Client Surveys or Online Reviews? - Marketing Tips for Promoting Your Business

When you are looking at promoting your business online, you want client feedback that will be seen by many people and that will impact your star-ratings on review websites. This may seem obvious, but many businesses make the mistake of conducting client surveys to gather feedback not realizing that this can impede your ability to generate new online reviews.

Asking your clients to fill out a survey can give you great information, but once a customer has completed the survey, they are MUCH less likely to also wander out to Google and write you a review. The tendency is for your customer to feel that he or she has done you a service by completing the survey and giving you the specific feedback you wanted. Writing an online review would be just redundant.

Don't get me wrong, surveys are great and they can give you specific feedback on your business, facilities, employees, products, and more, but the results are only seen by you. Until you have a solid star-rating and presence on all of the major review websites, hold off on conducting surveys and ask your clients to write reviews for you instead. You will still get the feedback you need AND you will be promoting your business online.

Everyone wants quality customer feedback for business improvement, but if you are going to ask your clients to give you feedback, why not also let that information and their praise promote your business to prospective consumers too?

Ann Pearson is the CEO of Impressions Review Managing, LLC - a company committed to empowering businesses to manage their online reputations. For more information about the services IRM offers, visit www.impressionsrm.com or email Ann at impressionsrm@gmail.com.