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10 Free Marketing Tactics for Photographers – Part 10: Get More 5-Star Review from Past Clients

 

If you AREN’T consistently getting 5-star reviews from the majority of your past clients, then it might be time to try out a new strategy. With over 100 5-star reviews on multiple different websites, we KNOW how to encourage our clients to leave us raving reviews. And in this video, we’re sharing all our secrets!

 

In our previous video in this series we talked about how something as simple as creating a small blog for each of your sessions could change your photography business. This week we’re finishing up this HUGE 10-Part series by talking all about how glowing 5-star reviews from past clients can be a powerful force for your business, and also how to get them! So let’s jump in.

 

 

Why Are Online Reviews Important?

So let’s start with why you should even care about online reviews in the first place. In a post-Yelp world, you probably know that Millennials and Gen Z consumers are inherently a bit suspicious of just about everything we see on the internet. After all, we’ve spent most or all of our conscious lives being sold to. First on TV, then on the internet through ads, and recently more and more social media and from influencers within our own feeds. So now, hearing from a company, “Hire me, I’m great!” or “Buy my food, it’s delicious!” just doesn’t quite cut it. And that’s where online reviews come in.

 

Online reviews are a type of “third party-validation”, which is something we talked about waaaay back in Part 3 of this series, when we gave tips and tricks on how to get your past clients to refer you to their friends and family. Very simply, third-party validation is when someone other than the business itself tells us that that business is worth buying from. Third party validation is why you’re excited to try out a new restaurant or Netflix show when your best friend tells you it’s awesome, and why you trust a restaurant more when it’s average rating on Google or Yelp is 4.7 stars.

 

But unfortunately, online reviews ALSO work the same way in reverse. Most people won’t even consider trying out a restaurant if their best friend told them that it sucked, or if you look it up online and find that after 25 reviews, it’s average rating is 2.3 stars. So online reviews are like a slightly-less personal version of a recommendation from a friend, but one with a much wider reach. That past client who leaves you a 5-star review (or a 1-star review) could have that review read dozens or even hundreds of times over the course of your business.

 

 

Reviews as a Buffer Against Displeased Clients

But here’s the thing: even if you do an incredible job week in and week out and are always giving your clients a great experience, there WILL be crazy people who you interact with during the course of your business. One of our current coaching students literally had a past photoshoot client try to use online reviews to extort her. She demanded a full-refund AFTER receiving the final photos, or she threatened to leave a 1-star review. When our student refused to essentially give her the entire shoot for free, after the fact, she left a one-star review full of lies about our student.

 

We once had someone leave our photography business a 1-star review because they were offended by an AirBnB review that WE left THEM while traveling for work. You might not have either of these exact scenarios happen to you, but even if you never royally screw up a job, there are still crazy people out there, and depending on the platform, negative reviews can be nearly impossible to remove.

 

So, gathering as many 5-star reviews as you can will protect you from those negative reviews when they inevitably come. Even though Google refused to remove this 1-star review that was unrelated to our photography business, our business’ average rating is still 5-stars, because we have more than 100 OTHER reviews that are ALL 5-stars. Don’t wait until you get that first negative review to begin collecting positive ones!

 

 

How to get more 5-star reviews

Okay, so now that you’re excited and ready to start collecting online reviews, let’s chat about how to actually get them. At the most basic level, the rule is just this: Ask. And then ask again. Over time, we’ve found that only about 10% of our wedding clients leave a review without being asked. So if you’re not being proactive about online reviews, you could shoot hundreds of weddings, and your online profile might look like you’ve only had a couple dozen clients. On the other hand, we’ve found that another 70% of our clients WILL eventually leave a review, once they’ve been asked and then reminded a few times. (By the way, if you’re doing the math, that means there’s about 20% of clients who will never review no matter how well you served them and no matter how many times you ask them. We can’t really explain why that is, but it’s just a reality, so try not to be offended when you feel like you delivered the best photos of your life, and your clients literally never talk to you again after the wedding day 🤷‍♂️)

 

So let’s talk about some tips on how to get that middle 70% to leave you a review. For starters, ask for reviews very soon after delivering your clients photos, and right away if they respond. They’re MOST excited about the experience itself in the week following the wedding, and that’s when that 10% of couples will leave you a 5-star review without being asked, and without seeing anything more than a handful of sneak-peek images on your social media. But the OTHER time when they’re most excited is RIGHT after they receive their final gallery.

 

So if we deliver a gallery and our couple responds telling us how much they love the photos and just gushing over the images, we respond right away, thanking them for their kind words, and asking them to share that positive reaction with the world! More on how we ask below. On the other hand, if they don’t respond to that initial gallery delivery, we follow up within a few days or a week, asking for reviews. Then, we keep following up until they’ve left the review, or we get the sense that they’re never going to leave one. Being persistent is ESPECIALLY important when you’re early in your business, and don’t have many reviews yet.

 

 

By the way, when we ask for reviews, we don’t just ask for an online review, but we tell them that “a glowing, 5-star review can have such a positive impact for our business”, and later on in that first email we tell them, “if for whatever reason you don’t feel like you could honestly leave us a 5-star review, please let us know so that we can try to make things right.” Those two phrases basically imply that we’d really like our clients to leave us 5-star review or come talk to us, but nothing else. No 4-star reviews, please! It’s impossible for us to say exactly what effect that’s had on our reviews, but since we started using this language, no one has ever left us anything but a 5-star review.

 

Another tip is to be aware that some couples create a whole new email address in order to separate their wedding planning activities from their everyday life. The only problem with this is that, as soon as the wedding is over, they never check this email again. That makes following up for reviews — and also selling prints or albums later on down the road — really difficult, which is why we ask for their personal email (NOT their wedding email) when they sign the contract.

 

 

Pro Tip: Build reviews into your workflow

The best way to actually remember to ask for reviews consistently is to build it into your workflow. If you aren’t familiar with the concept of workflow, this is just a repeatable process that you bring each and every client through. Your workflow consists of all the steps — from initial inquiry through getting a final review — that make up your customer’s journey with you. If you have a workflow already — whether something you’ve just written down on paper to keep yourself on track, or something more advanced like an automated set of email templates and checklists through Honeybook or some other client management software — make sure that requesting online reviews and then following up repeatedly is part of that workflow.

 

You also want to let your clients know that the reviews are coming, so they don’t think that the delivery of the final gallery is the last email they’ll ever see from you. If you let them know in that delivery email that you’ll be reaching out later for reviews, they won’t be surprised when that email comes. And as you’re building your workflow, keep in mind that requesting reviews should be the VERY last step. So if part of your workflow includes selling prints or designing a wedding album, do that first.

 

By the way, if you’re confused by this whole concept of workflow, we’re planning to host another brief workshop ALL about workflow — why they’re essential to your business, how to create your own, what apps to use, and how to run them day in and day out in your business. Keep your eyes peeled for that in the coming months!

 

 

Where to ask for online reviews

So the final question when it comes to reviews is where to actually host them. There are thousands of websites out there where clients can leave reviews about your business, so the best way to narrow them down is to prioritize websites that your clients are using to find you, and focusing on no more than 2-4 sites. At a very minimum, making a Google Business Page for your photography business and hosting reviews there is a great place to start. But if you currently use or plan to one day use sites like Thumbtack, TheKnot, WeddingWire, Bark, Yelp, Facebook, etc. to find new clients, go ahead and make a free profile on those sites, and begin collecting reviews on all of them.

 

Because here’s the thing, you never know where your clients will find you. If you have a TON of 5-star reviews on Thumbtack, but all of your clients are finding you on TheKnot where you only have a single review, you’re probably not going to book as many clients as if you had ALL of those 5-star reviews on both sites. That’s why we ask our clients to write one review, then copy and paste it to multiple sites. And we, of course, provide a hyperlink to all of those sites in every email we sent where we ask for a review.

 

And if they leave a great review on one platform — which often happens when they leave one without us asking first — we’ll sometimes thank them, and ask if they’d take just 60 seconds to copy and paste that review to the other sites as well, then we provide their exact review so it’s as simple as copy, click link, paste, clink link, paste, done.

 

Knowing where you want to gather reviews is especially important if you’ve been shooting for a little while but don’t had any reviews yet. You want to write a single email where you briefly explain how important reviews are to your business, include the links, then ask for a review. Then, send that to EVERY CLIENT you have EVER photographed! This is a great way to get your first few reviews, even if many of those past sessions were very cheap or even free sessions. Because at the end of the day, if a client is comparing you and another photographer who has similar work and is in a similar price range, but one of you has zero online reviews and the other has 10 or 15 5-star reviews on Google AND on Thumbtack AND on Facebook, they’re going to have more confidence in the photographer with more positive reviews.

 

 

Well, that’s the end of our “10 Free Marketing Hacks for Photographers” blog/video series! If you haven’t read the rest of this series, it’s PACKED with great marketing tactics like this one that are totally free for a new photography business, but can help you begin to build momentum in your business! Check out the links below for the rest of the series 😁

 

Want More?

 

Click HERE to get your free copy of our eBook: “5 Essential Tips for Turning your Side-Hustle into a Full-Time Photography Business.” You’ll also be subscribed to our newsletter, so our newest content, weekly encouragement, and exclusive offers will be delivered right to your inbox!

 

 

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Check out the other segments in this blog series!

• Part 1: Maintain a Strong Portfolio
• Part 2: Join Local Facebook Groups
• Part 3: Referrals from Past Clients
• Part 4: Begin Your Social Media Presence
• Part 5: Network with Other Photographers
• Part 6: Networking with Venues and Vendors
• Part 7: Win Over Your Personal Network
• Part 8: Our Secret Direct Outreach Method
• Part 9: Four Reasons to Start a Photography Blog
• Part 10: Get More 5-Star Review from Past Clients