Over the next few blog posts, we’re going to focus on increasing your online review presence across the 4 major players: TripAdvisor, Google, Facebook, and Yelp. This week, we’re going to focus on getting more TripAdvisor reviews.
86% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses in 2018, according to the 2018 BrightLocal research survey. Consumers also read an average of 10 reviews before they felt like they could trust a business, and 57% said that they would only use a business if it had 4 or more stars.
10 reviews before a consumer felt like they could trust a business? I know many restaurants and hotels that don’t have 10 reviews at all. Sounds like the first thing we should focus on is getting more reviews and get those reviews on a consistent basis. After all, the newness of the review is important too!
So how do I get more reviews?
Simply put, the best way to get more reviews, is to ask for more reviews. 70% of customers polled say that they will leave a review if they are asked to do so. That’s great, we just need to ask! … but how do we do that?
Well, TripAdvisor has made a tool just for this task. It’s called Review Express, and it’s free!
What does Review Express do?
In a sentence, Review Express allows you to create, track, and manage review request emails directly from your TripAdvisor account dashboard. Utilizing Review Express is the first step if you want to automate your review request process. First, you create an email campaign with text, pictures, details, etc, that asks your customers for a review. Once you have collected email addresses from your customers, you can enter them in manually (or upload a CSV or XLS file) and assign them to a campaign. Then send it out! The customer receives the email within 24 hours and it reminds them about leaving a review for your wonderful establishment! Super simple and very effective.
I’m in. How do I get started?
TripAdvisor has made the process very straightforward. Simply login to your TripAdvisor account and click on Review Express from the Management Center home page. From there you can start right away!
If you need more assistance with TripAdvisor, check out this full owner management guide from the ReviewTrackers blog. It’s incredibly comprehensive and goes over everything from Review Express details to contesting or reporting reviews. It has everything you need to keep your TripAdvisor image as clean as you can!
But wait, there’s more!
Do you remember earlier how I said that utilizing Review Express is the first step in automating your review request process? Review Express is great by itself and takes a lot of the manual work out; but you still have to regularly add new customer emails and send them out daily, weekly, or whatever time-frame you manage to squeeze into your already busy schedule. There’s gotta be an easier way… and there is!
You can automate your Review Express workflow entirely. Once your email template is created in Review Express, you could be done for good… How nice does that sound? If you happen to be working with a TripAdvisor-certified connectivity provider like an online booking agent, or property management system, you can opt-in to allow seamless integration.
We here at SurgeSocial are one of those providers! If you are one of our wonderful customers, we can create an automation to work directly with your TripAdvisor account that sends email review requests automatically. Once a customer logs in to your WiFi and their email is captured, your Review Express template can be emailed to them within 72 hours of their visit – again, without you having to do a thing!
In conclusion…
We have learned (or came in already knowing) how important TripAdvisor reviews actually are to our businesses. And we have learned how to easily integrate Review Express to order to increase TripAdvisor reviews on a regular basis. Join us next time as we tackle Google Reviews!
