Can You Offer a Prize for a Google Review
A struggle for many business organisation owners is getting their boilerplate customer to leave a positive review online. Unfortunately, people are often quick to leave a review online simply if they are dissatisfied with their experience and want to seek personal justice with a punishing or negative review. In order to receive more positive reviews, businesses usually make up one's mind to offer incentives or freebies to reward customers for talking up their business online.
Popular methods of incentivizing online reviews include offering a production discount, entry into a monthly prize cartoon, or even cold hard cash. At this point in the game, virtually concern owners take felt the sting of a negative review, whether information technology was warranted or not, and accept yearned to cover it upwardly . Concern owners are also becoming well enlightened of the SEO benefits of online reviews, specially for local SEO.
If you want your business to show upwards here: 
… then you need reviews. Bribery is a strong word.
But how tin a business organization encourage patrons to leave more than (positive) reviews without coming close to doing this? Is "incentivizing" a no-no for businesses? Brusk respond: yep.
While it'due south crucial to do everything yous can to bring in positive reviews on a regular basis, it'south equally important to adhere to the guidelines of each review site to keep your concern out of trouble. This is why reputation management has go an integral part of managing an online presence. Incentivizing reviews has been a big grey surface area for many online review sites in the past, but it's becoming increasingly dangerous to encourage reviews for many sites.
Here'south how the nearly popular online review websites feel about incentivizing reviews, and how you can get more reviews of your business without stepping into the gray expanse of incentivization.
Video: Online Review Management
Yelp
Exercise non mess with Yelp. Since receiving a lot of backlash about possibly favoring business accounts who pay for Yelp advertising, this online review giant is quick to "hide" reviews they feel are paid or from illegitimate users. Unfortunately, they frequently hide completely legitimate reviews from real people but the idea is of course to proceed businesses from encouraging lots of people to create Yelp accounts for the sole purpose of leaving their concern a 5 star review.
Subconscious reviews are attainable merely only afterwards clicking this ominous message on a Yelp business concern page: 
Businesses can get into real trouble with Yelp for encouraging reviews. What Yelp is really looking for are reviews from agile Yelp users, people who take had a Yelp account for some time, who engage with other users, and have multiple reviews of various businesses already. If you lot take a lot of reviews from people who never bothered to even complete their basic profile information and have no other reviews other than your business, they will likely end up being hidden or "not currently recommended" past Yelp.
Yelp actually gone so far as to post these obnoxious warning letters on business accounts who have been "caught in the act": 
Here's Yelp's have on incentivizing reviews: 
Basically, Yelp wants people to review your business without ever being prompted to do so (wouldn't that be nice!). But be a great business and you should only expect to receive lots of reviews (duh).
Google+
Google has changed it'south line on incentivizing reviews over the years. They naturally accept a lot of tools to detect what it deems to be false reviews, and a lot of times businesses volition lose legitimate reviews temporarily or even permanently for crossing Google's guidelines. Having in store kiosks, for instance, is one idea many businesses accept successfully implemented to get more Google reviews.
But since Google tracks the IP address of reviews, this will probable backfire over time and get y'all into trouble. That existence said, Google has no problem with you "encouraging" customers to leave reviews. Nevertheless…
So there is a fine line with incentivizing patrons for Google+ reviews. That's not to say yous can't get abroad with incentivizing reviews, at least temporarily. For example, bank check out this local salon who looks simply a tad out of place among local competitors: 
That being said, the repercussions with Google are frequently quite serious, especially given that many people at present attribute up to 85% of search traffic as coming from Google.
The short term gains from incentivizing reviews are absolutely tantalizing, simply continue in heed that Google can hands remove all your reviews, penalize your site, and even go along yous from showing up in search results completely if you're caught. Ouch.
There is not much to be constitute on incentivizing Facebook recommendations, just when information technology comes to developer apps on Facebook, they have this to say: 
TripAdvisor
On many sites it's quite difficult (surprisingly) to discover clarity on their incentive policy, merely not TripAdvisor: 
Angie's List
Every bit you may know, Angie's List is a different sort of online review site that requires users (not businesses) to pay a monthly subscription for access. Nonetheless, they take a hard line on incentivizing online reviews as well, as this response from client service makes abundantly clear:
We take the integrity of our List very seriously. Businesses may certainly encourage customers to join and review on their service experiences.
However, businesses may not buy memberships for their clients or offer reimbursements for buying a membership. We appreciate you lot wanting to share the List, but our goal is to avert any hint of quid pro quo. When we observe out that a company has washed this, reviews from these members are removed.
Amazon
Amazon is also quite particular near incentivizing or compensating customers for reviews, despite having its own organisation for incentivizing reviews of particular products (Amazon Vine). Here's their official stance on incentives: 
Information technology'southward also worth mentioning that reposting reviews from i review site to another or even asking patrons to get out the same review in multiple places is a bad thought. Equally we all know, search engines are not keen on indistinguishable content, and nigh online review sites follow suit.
While it may take some sites a long time to figure out your review is a indistinguishable, Google+, is aggressively remove reviews one time they are establish elsewhere. These are just a few of the more than pop online reviewing sites out in that location, just past at present you lot get the thought. At all-time, an online review site may allow you to "encourage" your customers to get out reviews of your business, but incentivizing is nigh definitely a no-no.
You may achieve curt term gains by offering freebies in exchange for client reviews, simply in the long run you're sure to pay more than you bargained for if y'all're found out.
Threatening Customers Who Post Negative Reviews is a Bad Thought, Too
In August 2014, the Union Street Guest House, a hotel in Hudson, NY, was reported by the NY Post's Folio Six to be fining guests who postal service negative reviews of its establishment online. Since the bulk of the hotel'due south guests are conjugal parties, the hotel's fines were reportedly $500 per review. Beneath is a piece of the original policy as it appeared on the Union Street Guest Firm's website prior to August fourth:
Please know that despite the fact that wedding couples love Hudson and our Inn, your friends and families may non.
[…] If your guests are looking for a Marriott blazon hotel they may not like it hither. Therefore: If y'all have booked the Inn for a wedding ceremony or other type of event anywhere in the region and given u.s. a deposit of whatsoever kind for guests to stay at USGH there will be a $500 fine that volition be deducted from your deposit for every negative review of USGH placed on whatever internet site past anyone in your party and/or attending your wedding ceremony or event If you lot stay hither to attend a wedding anywhere in the expanse and leave u.s. a negative review on any cyberspace site yous agree to a $500. fine for each negative review. (Please NOTE we will not charge this fee &/or will refund this fee once the review is taken downward).
Basically: if your nuptials party members leave a negative review, you lot'll be out $500. If they take it down, yous'll become your $500 dorsum. As expected, once Page Six broke this story, a number of other news websites picked it up every bit well, including TIME, Fox News, CNET, and so on. The hotel's Yelp page was immediately flooded with one star reviews (alert: explicit language).
The hotel'south Facebook page has also received like handling (similar alert for linguistic communication in reviews). 
A hotel representative responded, claiming that it was a "tongue-in-cheek response to a wedding many years ago" and "certainly never enforced," just the damage has likely already been done. So while paying customers to review your concern is bad, threatening them if they leave a bad review can be even worse.
Don't make the same mistake this hotel did.
Increasing Your Reviews (And Staying Out of Trouble)
So how can a business bring in positive reviews without offering incentives? Here are a few ideas:
- Display logos of popular review websites in the front window of your business, in your waiting room, on your menus, at the bottom of receipts, and on materials your patrons might take dwelling later visiting your business.
- Add links to your business concern profiles on popular review sites to your e-mail signature, website header/footer, and on your social media pages.
- Transport a follow up e-mail to your customers thanking them for their business organisation and asking well-nigh any concerns they might have. Conveniently include logos linking to your business contour on pop review sites.
- Talk to your customers nearly how much you value online reviews during their visit.
- Appeal to the ego of your customers by highlighting actual reviews on your website, via social media shoutouts, or by printing them out and hanging them in your place of business organization.
- Respond to online reviews (even the bad ones) on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor to prove people yous accept their feedback seriously.
At that place are lots of other resources out in that location about how to get more online reviews for your business, but this list should go you started in the right direction. If you have other ideas for getting new reviews that accept worked for you we'd beloved to hear about them in the annotate section below. If y'all're interested in how WebFX reviews are managed with our proprietary ReviewFX software, contact united states today!
Just call up, it doesn't pay to pay for online reviews! Photo Credit: StockMonkeys.com
Source: https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/incentivizing-website-reviews-bad-idea/
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