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By Blair Kelly SEC Ad Rule

How to Get More Google Reviews | Financial Advisor Testimonials – SEC Ad Rule

9 minute read
How to Get More Google Reviews | Financial Advisor Testimonials – SEC Ad Rule Featured Image

Have you ever looked on Google for a certain type of business and found yourself reading through reviews to help curate your decision? Have you ever wondered how these businesses get so many reviews that it pushes them to the top of certain searches?

In today’s video Samantha Russell, Chief Evangelist for Twenty Over Ten and FMG Suite goes over the top tips on how to get more Google Reviews.

 

Video Transcript

The SEC’s updated ruling on advertisements and testimonials has officially hit the federal register, which is setting in motion May 4th effective date. So with that being said, so many people now want to know, how do I start preparing to use testimonials on my website or in other marketing? And what can I do to get them today? I’m going to start by teaching you a little bit more about Google Reviews because that’s the easiest place for most people to start, and it’s it’s also going to be the most effective.

I’m Samantha Russell, chief evangelist at FMG suite and Twenty Over Ten and before we talk about how you can get more Google reviews. Let’s talk about why we’re starting with them, why it’s so important.

Why Google Reviews?

1. They help your SEO

So the first thing to think about is that Google reviews actually help your search engine optimization of your website, and the reason that this is true is because if you think about Google and what their role is is to provide all of us with the best possible search results they can. If you’re searching for a restaurant or a plumber or a contractor or a financial advisor, Google would like to show you results that are verified and legitimate businesses and optimally businesses that other people have had a good experience working with. Right? So Google reviews allow them to do that. So for local search, especially having Google reviews can positively impact your search engine rankings.

2. They act as social proof

The second reason we’re focusing on Google reviews is because of what we call social proof. So if you think again about the average consumer or investor and they want to start engaging with a new financial advisor, they’re going to maybe hand over their life savings to this person. Right? Think about how impactful it is to have what we call social proof to go and Google that person or that business’s name and see objective third-party reviews from other people who’ve worked with that person. It’s incredibly, incredibly powerful, and it does so much positive. It has so much positive impact on your business. So we’re going to start with Google reviews.

4 Strategies to get more Google Reviews

1. Setup and optimize your Google My Business page

Now, the first thing to make sure that you do in order to start getting Google reviews is to make sure that you’ve set up and optimized your Google my business page. So that’s what it’s called Google my business so you can make sure that you have your page both claimed, and then you also will want to optimize it. I mean, things like to make sure you have photos. Make sure your hours of operation. Your phone number is all accurate and up to date. There are other ways you can optimize it and we link to the full post on how to do that below. If you have any questions, certainly drop us a comment on the video and we’ll be sure to help answer it. So once you’ve got your Google my business account set up and optimized and you’re ready to start collecting reviews Here are a few things you can do.

2. Add a link in your email signature

Number two, add a link right in the footer of your email signature asking people to go and leave you a Google review. It will always be there. It will remind people, and if they have a great experience, hopefully, they’ll go ahead and click it.

3. Email all of your clients asking them to leave you a review

A great thing to do is to actually send an email out, right so you can send an email to all of your customers inviting them to leave you a review. This again is going to be Proactive in collecting these reviews, and I know one of the things that historically has been so hard for financial advisory firms is that getting a referral is one of the best ways to grow your business, but enticing people to want to give out those referrals can be hard unless a friend or a family member goes and asks your client, who do you recommend? And then, of course, we’ll say you in a lot of cases, they’re not proactively just singing your praises. It’s going to be the exact same thing with reviews. People aren’t going to wake up in the morning and think I should go leave a review for, you know John Smith, he’s such a great advisor, but if you ask them for it, they most likely will say Yes if they’ve had a great experience. So being Proactive about asking is really important. Now there are some caveats we did a whole entire webinar with Max chase of stark and stark. He’s an RAA compliance attorney, and he did mention that one of the things you want to make sure that you do if you’re proactively asking for reviews is making it so that it is obvious if you have an audit done that you’ve asked every client for review, you’re not cherry-picking just the positive reviews. So if you are going to send an email out, make sure that you email everybody and that you have archived records of that in case of an audit.

4. Include a Google Review Request in the footer of your website

Another thing you can do is include a Google review request in the footer of your website. So somebody’s on your website. Maybe they’re checking into their client portal. They’re reading your latest blog post. They Scroll down and at the bottom of your site map, you can have a link to be reviewed on Google.

So those are just some of the strategies that you can try in order to get more Google reviews. Hopefully, you’ll find this helpful if you have any comments. Questions about Google reviews more how to optimize your Google my business page or set it up. Please leave a question in the comment box below and we’ll be happy to answer them and we’ll see you next week for another quick marketing tip video.

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