8 Ways Get Online Reviews For Your Plumbing Business

Online Reviews:The Foundation Of Plumbing Marketing

Online reviews are the foundation of the digital marketing for your plumbing business. And they can make or break your business. This article will show you how to get more reviews from your plumbing customers.

Why Are Online Reviews So Important? 

Online reviews are digital word of mouth. So your potential customers find them really helpful when they are looking for a new plumber.   

• They have many plumbers to choose from,
• It's challenging to know what sort of service you're going to get from the plumber beforehand.

Thus they look at the service experience of people who have used your plumbing business in the past.

What they're doing is they're going online and looking at the Google or Facebook listings for reviews. They are comparing your reviews to those of your plumbing competitors. They are checking;

• To see who's got the most and best reviews. 
• What people say about your business.
• How your business responds to both positive and negative reviews.
• The recency of the reviews because as far as most people are concerned,  reviews from more than three months ago are not relevant.

Here is the data to back up the statements above from various research sources

You can leave the card requesting an online review and explaining how to do it.

There are some risks here - and with all the other impersonal methods below. 

1. You don’t get a read on the customer to see if they are happy with the job.
2. You don’t get the opportunity to get feedback and fix any issues.
3. You will likely get a low review conversion rate.

You can always follow up with an email or SMS request as well.

3. Ask By Email 

Another way is that you can leave it until you finish the plumbing job and ask for the review by email at the end of the day.  Make sure your email request contains links directly to the Google My Business listing and or your Facebook page reviews section.

The email ask is going to be less effective because you didn't have that interpersonal exchange with the customer, and you didn’t get a commitment from them to leave a review. And emails are easy to ignore or park. 

Then your best bet is to follow up in a few days and see if they have posted a review somewhere and remind those people who haven't done it yet if they would please go ahead and do the review. 

It's also essential that you make those requests every day rather than save them up in a big batch and do them all at the end of the month. That’s because;

1. People forget about the experience, and the ‘warm glow’ of your service fades.
2. Google and other review sites don’t like it when you do nothing and then send 30 or 40 reviews to your listing on one day - it can look suspicious.

4. Ask By Text Message

Another way to ask for reviews is to ask for reviews via an SMS message. Text messages are increasingly popular because everyone's got a phone and they open nearly all text messages quickly.

So if you're sending text messages to your customers already then asking for a review via a text message can be a great way of doing it. 

Plus it's super easy for them to leave a review because it's probably a three-click operation. Your customer opens the text message, they click to the link on the page and leave the review. 

As with email, you should follow up in a few days and see if they have posted a review and remind those people who haven't left a review if they would please go ahead and do that. 

5. Have A Review Page On Your Website 

Another way to collect reviews is to make a page on your website with links to your various review sites. 

It's relatively easy to build a page on the website that shows the icons for Google,  Facebook True Local and Yellow Pages, for example. These icons can link directly to the right place on the web for the customer to go there and leave a review. That way, you only need to share the review page with your customer, and they can choose where they want to leave the review. 

The only downsides of this approach are;

1. They may choose a site that's not so important to you, but you can control that by what you list on the page. 
2. Others can access the page and use it to leave reviews when they are not customers. They could do that anyway if they wanted to.
3. It’s another step in the dance and one more hurdle for the potential reviewer to deal with. Hurdles create inaction.

6. Ask By Snail Mail 

You can also ask for reviews by sending letters or postcards out to customers. This takes longer than sending an email, and it costs a lot more, but it looks better because you've made an effort to send the letter and people don't get many letters these days. 

It’s harder to follow up with because you don’t know when they got the letter or postcard or if it's even been delivered.  And a second follow-up pretty much doubles your costs.

It’s also a barrier between the written word and the direct link to the review site. The customer has to take the letter to their phone or computer and then type in the link to get started. As I said before it's a hurdle and hurdles, create inaction. 

7. Ask On Social Media

You can ask for reviews on social media by just asking your followers if they would leave you a review. It’s easy to ask your Facebook followers to leave a review via a post or a messenger message. 

There are some issues with this approach;

1. Some reviewers will not be customers, so may not accurately reflect your real service.
2. There are always some people out there who will leave a bad review even if they are not customers.
3. The reach of posts and messages is low, and you would need to boost them with advertising to reach most followers.
4. It's very impersonal and (at least to me) feels a bit desperate for a plumber. 

8. Make Outbound Service Follow Up Calls 

Some plumbing businesses make outbound service calls to customers to check that everything's okay - usually, 1-2 days after you complete the job. Your plumbing business can use that opportunity at that time to ask for the review.

What Do You Say Or Ask?

Face To Face

It's essential to make sure you and your staff are listening for positive vibes and compliments about the services you provided during the plumbing job. When you get a compliment from a customer, then it's a good time to follow up with an ask for a review. 

You just need to say;

Thanks for the feedback. We aim to do a great job, so you ask us back in the future. 

We're trying to grow the business and if it's not too much to ask would you help more people know what it's like to work with us by leaving an online review. Would you be willing to do that?

When they say yes you can then let them know you will send them a link via email or to their mobile phone and give them a short explanation of how to post the review online. 

Some people make excuses like they don't have an email address or the time, or a Google account etc. Don't push it. You are never going to get 100% of people to commit to leaving a review.

But just know that the Brightlocal research shows 76% of consumers that are asked to leave a review go on to write one.

Via Email or SMS 

Here’s the approach we use for our plumbing customers with good success

First Message

Hi [first name],

Thanks for using [Company name]. 

Did we meet your expectations? 

Your feedback helps us know what we did well and where we need to improve. It also helps others in the community choose a business like ours. 

Please takes a moment and leave us some feedback.

Thanks for your business and support!

Follow Up Email or SMS

Hi [first name],

Have you had a chance to complete your review of [Company name].

Your feedback means a lot to us because it helps;

• Us to understand where we are doing well and where we need to pull our socks up.

• Others in the community learn what it's like working with us. 

It's easy to leave a review and will only take a few clicks and a moment of your time:

[Review Us Now]

Thank you for your support

Some Other Tips About Getting Online Reviews

Leverage Your Google Reviews And Google Tools 

To get more reviews from Google, you can create a short link that is shareable and will direct people to the right place on your Google My Business page. Here are some instructions from Google as to how to create that link. You can then share the short URL with customers. 

It's also essential to reply to your reviews - especially on Google.  It helps do two things:

1. It helps potential customers who are looking at your reviews in the future. It helps them understand that you care about what customers think. 
2. And it helps stop bad reviews because people who are about to leave a bad review will see that you always respond to them and it may make them think twice. 

When you get a few reviews, it's a good idea to stream them on your website so that you can show them off to website visitors. 

It's also a good idea to use them in your quotes, and in your marketing like direct mail, letter drops, local ads, email and social media. 

Don't Worry About A Few Negative Reviews 

One thing that you might be worried about is getting negative reviews. People don't trust reviews online if there aren't some negative reviews because they don't believe it's realistic. So the odd negative review doesn't do any harm and getting a few negative reviews tells you a little bit about your process and what you need to improve on. 

What You Should Not Do 

There's a couple of things you should not do when you're asking for reviews because the review sites don't like it. 

First of those is to ask for a five-star review. You need to ask for honest feedback instead. If the review site finds out you're asking for five-star reviews, they might remove the reviews and may even take you off this site. 

The other thing that you're not allowed to do is incentivise people to leave reviews. So you can't offer benefits or anything else to get the customer to do the review. Those reviews need to be freely left. 

Be Proactive And Consistent 

The more proactive you are about collecting reviews, the more likely you are to collect good reviews and a lot of them and have those negate the odd negative review. So it's crucial that you and your team take on this foundational element of your digital marketing. 

If you find that it's too hard to be collecting online reviews of if you don't have the time to follow it up and chase everybody, then check out our review management software. 

Systematise The Process 

Consistently collecting reviews from customers is a bit of a pain in the butt process.  There are four main fail points;

1. You or your staff forget to ask for reviews at the end of the job. If you don't ask you don't get the commitment and therefore, your review conversion rate is going to be low.
2. It's difficult for your customers to go online and leave a review.  They have to overcome several hurdles and order to leave a review, and as a result, they just don't bother. 
3. There is no consistent process that everybody applies, so you have no idea what works and what doesn't. 
4. Following up on customers who didn't leave a review is a large time commitment. That’s because you have to check if they did leave a review and then go back into some sort of system and send a reminder. 

This lack of process means you end up with fewer reviews per 100 customers than you could have, and that puts you at a competitive disadvantage.

We have a tool that significantly reduces the time taken to collect reviews from customers and increases review conversion from customers. 

• All that has to happen is that one of your staff members enters the customer's name and email or mobile number into our review system. The review system will ask the customer whether they want to review your company on Google or Facebook. 
• It automatically follows up with All customers who have not left a review to remind them to do so.
• And it's effortless for the customer to leave a review. All it takes is three clicks. 

We can offer you several options that automate the process for you. And if you'd like a two-week trial just contact us and we can get that started.