It’s safe to say that TripAdvisor can play a vital role in building your company's brand reputation, and where you rank with TripAdvisor reviews can be so important to the success of your business. TripAdvisor is one of the world's leading review platforms, attracting a phenomenal 500 million average users a month. Over 7 million business are listed and users of the website have contributed over 465 million online reviews. 80% of travellers won’t even book accommodation if there aren’t any reviews online.
Nowadays, the leading website also offers business listings and reviews for restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, spas, entertainment attractions and many other brick & mortar businesses.Consequently, with the huge volume of reviews being left on TripAdvisor, customers are visiting in droves to review customer feedback about your business before deciding whether to choose you or the local competition.But "how do I get more TripAdvisor reviews and improve my rankings" I hear you ask? Well, we have some good news for you. First of all, obtaining TripAdvisor reviews doesn’t have to be a daunting process. If done correctly, you won’t come across as ‘pushy’ when you ask for a review. In fact, if you’ve provided a great service and you know it, then a huge percentage of customers will gladly give your business a positive review, no questions asked. That’s the ’Law of Reciprocity’ at work.So, to help you get those all-important reviews, and boost your TripAdvisor rankings, we’ve compiled our 4 favourite but simple tactics, so you can get started right away with little to no effort:
So you’ve hit it off with your customer, gave them an experience worth raving about and you took the plunge and confidently asked them to leave you a TripAdvisor review…And they said yes! Happy days.But will they actually do it? That’s the real question.I mean, the customer said directly to your face they would do it, and you know it will be a great review and help your TripAdvisor rankings. You can’t wait to see it......but they’ve gone and now forgotten to do it. Unfortunately, that’s a reality in more cases than not. Customers carry on with their lives when they leave your store and it’s inevitable that some of them will forget or never get round to reviewing you on TripAdvisor. With the passing of time, the chances of seeing that review online become slim to none. Life got in the way.So why not give them a little reminder?You can create simple but effective customer reminder cards in the ‘Free Tools’ tab of your TripAdvisor management centre, under the ‘Promotional tools’ section. Note, they aren’t all free! You have to pay for any amount ordered over 100 but they are really handy. You can also get some flyers if you prefer!And if you want your business to stand out a little from the millions of other businesses using this ‘free’ service, we recommend you design your own reminder cards or flyers, or add a little request to any existing marketing materials you may currently have. Yes, it will be a little more expensive and time-consuming, but it will increase the chance of grabbing your customers' attention among the many other cards customers have stuffed into their purses and wallets.
General conversation and chit-chat forms are an important aspect of most face-to-face consumer transactions. So there’s no harm in simply just asking customers to leave a review for you. It might be hard to take the plunge at first. However like most things, once you get over it and get used to asking, the request it will come naturally over time and become second nature. Remember it’s important to always deliver remarkable service before asking people to post their remarks! That should be the norm though, right?You really have to go the extra mile to compel your customers to leave a positive review after they leave. Check out our five strategies that drive customer satisfaction for inspiration.
TripAdvisor has its own tool called Review Express which can be used to request customer reviews via email and then analyse the success. The management tool also lets you create and send out your own review reminders via their website.The first step to using Review Express is to gather your guests’ information. This can then be entered into a spreadsheet or other easily accessible location. A few notes of caution though...First of all, it’s very important to make sure that all of the information you gather from your customer is accurate or this will not work. Secondly, you also need to get the customer’s consent to contact them via email. And thirdly, it’s worth noting that any personal customer information you collect must be stored securely in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. Once you have all of the customer information organised, you can log into your account to create and send the email campaigns. While you can update the content within your email campaign, unfortunately, you don’t have the option to make changes to the email template which can be a little bland. With Review Express you can analyse the data from the email campaigns you’ve sent via an online dashboard. You’ll see the key statistics from all the campaigns sent including Total Campaigns, Total Emails Sent, Total Opens, Total Clicks, and Total Reviews. The main pitfall of using Review Express, however, is the time taken, especially for smaller businesses. Even if you have a source of customer information - from a booking system for example - it’s a time-consuming task to upload the information and then make sure it’s all correct, especially if it needs regularly updated, legally held and with accurate permissions.
The Swipii app has the ability to prompt your users for ratings and feedback after they've made a purchase in your business, making the feedback you get through the Swipii app completely verifiable. This means that the process of getting these customers reviews is all done for you automatically! You won’t need to lift a finger.A key advantage to doing it this way is that the review requests are only going out to your loyal and regular customers who are far more likely to leave you a positive review because they know, like and trust you. That’s why they keep coming back after all! You'll also get honest feedback from these loyal customers when something doesn't go as well as you'd like. You should take heed of this feedback because these are your top customers! This is the same for TripAdvisor reviews! Using your loyal customer base to get more TripAdvisor reviews is going to be far more effective than targeting new visitors.
Customer reviews, especially on sites like TripAdvisor are so important to a local business's long-term success. And by implementing just one of the ideas above you’ll go a long way to getting more reviews that help to boost your overall ranking, which leads to more customers visiting your store and more sales.Want to learn more about TripAdvisor’s ranking system and how it can help you increase sales and drive repeat business? Just click here to read 10 Ways To Improve Your Business’ TripAdvisor Ranking
Do you own a small brick & mortar business? Interested to see how Swipii can bring your customers back more often, increasing your brand loyalty and revenue?
