Is Having More Online Reviews Better Than Your Competitor?

I was asked recent­ly by a client to share more about how to moti­vate their employ­ees to ask for online reviews and to help them under­stand the impor­tance of get­ting reviews. While reply­ing to my client, I real­ized that many times, com­pa­nies think they have to have more reviews than their com­peti­tors. They think that will make them close more deals and crush their com­pe­ti­tion! Let me share my quick answer to the ques­tion of if it real­ly mat­ters if your com­pa­ny has more reviews than a competitor. The short answer is this: Not real­ly! Let me explain. I’ve seen a lot of com­pa­nies stress out about get­ting online reviews. It is a chal­lenge to get cus­tomers to write reviews in the home improve­ment indus­try! I get that! What I have seen is that a com­pa­ny finds a way to do a review blitz. Maybe they call their cus­tomers or send an email blast beg­ging for reviews NOW. Using this strat­e­gy, I’ve seen com­peti­tors get as many as 30 reviews in a cou­ple of days. Here is the prob­lem with focus­ing only on get­ting more reviews. It nor­mal­ly does not last long. To be con­sis­tent, you have to have an ongo­ing plan to keep get­ting reviews. I’d rather my clients focus on a goal of 3 – 4 qual­i­ty reviews a month than 20 in a week! Why? It is all about the date of the review! At some point, if not already, con­sumers will get more savvy when it comes to their online research. If it has not already hap­pened in your case, soon you might have 20 reviews on Google and your com­peti­tor might have 60. Does that mean a con­sumer will NEV­ER hire you because you have few­er reviews? No it does not! Con­sumers will and already do look at the dates of reviews and fac­tor this into their selec­tion process. If they see that 30 of your com­peti­tor’s reviews were writ­ten back in 2013 but your 20 reviews were over the course of the cur­rent year, this can be seen as some­thing pos­i­tive. It means that you have a steady flow of ongo­ing reviews instead of 30 added in the space of a few days. Web search­es will get more intel­li­gent and put the puz­zle pieces togeth­er. One might think, ​“Huh…30 reviews in a week? No way! They must have asked for a ton of reviews or some­thing is wrong. I’m going with the com­pa­ny that has few­er reviews but seems more legit.”  See where I am going with this? Don’t stress about the num­ber of reviews you have. Just keep your team focused on ask­ing for a review when a job is done. You want con­sis­tent and updat­ed reviews instead of dat­ed reviews!