Reviews are one of the few local ranking signals you can genuinely influence, and they are the thing a customer reads before deciding to call. Most businesses do nothing about them, then feel awkward asking, then buy some, which is the worst available option.
There is a version of this that works and does not require you to be a salesperson.
What actually matters
Recency more than total. A business with 40 reviews, four of them this quarter, reads better than one with 200 that stopped in 2023. Both to a customer and to Google.
A steady trickle beats a burst. Thirty reviews in a week looks exactly like what it usually is. Two a month for a year looks like a business.
Replies. Owner responses are visible, and they show a business that is paying attention. This is the easiest thing on the list and most businesses skip it.
Detail. A review mentioning the specific job and the town does more than “Great service!”
Ask at the right moment
The moment is when the customer is visibly pleased, and it is almost never the moment you send the invoice.
For most trades that is when the job is finished and you are walking them through it. For a shop it is at the counter. For anything with a follow up, it is a day or two after, once they have used the thing and it worked.
Ask in person if you can, then follow up in writing. In person creates the willingness. The written follow up is what actually gets it done, because nobody writes a review standing in their own driveway.
Make the link one tap
Every extra step loses people. Google gives every profile a short review link. Get yours, and put it everywhere:
- In the follow up message you send after a job.
- On the invoice or the receipt.
- On a small card you hand over at the end.
- In your email footer, if you send email.
Do not send people to your homepage and ask them to find you on Google. Half of them will land on a competitor’s listing.
What to say
Short, specific, and from a person. Something like:
“Thanks again for having us out. If the new panel is working the way you wanted, a short review would genuinely help other people in Marianna find us. Takes about a minute: [link]”
Three things make that work. It names the job. It says why it helps. It sets the expectation that this is quick.
Do not send a paragraph. Do not send a template that starts “Dear valued customer.” Do not send it from a marketing system with an unsubscribe footer, because it reads as an automated ask and gets treated like one.
What not to do
Do not offer anything for a review. Not a discount, not a raffle entry, not a free coffee. It violates Google’s policies, it can get your reviews removed, and in several industries it breaks other rules too.
Do not buy them. They get detected, they get removed, and the pattern can take your listing with it.
Do not filter. Asking only the happy customers, or routing unhappy ones to a private form first, is against the rules and it is obvious in the numbers.
Do not ask everyone at once. A quiet listing that suddenly gets twenty reviews in three days is a pattern, and patterns get looked at.
Bad reviews
You will get one. Sometimes deservedly, sometimes from someone you never worked for.
Reply, once, briefly, in public. Not to win. To show the next reader that a real person is paying attention.
A reply that works has three parts: acknowledge the specific thing, say what you did or will do, and move it off the platform. “You are right that we were two hours late on the Tuesday and we did not call ahead. That is on us. I have your number and I would like to sort it out, so please expect a call today.”
What does not work: arguing, explaining at length, blaming the customer, or a corporate non-answer about how you value feedback. Every one of those reads badly to the person deciding whether to call you.
If a review breaks the rules, is from a competitor, or is about a different business, report it. Some come down. Many do not. Do not spend a week on it either way. The best answer to one bad review is nine recent good ones.
A habit that survives a busy month
Pick one trigger and attach the ask to it. Job marked complete. Invoice sent. Second visit finished. Whatever it is, it should be something that already happens, so nobody has to remember a new task.
Then check the listing once a month: read the new ones, reply to all of them, and note how many arrived. Two a month is a healthy business. Zero for three months means the trigger is not firing and somebody quietly stopped doing it.
