Today, contractors need to manage their online reputations and proactively seek positive customer reviews. Here are 4 vital tips, ideas, and strategies to help your contractor business maintain a positive reputation and use reviews to generate leads.
Word of mouth referrals have always been gold for contractors. When a client tells their friends and family that your work is outstanding, the deal is as good as done. These are hot leads.
Word of mouth still happens (thankfully), but in the world of smartphones, it’s often not face to face and often not from a friend. People listen to recommendations from strangers – online.
Today people access online reviews – and lots of them. It’s not unusual for a business to have more than 100 reviews, crossing multiple platforms that include social media and designated review websites.
This all results in a great deal of influential marketing content about your contracting business, with one caveat: you’re not the one creating it.
The user-generated content of reviews – at least initially – threw many contractors for a loop. Suddenly there were published statements about your work coming from unknown sources, and not all of it was good. Some was outright libelous; some repetitive, stream of conscious rants. Many reviews were positive and nice, if not particularly detailed.
Whatever the quality of the reviews, they had an impact – just like word of mouth between neighbors. And each year, that impact increased.
Today, online reviews are like the jury in a trial. After the evidence is presented by all parties, reviews have the final say. If they give a thumbs-up, you have a good chance at getting a new lead. If thumbs are down, all other efforts to persuade leads will likely fall short.
So what can you do to gain an element of control with this content? Here are some ideas on how to get reviews working for you.
#1. Your Work is Your Reputation
There is good news when it comes to reputation management. You do have control. A lot of control.
This is not control over what’s said in the review – that’s on your clients. You control the topic of the review itself: your work.
In the era of the online review, your work – and the perception you create by the way you treat customers – is really the underlying story. We’ve found that if your work is legit, it will be reflected in your reviews. If you provide solid value in return for what you charge, you’ll be on solid ground with reviews. Perhaps most importantly, if you have a customer-centric business model where you prioritize the needs of your customers, it will result in a strong review profile.
You must keep in mind that today, everything you do as a contractor, from initial estimate to final invoice, impacts your marketing. While there may be some fake reviews and unfair rants that get dropped now and again, you can expect your review profile to – overall – be a fair reflection of your work and customer service.
Your priority in reputation management is first and foremost the reputation part. If that’s strong, the rest will fall into place.
#2. Ask Clients for Reviews
Consumers today are more inclined to leave reviews. People are accustomed to having reviews be part of their activities on major platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon.
But for contractors, it still helps to nudge people, particularly if you need to get more reviews on a particular platform. In other words, when a job is well done, ask the client to write you a review.
First, when you’re wrapping the job up, mention it. Just say you’d appreciate if they’d write you a quick review – they may do it right there on their phone.
We’ve also found it effective to use email follow ups. This email template, for example, links to a review site if the experience was good, and opens a feedback form if it was not good. 
This tactic works for Google, Facebook, Top Rated Local, and Home Advisor. However, don’t use it to get Yelp reviews, as they are likely to get filtered because of their policies on not soliciting reviews.
Many clients pleased with your work will be happy to leave you a review. This is important for newer contracting businesses building a review profile, but it’s also a good idea for established businesses because you want to have recent reviews. If nobody has left you a review in a year or more, it may create concern in prospects.
Important Question: Should I Offer Incentives for Reviews?
You can take the request strategy a bit further and actually offer clients an incentive – like a discount on the job – if they agree to leave you a positive review.
If you’re struggling to get reviews or you need to suppress a series of negative reviews, you might consider an incentive. However, for the most part we’d suggest against it. As we said, consumers today are much more accustomed to online reviews, so just asking is usually enough. Also, if the quality of your work delights people, they’ll be motivated to leave you a review based on that.
On the negative side, creating an incentive for a positive review may smack of desperation or shiftiness, which is not the image you want to portray for your brand.
#3. Respond to Reviews and Welcome Feedback
One action many contractors overlook in building their reputation is how reviews offer an opportunity to communicate with clients. You don’t just have to read reviews – you can expand on them with your comments.
When you respond to reviews, do so with purpose.
First, if there is a negative review, give a detailed response to clarify the situation and explain what you did to rectify the problem. With the proper response, you can turn a negative into a positive.
Second, only respond to positive reviews when you want to expand on the topic of the review. What you want to do is clarify the benefit you delivered to the customer – particularly when they’re vague about it.
For example, say a positive review alludes to how you finished on schedule. You thank the reviewer, then offer a few details on how you always do your best to adhere to a schedule and finish on time and on budget. This makes the review a more powerful piece of marketing.
Don’t simply thank someone for a positive review, and certainly don’t to that repeatedly. Make sure your responses are relevant. Avoid going into a sales pitch as well. These people are already customers, so no need to turn your response into an advertisement.
Google states that responding to reviews and having more positive reviews helps with local rankings via your Google My Business account, so stay active there.
Facebook is also a good place to turn reviews into a dialogue. Be sure to respond to posts where someone comments on or recommends your work.
Look through your reviews for feedback that can improve your work and language that will help you tighten your value proposition. Use constructive criticism to make improvements. If you hear the same positive statements in many reviews, integrate it into you marketing message. Your clients are telling you what they love about you, and that’s likely to motivate new prospects.
Important Idea: Perfect is Overrated
It’s interesting to note that data shows that websites convert better when they don’t have a perfect review profile.
Consumers are skeptical, and when they see a perfect 5.0-star rating, they get suspicious. They wonder that this is “too good to be true”, and think maybe the business is tampering with things.
A few comments that reflect the fact that you have people working for you (who aren’t perfect) gives your profile some authenticity.
If you get a lower rating that offers reasonable, constructive criticism, leave it be. Authenticity is better than perfection with online reviews.
#4. Centralize Reviews and Monitor Your Brand
We’ve actually crossed a threshold with online reviews. It used to be businesses had too few reviews. Now many businesses have too many.
A contractor who’s been getting reviews for a few years could have a hundred or more reviews across multiple platforms, which can be somewhat self-defeating.
The problem is that prospects are having an increasingly difficult time answering the most important question: Can I trust this business to keep its promises and deliver fair value?
Across platforms, there are too many reviews and of those, many are too vague to be useful. There are many high-rated reviews, then suddenly a one-star bomb. It becomes kind of wash where the prospect remains uncertain about what they’ll get from the contractor.
It’s for this reason that we’ve created the Rating Score™ system, which aggregates ratings from all verified review sites then gives one overall rating for the business:
This links to their company page where prospects can read Top Rated Local reviews and link to the other review sites.
This system also allows business owners to keep track of their online reputations with relative ease, using centralized management software that tracks review growth and ratings. From here you can link to each site where you have reviews, respond as needed, and make sure your reputation is working to help you generate leads and grow your business.
