Why Your Agency Needs Google Reviews and How to Start Getting Them

By David O'Bryan, Field Sales Representative at State Auto

Do me a favor. Open up Google and search “insurance” and the name of your city/town. I’ll wait… Hopefully your agency showed up on the first page of both the local search (the box immediately below the yellow ad links) and the organic search. If not, well, that’s a whole other blog post. For now, let’s assume your agency does feature prominently on page 1. Now, take a look inside the local search box – does your agency have any Google reviews? Do any agencies in your area have Google reviews?

Google reviews have gained importance for small businesses since the company rolled out the feature in late 2013. If you click on a result inside the local search box, a new box appears which provides more information on the business and allows users to write reviews directly on the business’s Google listing. With more than a trillion searches per year, Google is by far the search engine of choice for most people on Earth, especially most Americans. So, if you want your agency to have a better online presence, there’s no better place to focus your time and energy than Google.

I don’t think it’s a great secret in May 2016 that more and more people are searching for products and services online. They are starting their buying process via searches on places like Google, Amazon, Trip Advisor, etc. And of that already-huge and growing-every-day chunk of people, nearly 70% say online reviews have a significant impact on their purchasing decision. Let that sink in. As Olsy Sorokina writes in an article last May for Hootsuite, “For small businesses, online reviews bring the benefit of social proof to the table—they help increase (or decrease) the degree of trust felt for a business based on feedback from other people with similar needs.” (Read the full article here.)

Sorokina goes on to cite a 2014 study that found 88% of consumers now trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. That same study also found that the more reviews a business had the more trustworthy it was deemed. Specifically with Google, customer reviews are among the first and most prominently-displayed things people see when they search your business category. Reviews not only help enhance your agency’s SEO, but positive reviews have a greater conversion rate than any other aspect of SEO – and Google reviews don’t cost you anything!

Here’s a quick to-do list to get going on gathering Google reviews:

1. Verify your business on Google – go to google.com/business, verify your agency and make sure your business info is accurate.
2. Make a list of your 40-50 best customers. Your promoters. The individuals and business clients who absolutely love you and would be glad to help you out.
3. Carve out a few hours and call each of these customers directly and ask for their help. The conversation can be as simple as this: “Our agency is growing and one of the best ways independent agencies grow is through online reviews. Can you help me out by reviewing our agency on Google?” They will have to have a Google account to do a review, but make them feel the call to action – their opinion is a huge contribution to your business.
4. Set yourself a follow-up (1-2 weeks) to check back with the customers who haven’t gotten around to doing their review yet.

Once you’ve filled the bucket with reviews from your best customers, implement a process to ask all new customers to review the agency on Google. One idea would be making it part of your onboarding process for new customers where a few days after they’ve joined they receive an automated request to provide a review. (A fantastic company called Rocket Referrals can set this up for a very reasonable monthly charge.) And one more tip on managing your online reviews: respond to every review, especially the negative ones. For positive reviews, a simple thank you is perfect. For negative reviews, apologize, show concern, and try to provide a solution. 

Start making the gathering of Google reviews a priority and I guarantee it will lead to more business and a stronger online presence for you, your agency and your brand.