"Without that word-of-mouth recommendation, they can have a hard time choosing between you and another broker, and knowing whether to believe all the promises your marketing makes."
1. Reviews build trust and credibility for you
Reading reviews from others who’ve used your services, help prospective clients feel they can trust you with their financial decisions. People also like to feel like they’re making a good decision, and so reading reviews about you gives them reassurance and confidence that you’re the right broker for them.
2. Customers expect to be able to read reviews
Some people can be put off asking for reviews in case it leads to negative reviews being left, which they think may cause their reputation more harm than good. However, the flip side of this is, customers can be put off using a business that doesn’t have any reviews, compared to a competitor company with reviews. People like the social proof that reviews offer. Many review sites allow people to leave reviews without a direct invite, so you can’t stop those negative reviews from being on the internet if someone does leave one. Instead, by taking control of your reviews and start proactively asking customers to leave you a review, you’ll show a balanced customer opinion.
3. You get an opportunity to learn from your customers
Asking customers for reviews gives them an opportunity to leave you feedback on their experience, which can be invaluable for you to learn from and make improvements. This applies not only if you’re working on your own handling all aspects of your customer’s mortgage application, but especially where you may also have an admin team who manage some of the work for you, so you can understand if there’s any improvements that could be made along the whole customer journey. It’s a good idea to acknowledge and respond to feedback, as it shows prospective customers you care about offering a good experience, but we would always recommend responding to any negative feedback privately, to save airing your dirty laundry in public.
4. Reviews compliment your other marketing activity and can increase your conversion rate
If you’re spending time, and money, to try and increase your client base, some of your future customers are likely to come across you online without knowing much about you. And without that word-of-mouth recommendation, they can have a hard time choosing between you and another broker, and knowing whether to believe all the promises your marketing makes. Having reviews, and sharing them on your site, can increase your conversion rate for enquiries. The reviews give prospective customers them the opportunity to see others independent and unbiased experiences, and give them the reassurance that you are someone they would want to do business with.
5. Reviews can help your visibility on search engines
If you’re listed as a business on search engines, they will take into account reviews that you’ve received by rating and the frequency of those reviews. A study by Moz, a well known SEO tool found that reviews are the third most important ranking factor in local search results. That’s pretty important for something which you can do for no cost.
Actively using a review site which links to your website also gives you more backlinks from a reputable website, which is something search engines also takes into account when ranking your site for visibility. Research from Moz, a search engine specialist platform, states that having reviews on your organisation can help boost you up the results page on search engines.
So if you’re not already asking for customer reviews, perhaps now is the time to start. Can you afford not to do it?
