How to Get More Reviews for Your Marketing Agency
Agencies are odd about reviews. You spend all day telling clients that social proof wins business, and your own Google profile has four of them from 2023.
Some of it is awkwardness. Asking a client to praise you in public feels like fishing for compliments when they are already paying you. The rest is that agency work has no obvious finish line, because the retainer just rolls on.
Below is how to fix both, without it feeling like you are fishing.
Why Agencies Have So Few Reviews
- There is no end of job. A retainer has no natural moment where the work is done and you can ask.
- The buyer is not one person. Marketing managers move on. The person who loved your work in March may have left by September.
- Some clients will not admit they use you. Anything white label or ghostwritten will never be reviewed publicly, and that is fine.
- You are chasing case studies instead. They take weeks to produce. Reviews take four minutes and most agencies never ask for one.
How to Get More Reviews for Your Marketing Agency
Twelve that work for agency work specifically, roughly in the order they make a difference.
1. Ask at the win, not at the end
Retainers do not end, so waiting for a natural finish means never asking. Ask when something goes well instead.
The month the leads doubled. The launch that landed. The day they forward you a message from their boss. That is the moment, and you already know when it happens because you are the one reporting it.
Say it in the same breath as the result: “that campaign hit 3x. Would you mind saying so on Google?” Nobody thinks you are fishing when the number is on the screen.
All your reviews in one place
Collect reviews, manage every response, and display them where they matter most.
2. Ask the person, not the company
Your review comes from a marketing manager, not from a logo. Two things follow from that.
They write about what you were like to work with rather than about deliverables, and that is the bit other buyers care about. And when they move to another company, a good review is often how you win the next account.
Ask the individual, thank the individual, and stay in touch when they leave.
3. Put the ask in the monthly report
You send a report every month anyway. It gets opened, read properly, and it turns up attached to good news.
Add one line at the bottom of a strong month. No campaign, no separate email, no chasing. Just a link sitting under the numbers you delivered.
4. Pick the platform your buyers use
Agency buyers do not shop like consumers. One link per client, chosen for where your leads come from:
- Google if you win local or regional work, since it shows next to your name.
- Clutch for anything B2B or enterprise, where procurement teams look first.
- G2 if you sit near software, or serve SaaS clients.
- LinkedIn recommendations, which are not reviews but are visible to exactly the people you want.
Check the last ten enquiries and where they came from before you decide.
5. Ask when they renew
A client signing for another year has told you they are happy in the only way that counts. Better than any survey.
Put the ask into the renewal conversation itself. They have already made the decision, so writing it down takes them two minutes.
6. Turn what they already said into a review
Your Slack channel is full of reviews. So is your inbox. “This is exactly what we wanted” and “the board loved it” are sitting there unused.
Screenshot it, send it back, and ask if they would put those same words somewhere public. You have removed the writing, which is the part that stops people.
7. Ask at case study sign-off
A client approving a case study has just signed off a page of praise, often after their marketing lead and their legal team have both read it. Every word is cleared.
Ask in the approval email. You are not asking them to think of anything, only to say a shorter version of what they have agreed to.
Doing one does not cover you for the other. A case study is your version of the work, on a page you control. A review is theirs, somewhere you cannot edit, which is why a buyer believes it more.
8. Give clients a way to say no
Some clients cannot review you publicly. Legal will not allow it, or the work is white label, or they would rather nobody knew they outsourced.
Offer them a private testimonial you can quote without naming them, or a LinkedIn recommendation instead of a Google review. Pushing a client who has to say no costs you the relationship and gets you nothing.
9. Build the ask into your reporting cycle
Doing this by hand lasts about two months. Hang it off a cycle that runs without you.
- Trigger on the reporting date, not a random calendar day, so it lands with the results.
- Ask each client twice a year at most. Retainer clients get asked every month otherwise.
- Skip anyone mid-complaint, and sort that out yourself first.
10. Answer every review, good or bad
Agency complaints are usually about communication or results not landing fast enough. Both are answerable.
Reply with what changed, not with a defence. Everyone reading it wants to know whether you are straight with people when a campaign flops, and that worries them more than the flop did. There is more in our guide to bad reviews for products.
All your reviews in one place
Collect reviews, manage every response, and display them where they matter most.
11. Ask the people who are not clients
Buyers look at more than the accounts you bill. Three groups nobody thinks to ask:
- Freelancers and contractors who work on your projects. They can speak to how you brief and whether you pay on time, which other suppliers care about.
- Partner agencies you send work to or receive it from. A referral relationship works better in public than in a private thread.
- Your own team, past and present. Glassdoor turns up when somebody searches your name, and a page of silence there reads worse than a mixed page.
None of it replaces client reviews. It just means somebody digging into you finds more than a quiet Google page.
12. Put the reviews next to the work
A reviews page on your website that nobody visits does nothing. Put each review beside the case study it belongs to, so somebody reading about a SaaS launch sees what that SaaS client said.
Name the industry and the result. “Great to work with” is worth little. “Cut our cost per lead by 40% in a B2B SaaS account” tells the next enquiry whether you have done their kind of work.
How WiserReview Helps You Get More Reviews
Any of these works once. Whether you end up with forty reviews next year instead of four comes down to whether it keeps happening in the busy months, and that is when it always stops.
WiserReview keeps it going:
- Collecting reviews. Requests by email, SMS or WhatsApp, fired off your reporting date so they land with the results.
- Getting more back. A throttle so retainer clients are not asked every month, and a reminder that only goes to people who did not reply.
- Managing. Google, Clutch and the rest in one inbox, so nobody is signing into four dashboards to answer people.
- Showing them. Widgets that pull reviews onto your site so nothing has to be retyped or kept up to date by hand.
Set it up once and it runs through the months when new business is the last thing anyone has time for.
All your reviews in one place
Collect reviews, manage every response, and display them where they matter most.
How WiserNotify Works for Agencies
Somebody comparing four agencies has all four sites open. The one that looks busy gets the enquiry form.
WiserNotify shows real activity on your site while they decide: recent enquiries, your Google and Clutch ratings as review notifications, live viewers on a service page, and countdown timers for real deadlines like an intake closing.
Every number comes from your own data, so a quiet week looks like a quiet week.
Wrap Up
Catch them on a good month rather than waiting for an ending, ask the person rather than the company, and slip the link into your monthly report. Those three fix most of it.
Then answer everything that comes in, and let the reporting cycle do the asking so it does not stop when you get busy.
Also check: How to ask for reviews, with examples
Related Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
When should a marketing agency ask a client for a review?
At a win rather than at the end. Retainers have no finish line, so ask the month the numbers jump or when a launch lands, while the result is on the screen.
Which review platform matters most for agencies?
Google if you win local work, Clutch for B2B and enterprise, G2 if you serve SaaS. LinkedIn recommendations are not reviews but reach the same buyers.
What if a client cannot review us publicly?
Offer a private testimonial you can quote without naming them, or a LinkedIn recommendation instead. Pushing a client who legally cannot review you costs the relationship.
Can an agency sell review generation as a service?
Yes, and most do not. Audit their reviews against competitors, claim and fix the profile, set up the asking, and take over the replies. It bills monthly and it renews.
How often can I ask a retainer client for a review?
Twice a year at most. Retainer clients receive enough from you already, and monthly asks get ignored or resented.
Krunal Vaghasiya is a marketing tech expert who boosts e-commerce conversion rates with automated social proof and FOMO strategies. He loves to keep posting insightful posts on online marketing software, marketing automations, and improving conversion rates.
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