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10 Nifty Ways to Maximize the Value of Your Real Estate Reviews

March 17, 2017

What do you do with your real estate reviews once your customers write them? Do you know there are at least 10 other ways to use them to generate more leads, customers and new reviews? In this post, we’ll take a look at how exactly you can do it.

Real estate agent reviews are important from many perspectives. They can boost local SEO rankings, build you a better online and offline reputation and generate you more leads. It’s like having your referrals working to promote your brokerage 24/7.

Still, the prospect of asking for customer reviews is daunting for many agents. It requires serious follow-up efforts and you need to find that perfect balance of getting in touch often enough without being too pushy.

The effort is well worth it, though:

when judging a local business on its reviews, 60 percent of customers say the overall star rating is the No.1 factor they pay most attention to;
68 percent said positive customer reviews make them trust a business more, even without visiting their website;
51 percent of customers select a local business if it has positive reviews.

*Stats taken from 2015 Local Consumer Review Survey by BrightLocal

If you’re struggling with your real estate reviews, check out this post that will guide you through: Real Estate Agent Reviews: Are Missing Out the Crucial Ingredient?

Let’s assume that you’ve already generated some customer reviews. The next thing to do is to re-use them intelligently. These 10 nifty techniques will get you started.

10 ways to generate more business with your existing real estate reviews

1. Publish them on your site

Emphasize your selling points by posting customer reviews on your website:

publish a few of the best ones on your home page;
create a dedicated page to put together all of your reviews and link to it when appropriate.

2. Share across social media

Whenever a customer leaves you a Google review, share it on your company’s Google+ page (don’t forget to tag the person and thank them). By the same token, share the review on Facebook and Twitter to make sure more people see it.

3. Create a custom Facebook tab with testimonials

About 90% of people search for their future agent on Facebook. If you have a handy tab with all of your customer reviews showcasing your expertise, chances are big people will be more inspired to contact you.

4. Add review badges to your site

Many review sites (for example, Yelp) offer businesses the possibility to embed a review badge on your website. It’s a great way to promote unsolicited reviews from third-party platforms as people tend to trust them more.

5. Add reviews to your Google and Facebook ads

It might be hard to stand out among the variety of ads competing for impressions and clicks. One professional way to enhance your ads is to include a link to your reviews and testimonials page just like this agent did (possible both for Google and Facebook ads):

6. Add reviews to your email signature

You can also add a link to a dedicated page in your email signature for real estate agents, just like in the example from above or below (or insert a one-sentence review).

7. Include reviews in your email newsletters

Real estate reviews in email campaigns may help you add credibility to your outreach and convert leads faster.

(We did a separate post outlining the best structure for a real estate newsletter, 7 Steps to Creating an Outstanding Real Estate Newsletter.)

8. Respond to negative reviews professionally

There’s nothing worse than a negative review left unanswered. Ignoring it won’t make it disappear and just think of all the damage it could do. Review etiquette requires that you should reply to any reviews, positive and negative alike.

If you have just got a negative review, don’t get defensive and admit you could have done better. Oftentimes, your disappointed customers can turn into your most loyal advocates!

9. Study competitor reviews and outperform them

Do some online engineering to find out where your competition stands in terms of reviews. Do they use any review sites you don’t? Where do they have the largest number of reviews? What are their customers writing about them?

All of this can help you fine-tune your follow-ups and establish your presence on a platform you might have been missing out.

10. Print out your reviews

You probably use some marketing handouts and flyers to promote your brokerage across the city’s venues so why not enhance them with your online customer reviews? Include a quote and photo of your reviewer in your printed marketing materials to make them less about you and more about customers.