Like many industries, our customers rely on us REFERRALS AND social proof for product and service recommendations. In the competitive PropTech landscape, every mention of your brand counts, whether it's in a review, article, comparison guide or forum.

High on the list of Google search results for our industry are PPL (pay per lead) rating websites, which collect honest reviews from users but display curated results from the site based on bidding strategies and those who want to appear at the top of the list regardless of rating or number of comments. These sites may show results for “most recommended”, which basically means if you pay a premium, the site will list your product first and as a result will “recommend” it the most.

I have had profiles on these PPL sites for over 10 years and have become increasingly frustrated with the cost vs. value. I would bid to get to the top of the recommended list, only to be outbid the next day and drop to the bottom, even though our product rating from customer reviews was still one of the highest on the platform. Rather than continue to compete with competitors' advertising budgets, I choose to shift our marketing budget in a different direction.

I decided to reinvest our advertising dollars back into my employees in the form of review bonuses. Results? In less than a month, our Google rating has jumped to 4.9 out of 5 stars, which is higher than any of our top competitors. Here's the exact approach I took to reward my employees for reviews, which produced impressive results in just a few weeks.

Connected: 5 Tips to Get More Online Reviews for Your Small Business

1. Start with a feature worth bragging about

I always knew my company had it excellent customer service; is one of the key differentiators that makes our product stand out in the industry. Our customer success team goes beyond being friendly and helpful; they provide added value because they all have training and experience in our industry, so they can build a personal connection with our customers.

I know our customers love working with our customer service team, I often receive personal emails from customers telling me about their positive experiences. I've also seen emails between customers and our support team that say something like, “It was a pleasure working with you, I'd be happy to refer you.”

2. Give your employees a reason to ask

It was clear that we had a feature worth bragging about and that our customers would share their experience given the opportunity. I asked our team ask their customers to leave reviews after positive interactions.

But the suggestion to ask wasn't enough of a motivating reason for my team to follow through. Maybe it was the fear of rejection or fear of asking for help which prevented them from seeking revisions.

Review incentive campaigns are quite common and traditionally involve a company paying someone to leave a review. I wasn't against offering incentives for our customers to leave a review, I just wanted to see what would happen if we just asked first.

I still needed to figure out how to motivate my team to overcome their fears, so I developed the simple Rewards for Feedback campaign for our customer service team.

Rewards for reviews (this is a copy of the exact project proposal I shared with my team)

We want to reward great customer service and user experience! If a customer has a good experience with you or the software, we want to hear about it.

According to BrightLocal, 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Great reviews increase our brand awareness and lead to more customers using our services.

How it works:

1. Provide great service
2. Ask for a review
3. Earn $20 per comment you collect

The details

1. After a positive customer interaction, ask for a review. A good time to do this is with a follow-up email to a service call. (see example below)
2. If a customer leaves a review on Google and you were the last person to talk to the customer, we'll pay you $20.
3. When we receive a new review, it will be shared in the #reviews slack channel and Nathan will follow up with the SSO team to see who requested the review

Example by email (we can add this as a saved answer):

It was a pleasure working with you today. If you have time, would you mind writing a review on Google for us? This allows others to learn about the value of the software for their rental business and helps us a lot!

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3. Work as a team

While a program like the one suggested above rewards an individual, you can encourage the entire team to work toward success together. If an individual receives a positive review, share and celebrate the praise with everyone. This validates the work everyone is doing to accomplish a common goal of a good product or service. You can also consider offering an additional bonus if the entire team hits a certain number of comments together.

4. Continue with rewards

In a few weeks, I've already paid out over $500 in review bonuses to our customer service team. That $500 could have gone towards a PPL bidding strategy that could have moved the needle on a software ranking page for a day or two. Instead, this investment will return to my employees and has positively impacted our Google rating. Every part of a dot on Google is meaningful. As an added bonus, we can see the truth feedback from customers about their experience with our company.

You can look to strategies like this to reward your employees, gain insight into your customers' experiences with your product, and hopefully gain new business as a result of your company's online reputation.

After all

Managing your social reputation, collecting reviews, providing a high-quality product or service, and rewarding your employees—all of these should be a high priority in your business strategy for success. If you want to increase your ratings, you can follow the steps outlined above and see the additional return of rewarding your employees and collaborating for a common goal.