3 Easy Methods To Get More Google Reviews For Your Insurance Agency

Insurance agencies often operate in competitive markets.  When a prospective shopper is looking around for a new policy, trust can be a major factor in determining who ultimately gets the nod.  When word of mouth referrals are not available, the next best thing is establishing a stellar Google Business profile with more positive reviews than your competitors.  After all, it’s a well-established fact that over 84% of consumers trust Google reviews as much word of mouth referrals from friends or family members.

This begs the question, how do you go about collecting and building your business reviews without it consuming your entire day?  After all, requesting reviews from past customers, giving them instructions on how to find your business on Google & write a review, following up with them multiple times when it ‘slips their mind’ is essentially a full-time job in itself.

In this article, we’re going to give you 3 great tools to automate your insurance agencies review collection on Google as well as other review platforms such as Facebook, Better Business Bureau, Yelp, and other review platforms you utilize.

Implementing these tools (especially number 3) can help your insurance agency get more Google reviews than you ever thought possible while freeing up your time to get back to running your business.

Create A Google Review Handout for your Insurance Agency

Let’s face it, as much as your clients likely appreciate the work you do for them, writing a review is not at the top of their ‘to do’ list.  You may already be asking them for a review upon completion of policy binding but how often are those requests resulting in real reviews?  The Google Review Handout is a critical tool in converting the customers you have face-to-face communication with into real reviews.  Rather than sending them an email after the fact or giving them confusing instructions that likely involves ‘searching’ for your business on Google to leave a review, the Google Review Handout gives them a simple link they visit and step by step instructions.  The link on your Google handout takes the reviewer DIRECTLY to your business profile on Google and even prompts a popup where they begin to write the review.

On top of the ease in writing the review, your insurance agency Google Handout gives them something physical to take home.  Something that will likely sit on their table or office desk and act a reminder to write that review they promised.

Creating your google review handout for your insurance agency can be done in just a few minutes and is 100% free.  Below you’ll find a few great websites that offer a review handout generator (one is made by us):

• https://arrivala.com/google-review-handout-generator/ ( our favorite 🙂 )
• https://whitespark.ca/review-handout-generator/
• https://reviewhandout.com/google-review-handout-generator/

Google Review Link For Insurance Agencies

If you do more of your communication & asking for your reviews electronically, we have a great solution for you as well!  Creating a Google Review Link can greatly improve the chances of a customer completing a review of your business from an email.  Why?  Without a direct Google Review Link for your insurance agency, it can often be difficult to find your specific listing.  Less tech-savvy individuals may click on the wrong business profile or they may get confused on how to write the review once they find your profile.  Google review links take the customer directly to the point in Google where they actually leave the final review, eliminating all potential for mistakes.

You may be saying, “I already have this, Google provides this link in my Google Business account”.  Well, that’s partially correct and if you found the Google review link provided by Google in your business profile, that’s a great start for you.  However, the Google Review link that the Arrivala tool creates can take it a step further than Google’s.  Our tool initially reads whether a user is coming from a desktop/laptop or a mobile phone.  If they are coming from a mobile phone & have the Google Maps app installed, our smart-link auto redirects them to the Google Maps app to leave the review which eliminates an entire step of having to login to Google via a mobile browser.

Ready to check them out?  Below you’ll find a few links to tools that can be used to create a free Google Review link.  We highly recommend checking out the first link which is the tool we created.  It’s the only tool that we know of with the ability to check desktop vs mobile device before redirecting to the best review location:

• https://arrivala.com/google-review-link-generator/ ( our favorite 🙂 )
• https://whitespark.ca/google-review-link-generator/
• https://www.brightlocal.com/free-local-seo-tools/google-id-and-review-link-generator/

Automate Your Insurance Agency Review Collection

Last but not least, the absolute best thing you can do to improve the review collection process at your insurance agency is to automate it!  As we all know, review collection can be extremely time-consuming.  Even with the Google review link tool and Google handout generator tool provided above, you will still have situations where the reviews are never written.  How do you keep track of and follow-up with those specific customers without wasting your day or spending hundreds in labor?  The answer is review collection automation.

What is review automation and how can it help get more reviews for my insurance agency?  From a high level, review collection is an online service/software that can track who has written you reviews and who hasn’t.  In the case of the latter, review collection software can automatically follow-up with that customer by email or text message to re-request a review.  Of course, it organizes all of this in an easy to use control panel and includes great statistics on the results.

Finding a software solution for your review automation can seem complicated.  There are a handful of different service providers and often the cost spread is fairly large.  Here at Arrivala, we have great plans designed for the insurance agency in mind that begin at $29.99/month.  Our plans are very affordable and feature-rich for the price point.  While some services do offer additional features, oftentimes the features extend beyond just review collection and you may end up paying $200-$500/month for features and tools that your business does not need. 

Below you’ll find a handful of companies that I’ve put together based on research into review collection software:

• https://arrivala.com/pricing/ ($29.99/month) ( our favorite 🙂 )
• https://birdeye.com/pricing/ (kind of hard to tell but looks to start at about $200/month)
• https://rizereviews.com/ (don’t provide pricing but based on info we obtained, looks to cost between $250-$500/month)
• https://reputationstacker.com/pricing/ ($79/month for a plan that includes SMS requests)
• https://www.grade.us/home/plans/professional ($180/month)

Concluding Review Collection For Insurance Agencies

In conclusion, the two points I hope you take away from this article is the need to:

• Make the reviewing process as easy as possible for your customers
• Make the follow-up process and tracking as easy as possible for you

Google continues to change its search algorithm and their goal to become the top ‘social network’ for business listings is very evident.  The importance of business reviews on Google cannot be overstated and you must be proactive. If you’re not being proactive today, you could very well fall behind your competitors to a point where playing catch-up could feel like an impossible task.

For full transparency, I (the author) am the founder here at Arrivala and we offer many tools and services to help improve your review collection.  If you think our services could help your insurance agency grow your Google reviews, please give us a call, send us an email or sign-up for one of our plans (we even have a free plan available).

Best of luck in 2020 with review collection.  If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly at cabe@arrivala.com.