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Why are Google Reviews Important When Running Google Ads?

Today I’m going to be answering a question that nobody asked me, but I’m sure it’s worth discussing. This will be very valuable for anyone who’s running Google Ads for local businesses. 

The question is: Why are Google reviews important when you’re running Google Ads?

Let’s set things straight. Obviously, Google Reviews and Google Ads are two separate things. 

There’s no way that you can get your Google Reviews to show up in your Google Ads. The rating isn’t linked or anything like that. 

So, why do reviews matter when you’re running Google ads? 

Well, customers often do not stop at your landing page, right? They click on the ad, they look at what you have to offer. And if it looks good, many people are going to keep doing some research before they actually contact you. What are they going to do? They’re going to go back to Google. Now they’re going to search for your business specifically, and they’re going to look for your reviews. 

If you don’t have any reviews, then that is probably going to be a lost customer. If it’s the type of customer who cared enough to go look and see what kind of reviews you had and they don’t find any, they’re probably going to move on. They’re going to look for another business that actually has good reviews. 

On the other hand, if they go looking for your reviews, and they find a lot of good positive reviews about the company, then they’re pretty much ready to go. They looked at your website, there was enough in there to get them interested and motivated to do some more research. Now they’re reading good reviews about the company. Now they’re pretty much ready, they are going to contact you! 

So this actually is a big factor. And I see this play out. There are companies that don’t have reviews. Either very few reviews or none at all. It could be a new company or it could be a company that’s been around for a while and they just have never made an effort to get people to leave reviews for them. So they’re sitting there with hardly any reviews.

If all else is equal, that company is going to have a higher cost per lead and a higher cost per customer with their Google Ads than the company that actually has reviews. 

Reviews do make a difference. And I see it happen because this is a very real thing. People are going and doing that extra research and looking for reviews. 

Now, we don’t necessarily want them to go leave the website and look for reviews because things can happen once they leave this site.

They can get distracted, maybe they come across another company somehow. So we don’t really want them leaving the site to look somewhere else for reviews. 

One way to try to prevent that is to put several Google reviews right on the landing page. The way I do it is just to take screenshots of the actual reviews that customers left on Google, and put those screenshots on the landing page.

The screenshot has a built-in trust because people know what these Google reviews look like. So it’s not just like any of those reviews on websites where it’s obviously not even a real person and they just have a random picture of somebody, and then a review that doesn’t look real at all. Obviously, people see through that type of thing. But by taking a screenshot of the actual review, it breaks down that barrier, we have instant trust. 

And if they actually go to Google and look for that review, they will find it. If we can put enough of these good reviews on the landing page, it decreases the chance that someone’s going to leave the website and actually go to the source and actually look at the reviews on Google.

So that’s one thing I recommend doing: PUT THOSE SCREENSHOTS ON THE LANDING PAGE. 

Obviously, these reviews are important. So what do you do to get more of these?

How do you get reviews?

Well, you really just need to ask. You need to get in the habit of asking people for reviews. 

If you’re running a business with a one-time type of transaction, perhaps you are a kitchen remodeling company, you’re going to want to ask for that review as soon as the job is done. When the customer is at their happiest, that’s when you request a review. Ask if they can go to Google, share this experience so other people can hear about it. 

If you have a business with regular customers, perhaps you have a gym or something, I’m sure you know who your most rabid fans are. The people who are in there all the time (the people who just love coming to your business), start there, start with the people that you’re almost certain are going to go leave a review for you and be more than happy to do so. 

Don’t worry about being a burden. Most people are happy to do this if you ask them for it. 

People are happy to help. They know that it helps your business. And if they’ve had a good experience, they’re happy to share that so that other people can have that same good experience with the business. Hopefully, I’ve gotten through to you on that.

Even with Google Ads, it’s important to have good Google reviews.

In this light, please continue to listen to my podcast: Google Ads Strategy, and make sure to leave a review. It will certainly help me. Talk about a very meta request, right? I’m asking you now to go leave a review as it helps up the algorithm, and it helps other people find the podcast.