Question

Does anyone know how to contact Google Local Guides? it looks like I would have to google the people and then find random ways to messages them. My goal would be to give them a free or discounted service offering in exchange for a review of our services. Since we would be contacting Level 7 or higher, then their reviews are supposed to be more valuable than those with low rankings.  

Answer 1

Not sure the way to make a contact, but this is a direct violation of the Local Guides guidelines. Anybody serious about their status would refuse to accept this.  

Comments

@fiddlefaddle I know you can't ask for a specific star rating, just an honest review with whatever feedback they provide. I'll look into the TOS to find a legal work around. I'm not trying or desiring to do anything whatever illegal.  

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Yeah, I thought so. But still, it is not legal. Besides, you are basically asking people to spend money on your service, even if you are giving a discount. I think that the closest you can get to it is to target them with PPC, and perhaps even the Social ads, with a good selection of interests. Just make a discount offer and let them decide if they want to use the service or not. If you target them well, many will make a review afterwards, because that is what they do. If they don't want it that way, they surely won't want it by you approaching them and asking to use the service (and pay for it).  

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@fiddlefaddle thanks for the feedback

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I second what @fiddlefaddle said. It is illegal. Especially in the US market. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) banned any paid endorsement that isn't disclosed as such to consumers. They consider paid reviews, like this, to be a paid endorsement. Think about commercials you see where people talk about all sorts of products where they are an actual user of said thing. They always have that fine print on the bottom that reads, "They are users of *said product*; and, they have been compensated for their testimonials. ". I'm not going to say that I haven't seen this done or people offering this service. It is something I'd definitely stay away from because the consequences could be far worse than just a suspension or slap from Google (or whatever platform the review is on).  

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Diesel @martijn McClain you missed the comment that above that stated I wasn't doing that.  

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I would think the route of giving away something free or at a discount would be considered paying for the endorsement. I will tell you if you look at the reviews people leave on a site, you can see what other places they've left reviews at, too. This would allow you to be able to reverse engineer who they are, where they live (roughly), and probably ways to reach out them, too. Setting up the right scrapers and you could probably grab an easy quick list of these folks. Especially, if you want to keep the reviewers local and relevant for a storefront or service business.  

Answer 2

There has to be a legit way of marketing to them. It looks like just setting up a targeting marketing campaign to them is the only legit way.  

Comments

Why not just buy some local guide status gmails?  

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@trinitrophenol I didn't know that was available. Where can I get these lists?  

Answer 3

I think they key is to do it exactly the way you described not wanting to do it. Find local guides who are in your area, locate them on social media, invite them to come to your store, and see what happens. I’m a level 7 local guide and if someone in my community approached me this way, I would consider it if I already thought they were a decent business. On the flip side, if I thought you found a way to make that offer to 100 people, like through a targeted marketing campaign, I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole because that looks shady and I wouldn’t want to get banned.  

Comments

@fearsome4336 but with the targeted ad it would say nothing about local guide status, it would just be an ad with a really great promotion.  

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Also to add to what someone said above, it depends on the service too. If you’re a pizza restaurant, sure I’d buy a slice. But if I would need to buy a hot tub or a house or a professional service I don’t need, then yeah, it’s not going to work.  

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@beset I guess then it 100% boils down to whether the promotion itself is good enough to get my attention and then if I remember to leave a review that day.  

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Why don’t you just implement a review program for your existing customers?  

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@fearsome4336 I'm don't that too. This is just another layer in the marketing system.