EDIT: So apparently, this is a very common practice called “review gating” and is now discouraged by Google. Here is an article on the subject.
Market saturation plays a key role in success of your business. Too many businesses offering the same product can ‘commoditize’ the offering and bring the price down significantly. There is a sweet spot in every industry and when this gets breached, newer entrants fail to make a mark without adequately differentiating themselves from competition.
This is why I love the business idea I am about to discuss here. There are a dozen ways you could differentiate yourself with more or less the same application. You could target local businesses, mobile apps, eCommerce stores, Amazon sellers, SaaS businesses and so on – the list is virtually endless.
The Idea
Customer reviews is important to all kinds of businesses. Local businesses can see a huge upswing in visibility with a handful of 5 star Google or Yelp reviews. If you are a SaaS marketer, you might be interested in platforms like G2 and Capterra since a good number of buyers research these websites before they come to you. For app developers, it is reviews on platforms like the Google Play Store and the iOS App Store that define their success.
In each of these cases, businesses look for two things – volume of reviews, and the rating. At the same time, even a few negative reviews from disgruntled customers can turn the tide and stop newer customers from coming to you.
What if you could build a tool that would ask each of your customers to rate your product or service? Those who rank it highly will be nudged to leave a review on Google/Yelp/Play Store while those who express disappointment will be asked for feedback for internal review?
Workflow
The app will work something like this:
Send an email to customers asking them to rate your product or service on a scale of 1 to 10
People who rate it 7 or above will be thanked and shown a message to leave a review on Google (or whatever platform you choose)
People who rate your offering lower than 7 (or whatever you choose) will be shown a questionnaire where they can give more details on what went wrong
From an implementation perspective, there are many ways to do this. You may, for instance, offer “Google Reviews as a service”. In this case, you get a database of customers from your client and manually shoot them an email with the above workflow. This could be a regular agency-like project where you are paid monthly.
You may also offer this as a standalone service that business users can configure themselves. For instance, they could sign up on your app and choose what happens when a user clicks on each of those ratings (from 1 to 10). They may further configure the message and the URL that the user is redirected to after clicking these ratings.
A more sophisticated tool could integrate with your CRM application and this tool can be scheduled to send out the ratings mailer after a predefined number of days.
Pricing
When I first came up with this idea several years back, I thought I should not charge more than $20/month for a product like this. Come to think of it – it’s a very simple tool to build. I know developers who can build something on these lines for just $100 or so. Knowing that, I am afraid charging more would mean your customers would rather build their own tool instead of using yours.
But this is where it gets interesting. As an app, you are offering something that can bring tons of new business. Imagine a company that offers local truck rental services. Even adding a couple of customers a month through your service would mean thousands of more dollars in revenue.
These business owners are also incredibly non-tech. So they are going to assess the price of your product based on what it means to their business rather than how much it would cost them to replicate it.
There was a user on the Reddit Entrepreneur sub a few years back who had built an app that is very similar to this and charged (if I remember right) his customers something like $250 per month. This user went hyper-local in their marketing and signed up businesses that would have never signed up for an online service as this otherwise.
Of course, at this price, your customers would need a lot of hand-holding. You may hence be in charge of more than just Google Review management. You may be asked to handle their online customer acquisition in its entirety. Your profitability depends completely on how you position your product.
If knocking doors is not your thing, you can choose to make this product completely online and focus on a very niche segment – like “Capterra Reviews” and tweak your pitch suitably.
Reach out to every business on Capterra that is not ranking in the top five and offer your product. While your revenue per customer might be lower than the hyperlocal model, you may still be able to scale up a lot faster and thus be able to sign up hundreds of customers in quick time.
