Want your Facebook page to attract new customers? You better have reviews.
Think about it: Have you ever seen a friend asking for recommendations for a vendor on Facebook?
“Do you know anyone who details cars?”
“Any recommendations for a good lawn mowing service?”
What do they want to see when your friend Bill recommends your business to them and tags your page?
Reviews. Hopefully lots of 5-star reviews.
But what if you’re struggling to get reviews and only have a few or none at all?
It’s simple enough—All you need to do is ask.
How to Ask Your Loyal Customers For Facebook Reviews
The good news about Facebook is that it isn’t against their terms of service to solicit or ask for reviews (it is against Yelp’s rules to ask for reviews, so be careful about this with other websites).
In helping our ongoing service clients to boost their reputation, we have helped several businesses to craft an effective ask to increase their Facebook review numbers.
Here is my suggested non-annoying way to ask your best customers for reviews when you need a review boost:
Send an email to 30 good customers
- Select 30 long-term, loyal, regular customers from your customer database.
- Craft an email blast or personal email to them with a short, genuine request.
- Ensure your email includes a direct link to your Facebook reviews page (your Facebook page URL with /reviews at the end. For example: https://www.facebook.com/11Webcom/reviews/)
Scroll down for a copy and paste template of an email you can send.
Caution: Don’t Email Your Whole List At One Time
Why spend time choosing 30 select customers? Why not just send the email to your entire customer database? Two reasons:
- You’ll want to save some patient reviews for other review sites. If you discover in a few weeks that you’re falling behind on Google reviews, you don’t want to ask your whole list again for reviews on another site. Constantly asking for reviews will annoy your customers.
- You don’t want dozens of reviews flooding in at one time. If dozens of people leave you a review within a couple days, it looks questionable rather than natural. Don’t let customers wonder if your reviews are fake because you hadn’t had a review in a year and then got 50 reviews in a week.
How many Facebook Reviews Does My Page Really Need?
This is a tricky question because it really depends on your industry and how active your competitors are.
My answer: You need more reviews than your competition.
When potential customers are vetting their options on Facebook, having more reviews shows them that more customers trust you than any other competitor.
In high-volume industries like chiropractic or car sales, that may mean 40-50+ reviews on Facebook.
In lower-volume or less competitive industries like accounting, you may only need 10-12 reviews to stand out.
Your Facebook Reviews Customer Request Template
Ready to take 20 minutes to get Facebook reviews for your page? All you have to do is identify your top customers and send an email.
Here’s a handy copy and paste email template you can use.
To our loyal customers,
We are thrilled with the great feedback and comments we receive from customers like you! We thank you for your support and referrals.
Despite all of these wonderful comments, we are unfortunately very low on Facebook reviews. We are asking for your help to please visit our Facebook page and leave a review for us. New customers often find us online, and many people base their choice to call us on positive reviews.
Please click the link below to be directed to our Facebook review page to leave a brief, helpful review:
https://www.facebook.com/YourFacebookURL/reviews/
We thank you very much for your help in growing our exposure and business!
Note that this template could be easily modified to ask for reviews on Google or other industry-specific websites. Go for it—I just suggest you wait a couple weeks between asks to spread your reviews out naturally.
I want to hear how it works for you! Leave me a comment below.
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