How To Ethically Get Lots Of Reviews
Hey, everybody. Andy Stickel, here. Today, I’m going to teach you how to ethically get a large number of reviews for your law firm. A lot of times, I talk to lawyers and they say, “I can’t get reviews. I ask clients to leave me reviews, and they just don’t do it.” Then I say, “Well, what you need to do is incentivize them. You need to give them a Starbucks gift card,” and then they say, “But that’s not ethical. I can’t do that.” So, exactly how do we do it? How do we overcome this battle because the reality is that not getting reviews is not an option? You need reviews to rank, and you need reviews to get phone calls, once you’re in Google Maps. You have to have reviews. It’s not an option anymore. You have to do it. There has never been a time when reviews have been more important. Clients look to reviews when deciding on which attorney to hire.
So, here is the idea of how you can give a client an incentive if you don’t want to give out Starbucks gift cards or something similar, and you don’t want to do anything unethical. So, what you can do is you can still incentivize someone to leave you a review. However, the person that you incentivize will not be the one actually leaving the review. What you’re going to do is, you’re going to, remove the Wi-Fi password from your office. You should not have any signs anywhere that say, “Here’s our office Wi-Fi.” Now, a lot of lawyers don’t have this, but the reason why is because people can leave reviews from their cell phones as long as they are on the cellphone — as long as they’re using their data plan. You don’t want them on your Wi-Fi. Once they’re off your Wi-Fi, you can actually have them leave a review from your office.
Let’s make this a little easier to understand. Identify the employee who greets the people who enter your office. This may be a receptionist or your assistant or whoever is in the front office, whoever meets and greets people and says, “Thanks. Thanks for coming. See you later.” You’re going to tell that person that for every review that they get, you will give them $10 or $20 or whatever bonus you have to give them to have them to actually get these reviews from people leaving your office. So, there is nothing unethical going on as in “paying a client for a review” There is nothing unethical about giving your employee a bonus incentivize your staff to get reviews. You will be surprised at how many reviews your staff will get for you, and how much attention a client will get from your people.
Here is another useful thing. You want to make sure that it’s easy for people to leave you a review. Hand them a piece of paper that gives them a script. The script says: “A lot of times, clients are happy with our service, but they aren’t quite sure what to write in a review. Below are some questions that should give you some ideas and will make your review much more useful for other people that need our services.” Then you will list a bunch of questions that they asked or they can answer. Leave a few lines at the bottom in case they have anything they would like to add. By answering the questions, they will leave you a better review, they are using strategic keywords, which will help you rank in Google.
A lot of times, people think that having the most reviews is what counts for ranking in Google Maps, and that’s not the case. But having keywords that have really high quality with correct keywords and having reviews that have keywords and synonyms that are related to your practice area and your location, that is what will increase your Google rankings. So, all you do is simply give them this piece of paper. The client is happy. You are happy, and your website gets a healthy boost.
If you would like a copy of the script we are speaking about, contact me by email and I will get a copy to you. You will have to customize it to fit your needs as mine has my letterhead.
If you use this strategy, if you incentivize your front office staff to get the reviews and you reward them for getting the reviews, then one, you’ll get many more reviews. Make sure that you don’t give out your Wi-Fi password. That way, your clients will stay off of your Wi-Fi, and you can get them to leave a review straight from your office using their cellphone. So, doing this, you can get around all those issues where you might be afraid that you’re going to get in trouble for getting reviews. There is no reason to mention this to anyone unless asked. With smartphones, the connection is rarely thought about. These tips can make sure that everything is done ethically. And not only that, but you’re going to get much better results for your law firm.
So, if you want this script, all you have to do is click the link included in this video, enter your email address, and I will send a copy of this very short, but very effective script right to your inbox. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments and I will talk to you guys soon.