Episode 7 of Focused On The Road is here! Bo discusses online reviews and what he has learned about them. Online reviews are incredibly important for any business, but especially a local growing business. Watch our video for more information on how you can get extra reviews, as well as more tips and tricks! Follow us on social media @focusengage and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for the latest content!
Focused On The Road Episode 7 Transcript:
Hey, this is Bo with Focused Engagement and this is another Focused On The Road. A couple of weeks ago I talked, one of the things I talked about was consistency, and how you really need to continue whatever marketing thing you are doing. You just need to be consistent at it and continue it. And I’ve kind of slacked a little bit myself on these Focused On The Roads, mostly because I keep forgetting to bring my camera with me. As my dad used to always say growing up, “Do as I say, not as I do”. We’re going to try to get better at this and do a little bit of practice what we preach.
If you have consistent reviews, they don’t all have to be five stars. They don’t even have to be four stars. Believe it or not even negative reviews, three stars and below, in a weird way can help you. And I’ll go over that. I’m actually going to go over that on a different one, probably my next one. We’re going to do responding to negative reviews so we’ll put a pin in that one right now, but yeah. Reviews are very, very important. The hard part for most businesses is how do you get more reviews? And there’s several ways to do it. It’s really actually one of the easiest things you can do in online marketing.
If you go into Google you can – Kyle let’s throw in a little clip or something right here to demonstrate how to do this. But if you log into your Google My Business listing, I don’t remember what it’s called. I think it’s called “get more reviews” or something like that. Anyway, you click on it and there’s actually a little link there that will, it’s a hyperlink that when clicked on, will send somebody right to the ability to leave a review. So that’s a fantastic way to start cause you can take that and you can email it out to anybody. It’s our experience that the majority of your customers will actually click and leave you a review if you ask first.
So that’s the first key is asking for that review. Don’t be afraid of, he did a good job for him. They’ve got to want to do it. In fact, I took this course once years and years ago that was actually talking about referrals, because the instructor said it’s human nature not to want to feel like you’re indebted to somebody. So how he put it: if you’re looking for a review, a referral and use his tip for referrals. That’s another one too, but, use this for referrals, on reviews site says if you tell that customer, this is what I’m going to do for you.
You know, I’m going to make sure to send out a reminder email in a couple of weeks to remind you to do XYZ. It really depends on your industry, you know, but if you talk to them about what you’re going to do for them, and then you follow up with what I would like you to do for me, they will do it.
Most of the time they will do it. And even if you don’t take it from that standpoint, that’s just one way to do it. If you don’t know how to ask for review just say, “Hey, I want to send you a request for a review online. Would you mind doing that?” And almost every one of them will say yes. Send them the link so it makes it as easy as possible for them to do it. Now, the link is cool. You can email it. You can also make a QR code out of it so they can just scan it on their phone. So that’s a fantastic way to do it. Our experience is the best way to deal with it now.
The best way to do it is through a text. You can email it and that’s fine and that’s fantastic. We actually have a platform that we’ll send email requests three different times. If they click on the request and then they don’t stop sending it. But in the meantime it sends emails at three different times.
Hopefully catch them at a point when they’ll say, “Oh yes, I have a minute. I’m going to do that right now”. But our platform will also sending a text request for that review and we find that when you do it through a text, it is much more likely that they will leave that review because it’s right in front of them. They have it. It’s easy and no problems.
So my second suggestion is to send them that review either through email or through a text, or, like I said, they have QR codes and have QR codes all over your store. I always thought it’d be really cool for restaurants to have that QR code right sitting right now on their table so that if somebody is enjoying their meal, they can just scan it right there and leave that review. So we’re going to ask for the review, we’re going to send them a review request multiple times and, you’re going to get those reviews coming in.
The key is to have reviews. Just a steady flow so if you will not ask your client for reviews or not for a long time, and you have a list of a hundred clients and you’re like, “Hey, these guys will give me a good rating”. You don’t send them all at once because it will look very suspicious if you are not getting any reviews.
And then all of a sudden you get 10 reviews all at once. So spread it out over weeks. I’m going to give you two really quick examples. Kyle, if I’m going over, over too long here, just cut this part out. But, one example is a client that has several locations for their mattress store and somebody came into a store.
Oh, here’s the third suggestion: have them leave your name. There’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Especially if you have salespeople, have the salespeople called out and then these positive reviews and that we’ll come back to this story here. So somebody walked into a mattress store, bought a mattress and the salesperson, when they’re getting the address, we have a closer location to you that you could have gone to.
And this person says, “Yeah I know, but I read the reviews and I saw he used that for you” specifically when they walked in they actually asked for the salesperson and they said I wanted to work with you. So people will travel further when they see those positive reviews.
The second example I have is another client of mine that really focusing hard on reviews and they’re an online real estate school and they used to sell 30 classes a month and filmed some other things we were doing with them. And I really think through her consistent requests and reviews and getting these reviews are better than any other school now. And they’re just consistent.
And she has not quite doubled, but she’s getting pretty close to doubling the amount of enrollment she gets per month. And a lot of that is due to her online reviews. So they are very, very, very critical. If you focus on that, month after month, this is not a quick fix. Okay, it’s month after month so continue to focus on that. You will increase your business. You’ll get more customers and your business will thrive.
This is Bo with Focused Engagement. And, Kyle, we really need to come up with a really cool exit here. But in the meantime, have a great day.