How (and why) to ask your clients for Google reviews

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As service providers, a great way to help potential clients to make the choice to work with you is to showcase feedback, testimonials and reviews from previous clients.

It’s free, it’s hugely effective, and it only takes a few minutes to ask for a review - so why do so many of us procrastinate over asking for so long?!

Sure, it might feel a little uncomfortable - but nine times out of ten, happy clients will be more than willing to leave you a few words of feedback… and those words can make the difference between a potential client contacting you or someone else, who might not follow the same ethical approach to their work with animals.

So today, I wanted to walk you through the process of asking for a Google Review from start to finish, so that you have no excuse not to ask your next client!

How Google Reviews help your business

Just like looking for plumbers on Checkatrade or social media managers on Instagram, everyone feels more comfortable working with someone who other people have had a good experience with.

If you were looking for a plumber, you’d choose the one with the most 5-star reviews, right? Because the chances of you having a terrible experience are much lower with someone with lots of positive reviews than with someone who only has 3 reviews and they’re all 2-stars.

And the same applies for your business, too.

Particularly for clients who’ve never worked with a dog trainer before, they’re going to want to see proof that you’re good at what you do - and as much as you can tell them that through social media marketing and your website, words directly from your clients themselves are far more valuable to potential clients than your own!

Having Google reviews also helps algorithmically too - if you have an active, well-reviewed Google My Business page and someone searches for a dog trainer in your area, your website is more likely to rank highly as a result of those positive reviews when competing with someone whose website doesn’t have a Google My Business page or only has negative reviews.

Remember: if you don’t ask, you don’t get. The more clients you ask, the more reviews you’ll receive - even if not every client leaves you a review!

Finding Your Google Review Link

First things first, you need to have a Google My Business page set up for your business. If you don’t already have one, go and do that now! It’s super simple to set up and will help you gain far more visibility in your local area, as you’ll start showing up in Google search results and on Google Maps too. If you don’t know where to start, this guide is helpful.

Once you’re logged into your Google My Business account, it’s really easy to find your review link… On your homepage dashboard, scroll down to find the Latest Reviews box - and then underneath that, there will be another box that says ‘Get more reviews’. Click on the ‘Share review form’ button and you’ll be able to copy the link to send to people.

It’s as easy as that!

Asking clients to leave a Google Review

Now that you’ve got your review link, you need to start sending it to your clients. The best thing to do is to have some sort of off-boarding process set up, so that every time you finish working with a client you have a checklist of things you need to do - for example, send them any final paperwork and an email rounding up your time together, including the review link!

If writing emails is the bane of your life, don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. Just copy and paste the template below, add in the specifics for your client and your business, and you’re done!

Template email for asking for a Google Review

Hi [insert client name here],

I hope you and [insert dog’s name here] are doing well following our work together. I’m so pleased I was able to help you both with [insert the issue you were helping them with] and I hope the training is continuing well!

Now that we’ve finished our sessions together, I wondered if you could spare a couple of minutes to leave me a review on Google? It really helps my business and I’d really appreciate any feedback you have on our work together.

You can write a review for me here: [insert the review link for your Google My Business page]

Many thanks,

[your name/email signature]

Simple! Here’s to celebrating your brilliant client reviews.

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