate to have established a very good reputation without receiving a single negative review.