Earn More Google Reviews with Fluid Local

If you run a small business, you are dealing with Google Reviews whether you want to or not. Google Reviews are part of the Google Maps and Google Search ecosystems and ignoring your reputation is a quick way of losing new business from these platforms.

Google Reviews Dominate

But how did Google come to dominate the third-party review space? We’d like to reference a 7-year case study posted by Mike Blumenthal discussing this very topic. Two important points to take away from this study:

1 – If Google wants to dominate… it can do so at any time. Yelp was king of reviews but within less than two years, they quickly fell behind Google which adjusted their approach on reviews. Look at the difference between 2017 and 2018 when comparing Google to Yelp in a screenshot from Blumenthal’s post.

2 – Google made it easier for customers to leave feedback but Yelp didn’t adapt. Instead, Yelp double downed on making it harder for customers to leave feedback on their app, while in our experience, filtering out real customer feedback. Yelp tried to control how feedback was left on their platform. This tactic will always lead to more negative feedback getting posted then positive as the overall engagement level will drop as it’s too difficult for the happy customers to bother figuring it out.

When scanning the web and reviewing different field service companies’ reputations, a majority of companies have less than 100 Google Reviews… and sadly, the averages are not always the best either.

It’s important to review both negative feedback and the ratio of positive to negative reviews. If you are providing a great service, you should easily have more positive than negative feedback on Google. But, a big part of the problem is the perspective of a happy customer in the survey process. Not enough of the happy customers are speaking up, or your company is not making it easy enough for the happy customers to have their voices heard.

Fluid Local Makes it EASY for your Happy Customers to speak up

Our reputation manager and local content generation app, Fluid Local, makes it really easy to get feedback from your customers. Our app is a turn-key solution focused on ensuring we don’t take up any valuable time from your revenue producing field staff. While Fluid Local reviews are more valuable than a Google Review (a topic for a future blog post), we integrated Google Review opportunities into our app’s survey process.

Let’s share some specifics from real companies and their data. What’s great about review data like this is it’s open to the public, so feel free to fact-check these results.

One of the most unique perks about Fluid Services is we run our own service business, Fred’s Appliance. So when we roll out a new feature or product, it’s not a theory or concept. We prove the concept with our Fred’s team before we roll it out to the public. And current Fluid clients will always get first dibs on the new features and apps we are producing. Like our new appliance repair scheduler.

Google Reviews – fredsappliance.com

Below are the Google reviews for Fred’s Appliance. We also highlighted the location of when we implemented Fluid Local but based on the data, you can easily tell when we launched this new process. We have had this solution in place for 4 years and the results have been quite impressive

Google Reviews – applianceexpresstx.com

Let’s take a look at Appliance Express out of Texas, a larger operation than our own at Fred’s, but notice a pattern yet? We’re not going to highlight the spot when they signed up… but you can make an educated guess.

Google Reviews – authorizedco.com

And finally, let’s take a look at a self servicing dealer, Authorized Service out of Ohio. While they have a different set of challenges servicing what they sell to customers, Authorized is having great success with Fluid Local and Google Reviews. Again, we’re not going to specify when they started using Fluid Local… but like Appliance Express… the data is pretty clear when the change started.

How Fluid Local earns more Google Reviews

The biggest reason our app is successful? We took a note from what Google did to dominate Yelp and we make it super easy to leave feedback. And to double down on this, nearly this entire process is turn key depending on the dispatch software you are using to run your business! So it’s easy for your customers, easy for your team, the only catch is your company has to be providing a great service experience, something our team at Fluid can also help you with!

That’s it. Sign up and start asking for feedback; our app does the rest.  If your company is providing a great service, you will see an immediate increase in Google Reviews within your first month of use!

Don’t be a Yelp

Don’t be a Yelp. Don’t try and “control” your feedback; open it up with Fluid Local and make it easy for your happy customers to provide feedback. You are likely spending more money on “policing” your reputation when you could just solve your Google Review problem by requesting an invite to Fluid Local today.

Learn more about Fluid Local

FREE STUFF ALERT!
What you can do for FREE about Google Reviews

For anyone that has taken the time to engage Adam or Alex on one of their free consultation chats (Schedule some time to talk shop with us today), they like to share some free ways to solve problems whenever possible, it’s just going to require some extra hustle on your part to make it work.

We know companies are in different stages of growth and not everyone can go all-in on what we offer. So let’s share some free stuff!

FREE Tip #1 – Setup a page on your website to ask for feedback

No need to pay for a fancy software to do this, just create a new page on your website and add a few links to different review sites. Use this URL as a quick way to email or text your customers to leave feedback. Any web developer should be able to knock this out in 15 minutes or less, if not, you should consider shopping around for a new web developer, you can use our page at Fred’s as a template!

Google even spins up a dedicated link for free to leave a review about your business.
The link can be found within your Google My Business account.

Create a link for Customers to leave Google Reviews

While this is a free solution, there is a lot of room for human error in this process compared to using a dedicated application like Fluid Local.

FREE Tip #2 – Display Google Reviews on your Website for FREE using Fluid Local

Fluid Local has a free version that allows a company to embed third party reviews on their website like Google, Facebook, Yelp, Yellowpages, BBB, and more. Our app checks the web for new third party reviews about your business and automatically adds the most recent to your website. A great way to earn trust with any new business visiting your website!

Learn more about Fluid Local

So we’ve shared both a free way to start earning more reviews and a free way to share reviews on your website. No more excuses for having a poor Google Reputation, either follow our free steps to work up a solution on your own, or reach out to our team for a fast, efficient, turn-key solution instead. Either way, don’t be a Yelp.

We hope this information has helped you to earn more Google Review Opportunities and helped you take control of your online reputation. Feel free to reach out with any questions using the chat bubble in the lower right corner, we’ll be glad to help!