The role online reviews have on the pest control industry cannot be overstated. Consumers hold a lot of power online with their ability to post public reviews that help others decide whether they will hire you to exterminate their homes and control their pests. It is important to implement an excellent review strategy and ensure that accumulating positive reviews is a top priority of each and every team member.
Positive reviews can help bring awareness to your brand and improve your online rankings. Your consumer base can help you get noticed by prospects and assist in giving you a boost in sales while improving your search engine rankings on major platforms like Google.
If you haven’t done so already, you may want to consider implementing a good reviews strategy as part of your pest control marketing strategy to generate consistent high-quality reviews. Your online reviews give prospects a lot of information about your pest control business and operations.
Pest control prospects trust the opinions of your customers and use their opinions to make judgements about your company based on the quantity and quality of your online reviews. Positive reviews can offer your pest control company the trustworthy reputation that sets it apart from competition.
Positive reviews can be the deciding factor a prospect will use to choose your pest control services over your local competitors. If your local competitors are consistently generating positive reviews on multiple platforms and you don’t, you might already be at a competitive disadvantage.
Generate Reviews on Online Platforms
If your company is registered on many online platforms that have a reviews section, you have a great opportunity to generate positive reviews because the platform usually does the work for you by constantly encouraging customers to leave them. Positive reviews help your rankings on platforms and search engines while benefitting the platform or search engine in the process by making them the go-to places for people to find credible pest control businesses like yours.
While the reviews platforms do much of the work for you, it is up to you to implement an excellent customer service strategy that will generate consistent high-quality reviews.
Generate Positive Reviews through Excellent Customer Service
First things first, if you want excellent reviews, you must provide excellent service. Part of the reason prospects seek out your reviews is to make sure you care about high-quality service. Before you ask customers to leave reviews about your pest control company or services, give them a reason to talk about you.
In order to grow your business and compete in today’s online-first marketplace, you must make happy customers who are willing to post positive reviews about their experiences with you.
In addition to all other marketing efforts, create an excellent customer service strategy that incorporates your reviews strategy. Positive reviews are the most important aspect of your customer service strategy because customers trust them better than they trust your own judgement of how reputable your company is.
Your reviews strategy should begin and end with great customer service. Positive reviews can help convert prospects into customers. In order to generate these positive reviews, you want to make sure you are giving your customers a good reason to talk about you and memorable experiences that are worth sharing.
When and How to Ask for Reviews for Pest Control
Generating reviews for your Pest Control company may be as easy as asking for them. When making requests for reviews, make sure you’re asking the right customers and at the right moments.
It is always best to ask customers to leave reviews in person after their service has been completed. In-person requests are more personal and more memorable. All other requests for online reviews can easily be overlooked, but something about the face-to-face experience just sticks in the minds of customers better.
If you know you have provided excellent customer service, leverage this moment by making a review request. Remember, happy customers are happy to share their experiences. Begin with an open-ended question, such as, “Are you completely happy/satisfied with the service I provided today?” This gives your customer an opportunity to express any dissatisfaction they may have and an opportunity for you to provide better service. Resolving their issues increases their satisfaction with your business. A Moz study finds that 80% of consumers are likely or highly likely to leave a review if their initial experience was negative and later turned positive.
Offering Incentives in Exchange for Reviews
Customers are already looking for deals and discounts, and it’s pretty hard to turn down the opportunity to save money on pest control services in exchange for something as easy to do as post an online review.
When offering incentives, it is good to show up where your customers hang out, like social media apps. You can offer them things like vouchers or a discount on their next pest control service in exchange for their opinion—is there an easier way to save money?
Respond to Both Positive and Negative Reviews
Bright Local suggests 89% of consumers are highly likely to use businesses that respond to all their online reviews, while 57% are unlikely to use businesses that do not respond to reviews at all.
If you notice your competitors are not responding to their reviews—both positive and negative—you have an opportunity to take a competitive advantage over them by creating a system of posting regular responses to your reviews. The earlier a response is made after a customer posts a review, the better.
Responding to both positive and negative reviews ups your credibility and gives you a trustworthy reputation over your competitors. Your responses show prospects that your company holds a high standard of service, and that you prioritize their concerns.
Put Positive Customer Reviews on Display
Lastly, display your current customer reviews on your website and social media pages. Don’t take a chance in letting the search engines generate which reviews your prospects see and risk the few bad ones you have being shown at the top of the reviews sections, burying the many positive ones.
Highlight your best and most relevant positive reviews. Put the perspective of your customers first and proudly display them on your platforms. Regularly update this section of your pest control website as more positive reviews come.
