Consumers get blitzed with ads and promotions every day. With so many companies promoting themselves heavily, it makes it hard for customers to know which ones they can trust. Until they have an experience with your home care agency, consumers are likely to put more faith and trust in people that can provide a first-hand testimonial than to trust the claims in your ads.
Where do they find personal testimonials? The simple answer is in your reviews. The challenge for your home care agency is how to get more reviews to prove that the claims in your ads are trustworthy.
Just how important are home health care reviews for your agency? A BrightLocal study shows that 83% of consumers read reviews for local businesses. Also, the number of people that always read reviews has been increasing.
A proactive approach for boosting online reviews is effective in getting you a host of great reviews that will lead customers right to your door. Here’s what you can do in your efforts toward how to get online reviews.
Get Set Up on the Right Platforms
The BrightLocal study shows that a third of consumers are searching for local businesses online every day. Consider this—they’re not just doing one Google search. They’re pulling up multiple platforms to perform due diligence in finding the best home care agency they can find. That means they’ll only view senior home care reviews about your agency if you’re visible on all the platforms they visit.
If you haven’t already done so, set up business pages or accounts on these platforms:
· Yelp
· Google My Business
As prospects are doing their research to find a quality home care agency, they’re bound to encounter a few home care lead generation platforms. These platforms give you online space with great visibility where you can highlight your senior caregiving services and give customers a chance to check out your star-ratings and reviews. Complete listings and honest reviews will improve SEO and boost your ranking in the search engines.
As a tip, avoid using stock photos. Many consumers easily detect listings that are disingenuous, and you’ll lose points for the lack of transparency.
In your quest for how to get more online reviews for your business, add listings for your home care agency to these sites:
- Caring.com
- BestofHomeCare.com
- Care.com
- AgingCare.com
- Carelike.com
- CareinHomes.com
- SeniorCare.com
- APlaceForMom.com
- SeniorAdvisor.com (offers business tools where you can request reviews via email, create printable flyers, and customize prepaid review postcards)
Make sure your listings are concise and complete and monitor them to ensure they’re always up to date.
Your Caregivers Look at Reviews Too
In your efforts to promote your home care agency brand, be aware that caregivers are also checking out your reviews. Reputation goes a long way when caregivers are looking for a job. Honest testimonials reveal a lot about your agency’s culture and mission. Caregivers will be looking for reviews that indicate whether they’re a good fit as your employee.
These are some of the sites where jobseekers will be looking for caregiver reviews:
How to Request Customer Reviews for Your Senior Care Business
When customers are happy with your home care agency services, they’re happy to give you a positive review. Often, it happens organically, and it’s great when it does. However, you don’t have to sit back and hope it happens on its own.
When you ask your clients to provide a review at just the right time, they’ll do it with pleasure. It creates a win for you and your future clients. The key to how to get positive reviews is to ask for them consistently.
Who do you ask to write reviews and when do you ask them? Ask happy clients that express gratitude for how they benefitted from your services.
The following steps are your guide on how to get reviews for your business:
1. Build workflows around asking for reviews. Train your staff to ask for reviews when making follow-up calls. Emphasize that honest reviews are the best thank you they can give you.
2. Take advantage of automation. Send out polite reminders at regular intervals asking for reviews using emails, texts, or other communications.
3. Link your requests to review sites. Make it easy for them to leave a review on Facebook, Google My Business, and other sites. As a word of caution, Yelp penalizes businesses that actively seek reviews. The workaround is to add a “Find us on Yelp” icon in a visible place where clients can’t miss it.
4. Ask customers if their experience with your agency is positive or negative. If their response is positive, it’s an opportune time to ask them for a review. If it’s not, it gives you an opportunity to make amends and take action to discourage a negative review.
5. Thank customers for their reviews with a prompt response. Whether reviews are positive or negative, be sure to thank them for taking the time to post a comment. Reply to negative reviewers with contact information on how they can properly address their complaint. Such a response tells visitors that you’re willing to address concerns in a timely manner and that you don’t skirt around problems. An occasional negative review can turn into a positive impression when you’re willing to address issues responsibly.
During their search for a quality home care agency, customers are looking for agencies that are ethical and reflect a sense of integrity. It’s not ethical to offer customers incentives in exchange for reviews.
Avoid any strategies for getting reviews that wreak of blinking lights annoying pop-ups. The right approach to getting positive reviews is to encourage your clients to give you feedback and gently guide them toward the best places to post reviews.
Ultimately, your end goal along the journey for how to get positive reviews for your home care agency is to ensure that the online presence for your brand is one that reflects the qualities that customers are looking for in caregiver services—honesty, quality, integrity, and professionalism. Lots of positive reviews encourage readers to choose your agency over another.
As for negative reviewers, they generally describe a particular incident. As long as you respond promptly, commit to righting any wrongs, and you handle concerns professionally, it still leaves a positive imprint on your services.
Overall, customer feedback gives you the insights to help you develop a culture that centers around what it means to provide quality senior care services.Are you still feeling overwhelmed by the day-to-day challenges of running a home care agency? When there’s no time or energy left at the end of the day, call on SeniorCareClicks to help you get the support you need with online marketing. You’ll be able to deliver even better care to your clients and have more time to grow your business when you leave the task of getting great reviews to a professional marketer.
Karina has spent most of her career working in the senior care industry, mostly as a digital marketing manager for home care and nursing home facilities. With 8+ years of hands-on experience in digital marketing to her credit, Karina also worked as a consultant for senior care businesses. As someone who cares deeply for seniors and has expert skills in digital marketing, Karina founded SeniorCareClicks to fulfill her passion for her permanent career.
Karina and SeniorCareClicks have been featured in Home Health Care News, HomeCare Magazine, Forbes, The Nursing Home Podcast, and other media. Karina is “the premier expert in senior care marketing”!
