Getting Language School Reviews: Are You Using All Your Options?
Any modern successful business today has established routines to ask customers if they are satisfied and offering options to rate and share their opinion. It is the smart thing to do.
Free honest real feedback, no matter if it is positive or negative (hopefully more positive in nature) is worth gold for getting new customers. Here is why it is important to maximize the impact of getting reviews and using those you have already gotten.
Why Language School Reviews Are The Life Blood Of Your Business
Getting Reviews are of course important in order to influence potential language students to want them to study with you and buy your language services. But beside the short-term goal of making immediate sales, it has a lot of additional long-term benefits that should not be overlooked.
Social Proof: Your Business Is Real
Anyone can create a website pretending to be something that does not exist in the real world. Whether you are personally have fallen for a scam trying to buy something online ” too good to be true” or not – it is the luring question with any buying decision you make. “Can I trust this company? Are they for real?”
Reviews with authentic voices from customers are the most powerful tool to help people to overcome doubts. It helps them to educate themselves about your main advantages compared against other language schools and gives them peace of mind, that indeed you are a real business and when they book a language course with you and travel to your location that someone will welcome them to get their language adventure started for good.
Increasing Your Reach Into New Networks
It is very wise to add yourself to as many review websites as you can because you might reach potential students that you have not thought of in the first place.
Google and search engines are very intelligent and always show different website results to different users based on their location, what device they are using, what past web searches they made – so it is a smart decision to be present on as many diverse networks and not to rely on just only one review platform to present and show off your customers satisfaction.
SEO Benefits From Getting Links From Other Websites
Your own language school website will rank much better, the more relevant links you will get from other websites that confirm the authority of your topics, in your case learning languages.
So getting as many different links as possible from other websites not just confirms that your business is real and exists, it will ultimately help to get listed in higher positions and get you to be shown on page 1 for search results for maximum exposure when potential language students search for related language services they need.
The Only Challenge On Being On Multiple Review Networks
There are many benefits on being present on as many language school review networks as possible. One challenge and “downside” is that you probably have to employ one or more dedicated people to monitor and answer them on all those different platforms.
Once your popularity picks up, you definitely want to react without delays and apply the strategies that I am going to share with you now.
Getting Started: Is It Worth To Get Fake Reviews At First?
If you start out and have no reviews at all, should you get fake reviews at first to get started? After all, even street musicians and even professional beggars on the street know that putting some initial coins into their hat or cup will help that more people add their tips and donation much faster as opposed to put an empty container in front of them.
While there are even services out there selling you fake reviews, you should avoid those like the plague. Seek out your real customers instead. Maybe you had some customers already but they were not aware of the options to rate your language school?
Especially if you have language school customers that were satisfied with your services, they are usually more than willing to share their positive experiences.
You can consider offering free language course units in exchange for reviews – that is a much better authentic way to get your first reviews going.
The “grey zone” of adding customer reviews is if you have existing testimonials and want to copy and paste them online. One option is to use single created Google accounts and then adding those reviews under each of such accounts.
This is a border-line strategy because, on one hand, it is you sharing *REAL* testimonials, just under “fake accounts” that you create yourself in order to have them presented in the correct way other customers expect them to be seen.
This should be nothing more than a first-time measure to get other customers adding their reviews. Do not add fake non-existing untrue reviews. You will get eventually get caught and ruin your reputation.
It is much better to improve your services to the point where your customers are so impressed with what you do that they can’t help themselves leaving reviews naturally.
Then utilize then and multiply their impact with the following tips and strategies.
The Most Important Secret To Your Own Language School Reviews
Getting reviews is one thing, using them and multiplying their impact is another. Here are the most important elements of doing it successfully.
Always answer reviews within a very short time, within days instead of weeks to show that you care about the opinion of your language service customers.
Always answer to all reviews, both the negative and the positive. Thank people enthusiastically for their positive reviews and tell them how much you respect their time and effort it took them to write a few words.
A word on “giving star ratings only” reviewers: Always answer also those ratings that did not add any details.
Star-Ratings alone usually have no value without any explanations, but sometimes (like the Google Local Guide program) reviewers are rewarded with some benefits “to rate”.
Tell them that it would help not just your company but also other people reading their review if they would add 1-2 sentences to explain why they think that your language school is 3-stars or 4-stars.
Also: make out the most of getting your reviews and take screenshots and repost them across all of your social media. If you get a review on Google, repost it on your Facebook-Profile. If you get reviews on Tripadvisor, repost them on your Facebook-Profile. Upload those screenshots into your Google My Business profile. Be creative where you can share those, including on Instagram and of course in a dedicated section on your own website. Include them in your email marketing.
Use existing reviews that you have to invite other people to do the same and also leave you a review. Make it easy for them and give them the feeling that they will be in good company to rate your language school because it is what everyone else is doing – because they are all excited and impressed with what your school does.
Where To Get Language School Reviews For Your School
This article was written in October 2018 and of course, you should constantly keep your ear on what is new and developing online. Look out for new sources of referrals as part of your ongoing marketing efforts.
However, there are already established important sources to get reviews for your language business and here are some of the major important ones.
Google Reviews for Your Language School
Google Maps entries are just more than that. I wrote a whole article about how beneficial Google My Business is for your language school here.
People use Google most often as their primary source of doing research so it is the most important place to get reviews.
Facebook Reviews for Your Language School
Facebook has recently as of September 2018 changed their rating systems from the traditional 5-star-rating-system to a “recommend this or not” approach. So people can say they like or dislike your services and company.
This does not change any of the impacts of reviews have on Facebook, on the contrary. Facebook said that those reviews are even more prominently shown in their friend’s networks and are more visible for other people known by those reviewers.
Yelp Reviews for Your Language School
More important in the United States than in other countries, Yelp is similar to Google, but certainly with a lower reach.
Tripadvisor Reviews for Your Language School
The most overlooked source for language schools. While most think restaurants and hotels – anything that people like to do while going on vacation can be found here. Beauty salons, guided city tours… and yes, language schools!
Language School Niche Site Reviews for Your Language School
There is a growing number of language school niched review websites like www.languageinternational.com, www.languagecourse.net, www.languagecoursefinder.com and of course our own network MyLanguageBreak.com
LanguageCourseGuide.com Reviews For Your Language School
We help you to promote your Language School better. While we can’t help you to get the good reviews yourself – that of course depends of the outstanding quality of language training services you do provide in the first place – we can help you to maximize those you have and get and showcase your work to the right prospects and eager language students that want to buy and book their language training today!
LanguageCourseGuide.com combines interesting relevant articles for future and current language students.
For more information learn more click here!