As a painting business owner you depend on your reputation to find new customers and generate new referrals, and it’s no secret that online reviews are the new word of mouth.
Here we will discuss 8 strategies to generate more online reviews for your painting business to answer a simple question…
How can I generate more repaint leads for my painting business?
Today, in hand with your marketing efforts, you also need to generate online reviews to help build trust and outrank your competition. That’s right, your online reviews are a direct ranking factor in Google.
Why are online reviews so important?
Reviews are the digital currency for trust
While this might seem like another task you need to manage on top managing your painting jobs, rest assured, we have some simple strategies you can implement today to capture more positive reviews.
Let’s jump in!
1. Provide a good service/customer experience
Ok this sounds fundamental, but it’s worth stating. Your ability to generate positive reviews is much easier when your customer is happy.
In today’s society it’s no longer acceptable to just deliver on your promises, you need to exceed your customer’s expectations. This is especially true when putting your customer to work by requesting they take time to leave a review for your painting business online.
Mitigate negative reviews
At the very least this strategy should be used as a way to deter negative reviews. For every negative review your business receives it takes at least 5 positive reviews to offset. Since your dissatisfied customers tend to have the loudest voice it’s important to focus on exceeding expectations for every painting project.
This doesn’t need to be a lot of work. Especially for the younger generation, it’s the little things that go a long way — being prompt, clearly communicating expectations, wearing shoe covers in the house, etc.
2. Claim your Online Citations
Online business directories, otherwise known as “citations,” can greatly increase your digital footprint.
What is a digital footprint?
Your digital footprint is how much space you occupy on SERPs (search engine results pages). For instance, if you have a website, Facebook page, and are listed on several online directories it increases the likelihood that your customers will find your business, and not the competition.
Where to start?
Almost every online directory has some sort of review capability. The more diversified the source of your reviews, the better. For professional painters we recommend starting with the following online citations:
Keep your NAP consistent
If you follow the SEO (search engine optimization) space at all you may be familiar with the “NAP” acronym: Name, Address, and Phone number.
It’s critical that these three data points are exactly the same everywhere your business is listed online. For instance, if your business address contains the word “Road” but you’re using the abbreviation “Rd” on your Google Business Profile it’s important that the “Rd” variation is used on every other directory/profile.
Why is NAP consistency important? Google gets confused by conflicting data points, so it assumes there’s an issue with the data on one or all of your listings. This confusion can lead to penalties that negatively impact your website and local rankings on Google.
The bottom line: The easier you make it for Google to index your business, the better you’ll rank.