photo by fizkes via iStock
One of the biggest sticking points I’ve found over the years with photographers I’ve tried to coach is that they absolutely hate asking for reviews.
I get that it can be scary to ask for reviews for fear that some of your clients may have had a bad experience with your business, but photography business reviews can make or break your business, especially if you live in a large city with hundreds of options for photographers.
So, the best way to get more reviews is to simply get over your fear and ask. But, there are a few easy tips you can use to get more reviews in a less intimidating way.
This article will walk you through some tried and tested photography business tips I’ve used over the years to get more reviews.
Call Your Clients
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As I mentioned, the best way to get more reviews is to simply ask for them. When I first started my photography business, I wasn’t very organized. So, when I realized that I needed to get more reviews, I just started setting aside a day each month where I would call all of the clients I had worked with in the past 30 days and ask them to give me a review.
This isn’t a very sophisticated way to get more reviews, but it works in a pinch. Make sure that you send a follow up email after you call your clients as a friendly reminder. You can include information about where you want their reviews posted, if you’re hoping to get a better Yelp presence for instance, and you can include specific questions about their experience to help spark their creativity.
photo by PeopleImages via iStock
If you’ve been in business for a while, though, then I personally believe that you can do better than calling your clients. It’s disorganized and it can be easy to forget to call your clients to get more reviews.
Calling your clients is also not the best way to get really honest feedback, since people are typically more willing to lie to you over the phone, as opposed to over the internet. If your purpose of learning how to get more reviews is to actually improve your clients’ experience, then don’t use this method.
Use Your Email Marketing
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My personal favorite way to get more reviews is to send a questionnaire via my pre-established email marketing channel.
This doesn’t take very much time on my part, since I already send marketing emails out on a regular basis to my old clients. The biggest time investment to get more reviews over email is to actually build your survey (which shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes).
- You should include the following information in your survey:
- Basic identifying information (name, address, phone number and email)
- Type of photography performed
- Questions about whether they follow your different social media channels
- A basic bubble question about how much they did or did not enjoy their experience
- A block text space so they can give you more information about their experience
- A simple yes/no question about whether they would recommend you to others
- A block text space so they can provide more comments about anything you forgot to ask about
People are much more willing to be honest via this method, as opposed to the phone method. Make sure that every single one of your clients receives this survey within a week of the end of their contract with you.
Depending upon where your business is at, you can also offer an incentive for your clients to fill out your survey (like a gift card).
Learn More:
Respond to Every Review
photo by HAKINMHAN via iStock
Another method to get more reviews is to ensure that you’re responding to every review...even the negative ones.
I wrote an entire article on the importance of responding to every review, which you can read in the learn more links above, but the gist of that article is that it helps to build trust between you and your clients. If you are only responding to positive reviews, this could suggest that you are trying to avoid any negative feedback your business receives, but if you’re only responding to negative reviews, this suggests that you don’t care about the time your happy clients took to fill out a review for you.
The key here is to only respond to your reviews when you are in a good head space. For example, if you get a really negative review and respond right after you read it, your emotions are going to come through and you could accidentally end up being really snappy. We’ve all seen businesses responding to negative Yelp reviews in this way, and it never looks good.
If you want to get more reviews, make sure that your clients know how valuable they are by responding to each one.
Use Podium Reviews
If you’re at the point in your business where you can afford to outsource your reviews for photography, then you can also try using Podium reviews.
Podium is a text messaging platform that pulls all of the messages your business receives, from your social media channels to your Gmail and text messages, and puts it all in one, easy to read place. It has helped me respond to all of my clients much more quickly and it also helps me to make sure no messages fall through the cracks.
But, another part of Podium is Podium reviews. Through Podium reviews, you can create a text message that automatically sends to your clients when you are done working with them. Through this text, your clients can click through to leave a review on Google, Facebook, or any other review websites you deem important.
Since more people open their text messages than answer their phone or email, you can be sure that your clients are receiving your review request.
Since you are already trying to get more reviews for your business, then you know how important reviews are to potential clients. My favorite part of Podium reviews is the chart that provides you in-depth reporting about your online reputation. It makes it so easy to track the number of reviews you are receiving every month.
Podium is also currently doing a free trial so you can try them out before you decide whether they will work for your business or not.