Getting reviews for your painting business is essential for a lot of reasons…
As people search the internet to find a home painting contractor or someone to paint their business’s interior, they may see a few companies on the first three results pages. Perhaps a contractor in position one may catch their eye.
But when they check the company’s reviews, they’re missing or have mostly bad reviews.
According to Search Engine Land, a leading SEO industry publication, “68 percent of people say positive customer reviews make them more likely to use a local business.”
Ensure potential customers find reviews of your business when they’re looking for them (and they will look for them.) You want them to trust you to do an awesome job.
Something as simple as a lack of positive reviews can cause potential customers to hesitate to request a pricing quote from your business.
You can quickly see how critical client reviews are to your painting company’s success online, so you must have a method in place to consistently grow your number or reviews.
Online reviews are essential for three reasons:
- They help your company get found.
- They allow you to convert prospects into customers.
- They help provide social proof of your excellent work.
How do you get online reviews?
There are plenty of methods and software that you can use to help get reviews, but none of them are as effective as what we’re about to show you.
We’ve seen people use our process to go from zero to three hundred reviews in a year.
Offer incentives
Urge your crew leaders to get reviews. Keep track of these reviews, and offer bonuses or gift cards to those who get the most reviews for your business.
Create a review link
The easiest way to let customers give you an atta boy for a great job is to have a link that you can send customers to after completing their painting project.
Google My Business allows you to generate a shortened URL that leads right back to the “leave a review” portion of your GMB profile. There are also third-party options you can use, such as Reviewflowz’s Free Google Review Link Generator.
Of course, your painting service has to have a GMB profile setup to get the link, so make sure that you create one for your painting company as soon as possible.
Your Google My Business profile is how you dominate in local search results. Some experts say that GMB is the most critical contributor to small business local SEO.
Not only do potential customers take note of your company’s reviews, but search engines also do. More quality, positive reviews will signal search engines that you are an experienced painting contractor who values customer service and does a fantastic job.
Reviews are great for painting contractor SEO!.
Other social media platforms such as Yelp and Angie’s List also provide you unique URLs to send past clients to leave you a review. We’re not saying that they aren’t necessary. They’re just not as crucial to your local SEO as your GMB.
A properly optimized GMB profile is the easiest way to generate more leads locally for your painting business.
Create a review request template.
Place the focus on the team leader, not the customer. People will feel more obligated or compelled to help a painter, not a painting business.
In your template, ask your customer for an honest review and explain how their criticism helps you evaluate your efficiency.
Now, let’s do some math.
If you create a template and let’s say you have five crew leaders. Let’s say that you ask them to get reviews on half of the jobs. Statistics show that about 60% of your crew leaders will follow through.
So, let’s say you do 100 painting jobs a year. Half of your crew leaders are soliciting reviews. That’s 50 reviews.
If they do it 60% of the time, that implies that you will get 30 reviews in a year.
And for the rest of the customers you didn’t manage to get a review from, simply send a text, follow-up, call from the office, or ask them personally.
But, your timing is critical. Do it as soon as you finish the job. As soon as the paint dries (see what we did there?), individuals become less likely to review you weeks or months after completing the project.
They may, but conversion will generally be low.
Follow your review template.
If you stick to your plan of requesting reviews from painting customers that we showed you, we promise you that you’ll quickly have more reviews than any of your competition, assuming you have the work volume.
And, as you continue to stack up those positive reviews, Google will also. Your Local SEO rankings will get a boost, and you’ll move the mighty search engine optimization needle tremendously.
Continue to provide excellent customer service.
Of course, positive reviews all come with providing high-quality work and your customers having a great experience. If you go through and spill paint all over a customer’s home, you probably won’t get a great review.
Continue giving your customers an excellent product and doing a good job to keep them happy. A happy customer is not only likely to leave you a great review, but they’re also more likely to highly recommend you to their friends, family, and coworkers about your business.
Word of mouth is still essential for a painting contractor.
Need Help Establishing an Online Review Generation Process?
We hope that this article helps you in generating online leads for your painting company. If you ever need help with this or need any other digital marketing services, or an award-winning painting business website please contact us.
We help painting companies grow bigger and better businesses. Complete the form below to get your free painting contractor online marketing consultation.