5 Review Sites To Get An Edge On Your Competitors

As a 3-time entrepreneur, I’m often asked by others, “How do I get new customers to my business?” “What are the best tools out there to attract attention?”

After all, it isn’t enough to just build a great business or service. You need to find the right tactics to showcase just how great your business is. In a market saturated with reviews on sites like Yelp, Yellow Pages, and TripAdvisor, it can seem challenging for a young company to get found.

Don’t get lost in the crowd. There are several lesser-known review sites that savvy business managers can leverage to gain awareness and ultimately new customers.

1. Trover: There’s nothing like a stunning picture to whet a potential customer’s appetite. Trover, a travel discovery app and website, lets users share and view great photos of places. Users discover locales and take pictures while Trover publishes them and syndicates them to Bing. If your business is a unique attraction, a tasteful eatery, or a boutique shop, encourage visitors to take and post photos on Trover.

2. Judy’s Book: Founded by two friends, Judy’s Book takes that little book many people keep of local favorites and puts it online. From cafes to lawyers, Judy’s Book publishes reviews of most business categories, and lets business owners control their own listings via a personal dashboard. If you’re a business owner, this is one of the few review sites out there that really lets you control your outward profile.

3. KidScore: Created by the folks at Judy’s Book, KidScore uses a proprietary algorithm covering almost a dozen factors to rate the kid friendliness of business spanning from doctors to hotels to restaurants. The higher the score, the more kid friendly the business.  If your business caters to families, this is one place you must be listed.

4. Porch: If you’re a home service professional, Porch is the place to be. Showcasing completed home projects in specific geographies, it gives homeowners much-needed information on the price of home improvement projects and the breadth of improvement opportunities. More important for service professionals, it offers reviews of people just like you. If you tackle home improvements for a living, make sure you’re encouraging your clients to drop a review or two on Porch.

5. RealSelf: Bringing transparency to the cosmetic surgery industry, RealSelf gives potential customers a portal to research procedures and practitioners. If you’re a cosmetic surgeon or dermatologist, a positive profile and reviews on RealSelf will give patients the piece of mind to make an appointment.

Start poking around to see how you can create a profile on one or more of these sites. And don’t let ignorance get in your way. If you can’t figure things out, email their support address. You will get an answer.

These sites all leverage a virtuous feedback cycle: more reviews equal more customers. More customers equal more reviews. So don’t be shy. Actively ask your customers to write a nice word or two about you on these sites, and you’ll start seeing higher traffic in no time.