What You Need to Know About Customer Reviews

SEO ROCKET WEBINAR SERIES

March 31, 2021 11:00 AM EDT
webinar banner on what you need to know about customer reviews

Do you find yourself debating if customer reviews are worth the effort to request them? Confused about even starting to implement a review strategy?  The truth is reviews matter tremendously. Just ask your buyers! (Or Google!)  The process of procuring customer reviews that help you rank better and convert leads into sales is absolutely within your grasp. You simply need a break down of its pieces to fully engage this powerful marketing tool.

In this webinar, we explain WHY reviews are the golden opportunity for your business. Also, we tell you HOW to get customer reviews, monitor them and even respond to feedback.  It’s time to clean up the mystery of your online reviews and make them work for you. This hour will be filled with tips on what to do – and not – to rank and convert using online reviews.

Presenters:

  • Zane Tuck, Local SEO and Reviews Specialist – SEO Rocket – Guides you through understanding why reviews are crucial marketing tools, how to get them ethically and how to respond to all reviews good and bad
  • Angela McAfee – SEO Rocket – Host and Coordinator

 

Don’t miss this opportunity to bypass your competition!

During this informative webinar, Zane will go over:

  • How to get customer reviews
  • How to monitor your reviews
  • Responding to reviews (positive, negative and fake).
  • Do’s and Don’ts on asking for reviews

READ THE VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION HERE

What You Need to Know About Customer Reviews
image of Angela

Hello everyone. This is Angela McAfee with SEO Rocket. We're about to get started. Thank you for joining us today. Just while we're here. I wanted to go over a couple little housekeeping things that we always do just remember you were here for what you need to know about customer reviews. You can probably see that on the screen. So you're in the right place you are joining us today and what we call listen-only mode. I'm sure you're familiar with that if you're a regular webinar attendee. It means that we can't hear you. But, of course you hopefully can hear us also too.

We love your questions and this is your opportunity to ask the expert. So please while you're here today go to that little questions chat box text box in your dashboard and ask away any questions you have today while you have Zane as your captive expert. Zane Tuck is here. He can answer those questions for you.

You don't have to hold them to the end. You can answer them at any time. However, we will you can ask some other any time. However, we will answer them at the end. So be sure to get those in and of course stick around for the answers and speaking of sticking around. Please stay tuned for some fun offers at the end. SEO Rocket is offering a lot of different resources and things this year as sort of part of our giving back to the business community. Because we all you know, we all need to give each other love and help and support. So we are adding to our resources list fairly regularly these days not only with our webinars and our blogs but some offerings that we're putting out there.

We're going to discuss those later. So stay out stick around for that. Also to one more thing and then we'll get started. We put these webinars together for you. So if there are any marketing subjects that you would like to talk about or learn more about please feel free to type those into the little super brief two question survey that we have at the end of this webinar. That is your opportunity to pop that in there and let us know about some topic that you would like for us to discuss and go over and either internally or bring in someone else have a chat about. We really do these things for you. They're based on the frequently asked questions that we get, and information that's extremely important to share with you.

We will do our best to cover the subjects that you want. I mean, we have 12 months, right? So let's do that. All right, it looks like it's 1102 and a lot of you have already logged in. So I'm going to get started. Once again, I'm Angela McAfee with SEO Rocket. I'm one of the founders here. And today we have with us Zane tuck you can see how his smiling face. Zane is our SEO Specialist, one of our SEO Specialists at SEO Rocket rather. He also is the leader of our RocketReviews program. And with that I call him. He's our in-house master of all things reviews. I call him that to his face and behind his back by the way too obviously. So anyway, he's here today to help us and help you walk through all these things - the good and the bad and other things you need to understand about your reviews and creating a review system for yourself.

I mean, you know, I talked about frequently asked questions. Many people when they contact us about digital marketing they'll say things like “Yeah, you know my reviews are weak” “We need to do that.” or “You know, we're not doing that yet.” Or “Yeah, we need to do a system there.” Or “Our competitor has all these reviews, but we don't, you know, maybe I need to up my review game a little but I'm not sure how to do it yet.”. Right? We hear that a lot. So I really applaud each of you for being here today and listening in taking this time because we encourage you to take the next step to really make your reviews an important part of your marketing plan, an important part of your business processes daily. And, if you do that I can guarantee you it's going to be a game changer for you. It's going to be a game changer for your visibility online. And also for your conversion.  Guess what Google really likes reviews and also your prospects people who are considering buying a product or service from you. They really like reviews.

I mean how many times have you purchased something lately online or researched it online that you didn't read the reviews? We always do it. It's just it's a part of our lifestyle now, it's just that that technology is completely incorporated in our buying decisions these days so it is so important.

That's why I have Zane here with us today. And thank you so much for being here. We want to be here. Yeah. Yeah. So Zane has a lot of awesome things to share with you. I'm going to zip it and get go off camera and Zane just let you roll when you are ready.

Zane Tuck image

I'm ready. Thank you Angela. It's good to be here today, and I'm excited to talk to you guys about something that's really really kind of a passion of mine. I do as Angela said, I'm one of the local SEO Specialists here, but the thing that that I really enjoy working with is reviews and helping our customers get more views and handle their reviews the right way? So let's jump right into our presentation today, which is what you need to know about customer reviews.

And so what we will do here's our agenda for today. We will go over why reviews matter. We're going to talk about why reviews matter in today's Marketplace.

Next we'll go over some ways on how you can get reviews if you don't have any or if you do have some reviews, but you want to get more we can talk about how to get more reviews.

We'll talk about the importance of monitoring incoming reviews and then we'll wrap up with responding to reviews why it's important and some do's and don'ts related to responding to reviews.

So first we're going to talk about why reviews matter and the first reason that reviews matter is that reviews help your businesses online visibility.

When you search for a business, you know, it's not going to take you long to find what others have to say about it. You know, it's probably going to be one of the first things they see. Google takes review ratings from multiple sites into consideration when they determine the order of businesses that show up in the local search results, as you can see on this screen here. The image on the left if you have an iPhone or iPad when you ask Siri, you know, find me a pizza restaurant, you know in the screen on in the black screen shot on the left, you've got three pizza locations listed three pizza restaurants and reviews are prominently shown in with the address and the distance the star average and the total number of reviews.

Then when you go to if you're in Apple Maps and you search for pizza or hair salon or coffee shop and you see all those little pins and you tap on one it will give you driving time the name of the location and it will tell you how many stars and how many reviews. Now Apple has partnered with Yelp. So they use reviews. They show the reviews from Yelp. On the right is a screenshot from Google Maps the desktop version and somebody looking for “best allergy doctor” in Alpharetta, which is a suburb of Atlanta in Georgia. So the reviews that are the listings that are served up. In this first one it shows the average review score. How many total reviews prominent right under the name of the business. Or, in this case the name of the doctor. As you can also see in this image text from a review that a patient wrote that matches what this person searched for are bolded. So best doctor that's bolded out to best doctor to go for your allergy. So those three words that appeared in the search query are bolded. Google will pull that part of that review out and put it in the search result there. And as you can see in the second one allergy testing quick and efficient, so you know that also is a match. But this one is bolded because you've got three of your five, really four because it is not really one of the major query words. So three of those four words are bolded because they all appear in that one review.

According to most industry experts online reviews and the location of the Searcher influence local search engine visibility more than anything else and in things that I've seen with our clients and in looking at other businesses that that definitely rings true. You know reviews matter they help get your business in front of more eyes. Reviews and review sites, play a part in your overall web presence, you know because you've got your other information out there - your business name, your address, your phone number. So those are places that we've talked before about making sure that name address and phone number or NAP that's correct and consistent. Part of that is making sure that it's right on these other review sites, like, you know TripAdvisor if you're a bed and breakfast or a restaurant or Open Table if you're a restaurant

Those third-party sites, you want your prospects, your customers to have a good experience with you no matter where they're interacting or trying to interact with your business. So keeping your name, address and phone number consistent not only presents that consistent presence for your consumers, but it can also help your business rank better in the search results.

So again, here for those who use Apple’s Siri and will show then there's the result from Google.

And so the next reason why reviews matter is that reviews impact purchasing decisions Angela touched on this briefly. People who leave reviews, they've really got nothing to gain or lose. They had an experience good or bad or sometimes indifferent but usually people that don't really feel one way or the other usually won't post a review or post their feedback about it. But most customers had an experience good or bad and they want to share it and people listen to that.

This graphic here is from the most recent local consumer review survey from Brightlocal and it shows that 79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends or family. These days Word of Mouth comes from all kinds of places. It comes from outside the consumers’ Social Circle and with an online review having a ripple of a happy or an unhappy customers positive reviews have a big impact on consumers. According to their survey 94 percent say that positive reviews make them more likely to use a business.

Reviews with a high star rating positive sentiment have a significant impact on a consumers decision whether not to use a business. So it's vitally important to make sure that your reviews, you know that you're getting reviews and that you're asking for reviews and on the flip side, as you can see in the middle section negative reviews that make customers more likely to not use a business that number increased to 92%.

A consistent, or in a lot of cases, a recent history of negative reviews because like when you go on Google or you go on Yelp or go on any of these review sites, you can sort by most recent. Because a bad review from two years ago, you know doesn't hold as much weight as a bad review from last week. And in the mind of a consumer because a lot of things can happen in two years. If it's a restaurant there's people consistently posting about long wait times cold food, rude waiters that type of thing and if that's recent, you know that's going to weigh on a decision that a customer makes as to whether they want to go eat at that restaurant.

The takeaway here is that reviews both positive and negative are very important to local business.

The third reason why reviews matter is that they provide important feedback. Here's an example of a review on Google for a week for a restaurant. And so this person Abigail wrote “waited a long time open seats were visible the hostess and waitress were efficient, but curt. Nice big patio. But it wasn't open.” Then a quick comment about how the guacamole was fresh but it was heavy on the onion. So, you know, there's a lot that you can learn from a review that somebody leaves for your business.

You know, what do they love about your business? What are they not so crazy about? Paying attention to your reviews helps you do more of the good and less of the bad. I'll just say this right here and I'll probably mention it again later. Negative reviews aren't always a bad thing. You know, you can see if there's a common theme like we'd like I mentioned before or you know, if you're a restaurant and you're getting reviews from people saying that you know, the food keeps coming out cold or you know, this particular server was rude, you can look for common themes in those negative reviews, maybe people have a hard time getting ahold of you or they're finding that information about you or they're just receiving slow service. Like in this instance here. It could be that a sous chef doesn't have the guacamole nailed down just yet. So regardless, negative reviews can help you discover and fix issues before they become a bigger problem.

And of course with positive reviews, you can confidently market what you find to be most popular with your customers.

So how do you get more reviews like this meme here, "Please sir I want some more." I think every business owner would like more reviews both good and bad. So, how do you get more reviews?

You just have to ask. You've got to ask customers for reviews. You don't want to leave it up to the to the customer. Yes, you got to ask for more reviews. It's up to you to ask every customer. You have to leave a review you can have ways for customers to leave reviews on their own. But don't depend on the customer to instinctively leave one for your business.

Many times people tend to take initiative and leave reviews if the service or product was really good or if it was really bad, you know, like we said people who were indifferent or had an okay experience. They're not that likely to on their own leave a review but you should ask every customer, you know, and there's lots of ways to do that, but you should be asking every customer to leave feedback.

Doing that you're increasing the likelihood of getting more of those people who don't fall into either the really great experience or really bad experience to leave you feedback.

And as with anything, there's a wrong way and a right way to do things and asking for reviews is no different. So let's go over some of the wrong ways to ask for reviews. First off don't offer a script or a template for customers to use. Some businesses have tried. They feel like, you know, some people may say I don't know what to say. You want to write a review and so some businesses feel like they're helping by offering this script or a template for customers to use and their feedback.

Some businesses have basically even said, you know, here's a few examples of great reviews. Just take one of these and kind of make it your own. Well, this is bad idea number one and it can go bad and go wrong in a number of ways. First off your reviews will begin to look and sound exactly the same and if that happens. It'll trigger a lot of these review platforms to flag your profile or maybe even delete it.

And by doing that by offering this script or a template, you don't really get to hear what your customers really have to say about your business. You know, you want that unfiltered, unedited opinion. You don't want to use a legal term. You don't want to kind of lead the witness here. You don't want to, you know, try to get them to say what you want them to say.

You know it also is unethical and it could damage your business's reputation. The second bullet don't offer incentives for leaving the review - offering discounts, free products, gift cards or straight up payment might seem like a great way to get more people to leave feedback about your business. But the problem is that any review or feedback that you get in exchange for something like that could be seen as tainted or consumers may not feel that they can really be honest in providing their feedback. Also in a lot of cases in lot of locations, it's illegal. Offering incentives is bad idea number two, and it beats the pants off of a bad idea. Number one most review platforms strictly forbid incentivizing reviews, and that's what this is called incentivizing. If they discover that they'll remove them and can perhaps even remove your entire profile on the site or if we’re talking about Google. They can remove your business from Google my Business if they if they feel like something fishy like that's going on. So don't ever offer any kind of quid pro quo types of things in exchange for review.

Third Point don't ask all of your customers at once. So maybe you've got a database of all of your customers and you want to send out a mass email to all of them saying. Alright. I'm going to ask all of our customers to leave us a review and that's in in theory. That sounds like a great idea, but the result usually ends up being that too many reviews appear over a short period of time.

And if that happens readers - but even more the different platforms, the different review services - they may that may throw up a red flag. For them, part of gathering reviews is building trust. So instead make it part of your practice to ask for reviews on a regular basis. You get this constant trickle of feedback rather than a flood of feedback now and then nothing for a short period of time and then another flood of feedback.

You know places like Google and Yelp and TripAdvisor and all those types of review sites. They like to see the steady flow of reviews coming in these platforms take note. When a business gets too many reviews at the same time. They might even hold those reviews in the queue and not display them because they may give off the impression that they're not legitimate.

And the last Point - Don't spam your customer base. Don't repeatedly ask your customers about leaving a review and primarily we're talking, you know via email or via text. If you've got a system set up to do that, you know asking your customers continuously and repeatedly about leaving review could come off as pestering them or spamming them. You don't want to upset your customers so, you know send out your initial request. If you don't get anything back in a couple days. It's absolutely okay to ask again, but if you don't get a response after that second request, you know, I might would wait a week before I send one last request or usually if you ask twice and nothing happens, they're probably not going to leave you a review so you'd be perfectly okay as well just not asking that customer again.

These are some of the wrong ways. So now that we've kind of covered that let's talk about the right way to get more reviews.

First off  make it easy for your customer to leave reviews. You know, your customers don't want to spend a lot of time leaving feedback as a business. You want to make it easy for them to do this. So if you're emailing customers be sure to include the link that takes them right to the place where they can leave their review, you know, or if you're including links to all of your to all of your third-party places like Facebook and TripAdvisor or Open Door or Open Table. Only include one or two, the ones that are most relevant to your company. Another easy way is if you have their cell number, you can send a request via text messaging SMS messaging with the link and then your customer can just tap that link straight to where they can leave the review from their phone.

By making the process easier to reduce the risk of customers giving up part way through the process because if it's long drawn-out takes a long time, you know, they may start it because they really want to leave you feedback. But then they get part of the way through and they get frustrated or they get fed up with how long it's taking and they just give up and you don't want that to happen.

Next make it a company initiative. In my experience the businesses that are the most successful than getting reviews are the ones that have made asking for reviews part of their internal process, whether it's a passive mode such as you know setting up a tablet by the cash register, so that customers can leave quick feedback as they are paying and checking out.

An active method such as sending emails to customers, you know a couple days or a day or two after they've done business with you or some combination of both active and passive. Making asking for reviews a part of your process is one of the simplest things that a business can do to increase the number of reviews that it gets.

Not having a standard review process is like a restaurant where each line cook makes a dish differently, you know, you may have you know, people may order the fettuccine alfredo with chicken, but some people get  fettuccine alfredo, but others may not because they have different cooks. Some cooks don't  want to add the cream or they a different type of cheese. They change the way things should be done and so not every customer gets the same experience. And so when it comes to asking for reviews, you want to have everybody on board, everybody doing the same thing. So that if that's asking a customer when they're paying or when they're checking out you make sure that every employee is doing that you know people aren't skipping that because they're not comfortable asking or they don't feel like doing it or they think it's stupid.

Set that internal process and set that expectation that every customer is going to get asked to leave a review put you can put links everywhere. If you've got a link to where a direct link to where someone can leave a review for you. This is a little bit more of a passive way of asking for reviews, but it goes back to that first point of making it easy. Just a few places, you can put a link in your email signature. I've got one in mind every email that I send out has a link where someone can leave a review for SEO Rocket, you know on your invoices if your business is one that sends out invoices on a regular basis. This can be a consistent way of providing a link to your customers or your vendors to leave feedback for your business? You can create a QR code if you're not sure what a QR code is its those square looks like a pixelly graphic black-and-white graphic. Those have become more popular over the last few years . They came out a while ago and then people stopped using them. And so now the kind of coming back, you know now that you don't have to have a special app on your phone to scan it. If you have an iPhone the camera will notice that it's a QR code and give you a prompt to go to that website and pretty sure that an android phones work the same way. If you can create a QR code and this so somebody scans that QR code take some straight to the place where they can leave a review and you can put a QR code on anything that you have printed, you know mailers, etc. I've seen it where some businesses have put one on their vehicle wrap on a company vehicle. So if you're in your car and you can take your camera point over to the car next to you and scan that QR code and leave a review your boundaries are limited by your imagination when it comes to QR codes. If you can print it you can put our cute put a QR code on it.

You know and if you're a coffee shop or restaurant, salon some other type of business with high traffic or people will sit and do business with you having a tent card on a booth or on your tables with either  the QR code that they can scan with their phone or a code that they can text, send the word coffee to one two, three four to leave us a review. These are great ways to make it easy for customers to leave you feedback.

So so now that we've talked about what you should do to get reviews and how to get more reviews. When they start coming in what do you do?

Monitoring reviews. That's what we're going to talk about here why you should monitor reviews.

First off, you know being able to know what people feel or think about your business can help you make changes or understand why consumers felt the way they did in that moment. You may not be able to be present every hour that your business is open. Maybe you own a restaurant and people are complaining about speed of service or the server that they had on a certain night.

Online reviews can be your eyes and ears so to speak when you're not present even though you may stumble across a negative review from time to time at least you're made aware of the situation. So being made aware of any problems is a great reason for making sure you are monitoring your review, seeing them when they come in. And on the flip side, reviews also can let you know when you're doing things right? You can gain valuable insight about maybe a new company policy or procedure, staff, maybe a new hire from what customers have to say and their feedback. You can learn about the experiences that they have with your business and use it to your advantage knowledge is power.

These are honest reviews. This Insight from your customer is how they view your business. So it lets you see your business through the eyes of your customers and it can give you reliable information and ideas on what you may need to change or improve on so that you can be better. Without customers you wouldn't be in business. Knowing what they really feel can give you an advantage that you need to stay afloat, you know, especially in these tough economic times, with this pandemic. The last year has really been tough.

So monitoring reviews and adjusting how your business operates based on reviews that come in can really be helpful.

So now that you can ask for a review, you know how to ask for reviews and you're monitoring reviews. Let's talk about responding to reviews. And what do I do now? What do I do when a review comes in? So first off we'll talk about responding to negative reviews because I know a lot of businesses are concerned about negative reviews. They're scared about getting them. About how it makes their business look,  scared about should I respond? How do I respond?

So my first response is “yes, absolutely”. You should respond. You should respond to every negative review too. Don't ignore them. That's the worst thing you can do is to ignore a negative review.

So when you get a negative review, what do you do? Well, first off you respond and first, I'll say thank you to show your customers that your business appreciates and values their feedback. Always remember to say thank you in responses. It's a small gesture that can go a long way towards making that customer feel better about you and your business.

Next apologize and sympathize, you know saying sorry shows that you care about your customers. It shows that you're human. That they're not getting some canned response and it also shows that you're not too proud to own up to your mistakes.

Even if it's something that may not be your fault say sorry. Anyway, you know, this is one of those times where being the bigger person. It's a great opportunity to establish and strengthen trust between you and your customer. You don't want to get into any kind of back-and-forth tit-for-tat match with a customer because you know of something, that happened to them and you may feel it's not your fault. So you must even if it's not your fault apologize because this can go a long way. People can turn away from businesses that are too perfect or feel that they're too proud to apologize.

The next point - take responsibility, don't make excuses. Even if what happened to that customer was an uncommon instance or an isolated case or maybe just a person had a bad day, acknowledge the experience that that customer had and at the same time provide reassurance that you hold yourself to high standards, and that's not how your business normally operates. That is kind of the first step towards this next point of trying to make things right.

So when you're dealing with negative feedback try to avoid cookie cutter responses, you know that don't resolve or address a specific issue that the customer brought up in the review. Include details about the customers experience in your response when it's appropriate. And then communicate any changes or improvements you've made or will make as a result of their feedback if there's something you can do to fix what happened. Present a compelling response to the reviewer. Take ownership of the issue and promise to make things right in the future.

And the last point is to offer to take the issue offline. It's always best if you and the customer can talk directly about the problem they had and doing it on the phone rather than going back and forth online.

It just could save any further issues or embarrassment on the businesses side and it also prevents any interference from outside sources, especially on a platform like Facebook where your reviews are public and somebody else may want to jump into the discussion and jump on and provide more negative energy.

Provide direct contact information for customers in your review response. Say I'd love to talk with you about your experience. And please call us at this number and we'd love to talk with you offer to take the issue offline so that you can try to help make that person feel more satisfied with their situation and how it's being handled.

So, you know that those are the things that you should do regarding negative reviews. Now when you get positive reviews, what should you do as a response? Well, yes still respond to every review and yes say thank you show appreciation for that customer who took the time to share their positive experience, you know, we talked about it before great reviews, high review ratings serve are so powerful or attracting new and potential customers. Online reviews are trusted as much or more than Word of Mouth from someone they know. It can attract new customer’s decision-making and your customer really just did you a solid by telling you how much they appreciated your service, your product, how much of a good time they had doing business with you.

Tell customers you can't wait to see them again, you know, you can include that into in your response say thank you for coming in and telling us about your experience. We look forward to seeing you again, especially if somebody writes a review about maybe they came and had dinner at your restaurant on their anniversary make note of that in your response and you can say we hope you choose to come back and spend your anniversary next year with us. You can always encourage them to spread the word and so you can do that in your response.

Or if you have some kind of system setup, you can ask them. “Hey, thank you so much. Would you mind leaving us, feedback on a couple of these other sites on Facebook or on TripAdvisor?”. Encouraging them to spread the word and a lot of times you'll find that customers will do that. They'll be glad to do that.

We've talked a lot today about how to get reviews, how to ask, how to monitor, how to respond, and at SEO Rocket we have a tool that handles a lot of that for our customers is called RocketReviews. What it does is it monitors review sites. It will let you know when you get a review it will send out reviews. If you've got one you can import your customer database into the system and it will send out requests in that slow drip kind of format. If you import 500 customers, it won't send requests to all 500 of those customers at one time. It will send out 10 15 20, however many a day so that hopefully as people start responding you get that consistent flow of reviews back into the system. It works if you've got one location, it works if you've got multiple locations. There's a dashboard where you can quickly see how many reviews, response rate, open rate regarding emails. You can send reviews via text. I mentioned briefly earlier about a code like sending the code “Pizza” to number 12345 and what that does when using RocketReviews is it will send them a response with a link that they can tap right there from the text message to leave quick feedback. And then once they leave that feedback, they'll get a notification or get an email asking them to leave a review on these other sites on Facebook ,Google wherever else that you have these other review platforms where you have a presence. It's got reporting so you can look and see how you're doing as far as getting reviews. Are people opening your requests? Are people opening the emails? Are people responding? Are they clicking through to leave reviews on third-party sites?

When you make something like this part of your internal process it almost takes it completely out of your hands. Then as you add customers into your RocketReviews system, it does all the heavy lifting for you and sends out the requests. It notifies you when you get reviews. It directs the customer to leave the reviews and directs them in the right direction.

We've got a link on our website SEO rocket.com/RocketReviews. You can go there and read more about the system, what it does, you can schedule a free demo with us. That actually would be with me. I could be walking you through the system to show you how it works both from the customers perspective and from the business owners perspective so that you can see how RocketReviews can make asking for and getting reviews an easier process.

I know we covered a lot of information. So if you've had any questions and if put them in the chat, we can answer them. Now. If you haven't put them in the chat, you can go ahead and do that now and as they come in we can go over those as well because we think we've got a little bit of time here to answer some questions. So Angela if we've got any questions from from any of the attendees, let's go ahead and start answering some of those.

image of Angela

Yeah. Yeah, we have a few and I'm back. I've got my camera on. Yeah, so we actually had a couple and we'll start with them. First, “If I already have more reviews than my competitors. Should I keep asking for them?”.

Zane Tuck image

Yeah, if you already have more yeah, you should always keep asking for more reviews. Always. Always. Especially if you are the type of business that gets repeat business from customers. So if you are a restaurant or a coffee shop, or a hair salon, someone may have left you review two months ago when they were in. But the review is more about the experience that that customer had at that time rather than their overall opinion of you or your business. So, yes, absolutely ask every time. Reviews are a numbers game, you know, the more you ask the more you'll get back. If you don't, if you're only asking a small percentage of your customers, then the number of reviews you're going to get back is going to be really small. So if you ask a hundred percent of your customers, if 20% leave you feedback that's fantastic. But if you reduce the number of customers you're asking then you're only reducing the number of reviews you're going to get back.

Yeah, absolutely, you know a lot of people a lot of business owners and marketers we found kind of feel like it’s impolite or pushy or too aggressive to ask for a review. But you know, honestly if you are in a face to face situation with a customer and they make a remark and give you some feedback about how you excelled in some way or gave them great service. You fixed it or helped them overcome their fears about this specific service, you know, whatever the example may be. If you're right there in front of them and they're having this conversation with you. They're being honest and transparent with you. That is a fantastic time to ask for a review. If they are giving unprovoked feedback verbally, then that's your foot in the door to ask them. Hey, would you mind leaving us a review online? You know, I can you know send you a link in an email. I can text it to you.

Do whatever you can to make it easy for that person because they already want to share their feelings about you and they're doing it face-to-face. So like I said, you've already got your foot in the door there go ahead and ask them. To go back to your point about feeling pushy it's okay to ask. It's absolutely okay to ask you should ask.

Yeah, I think you know right now it's so common it is you know, we're talking about technology is become such a part of our routine all the time that if we make a purchase or you know inquire about something we're always going to get a survey a question back. I mean, that's just so common. Now people aren't they're not surprised by it doesn't interrupt them. You know, they're just really used to it now, so I wouldn't think twice about it.

image of Angela

Also to let everyone know while Zane was talking. I popped in the chat the link for the RocketReviews system that he mentioned. That's in our chat group right now so you can go there and click on that link. If you want to learn more about RocketReviews and one thing that's really cool about RocketReviews is that it does allow you to ask questions or ask for feedback and reviews from your customers.

You can do it with a tablet at the checkout at your cash register like Zane mentioned earlier. Yes that as an option. Also too you can send people emails you can have QR codes. You can send them text it offers all those opportunities and also does set a reminder where you can actually remind people that haven't responded but you can set the reminder to only happen like once or twice. So for those who have that

concern about bothering someone with the reminders you can set them to stop. It doesn't go on and on and on but it does automate for you a little bit. That link is in the chat box for all those who are interested in checking that out. I think we have videos and all kinds of information that suggest you give it a look and be really fun.

Next, I have another audience question. Let's see. “What if I'm afraid I'll get bad reviews?” I'm afraid I'll get bad reviews. What's say you Zane?

Zane Tuck image

Okay, um, bad reviews are going to happen. I think you know first off anybody who looks at a company,  if they're researching a business and they see that they have nothing but five star reviews, you know that tends to throw up a red flag for people. It's like I said before negative reviews are okay. You know bad reviews are going to happen from time to time. How you handle those reviews and how you respond to those reviews really determine what happens from that point forward if you ignore it. Well, that's just kind of sticking your head in the sand you don't want to do that and you don't want to come across in your response being defensive or curt or snippy. Or, you don't want to respond to negativity with negativity. So, you know like we talked about before about how to respond to negative reviews.

Be apologetic, you know try and take the issue offline soon, offer to give your phone number and say please call me at your earliest convenience so we can we can talk about this and I can learn more about what happened. What we can do to make sure that this doesn't happen again to you or to others in the future. Because it could very well be a process issue with one of your processes or you know, maybe an issue with staff. Especially if you're getting consistent negative reviews that mention somebody in particular.

Don't be afraid of negative reviews. Everybody gets negative reviews. If you haven't gotten one yet. You will. Or fake reviews, but negative reviews are going to happen. How you respond to them is the key and hopefully I've given you some tools and some tips to help you navigate responding to a negative review that you absolutely have.

image of Angela

Thanks Zane! One quick question that I had was or wanted to make sure that we discussed very briefly is you know, you mentioned earlier leading the witness and also things to not do as far as incentivizing, you know, a free t-shirt for review or a coupon for review or whatever to not do that. Make them an honest and genuine overview.

What happens if the almighty Google finds out that you've done that? You could be gone! Google they have done it before and they will they I'm sure they would do it again. They have removed businesses listings from Google for incentivizing reviews.

Zane Tuck image

Not only do consumers and customers look at your reviews, but your competition does too. I've seen where they've put in their response comments like "your gift card is in the mail" or you know will send you an email with a link to your e-gift card. They've actually done that. And you know, you just make it easy for Google to say you're gone and they've done that. They do the same thing for businesses posting fake reviews, trying to boost their review profile by posting bogus reviews from bogus customers. I remember reading once about a law firm that did that. Google took down their listing off and they had I want to say they had hundreds close to thousands of reviews that been established been on Google for years and Google took him down and if you don't think that your competition has an eye on you and your listing and your reviews I would beg to say that you're probably wrong. I think I think they are. And if you're not keeping an eye on your competition and their reviews and how they're doing things you should. If nothing else you probably could learn something about maybe how you should approach certain things or a certain aspect of your business by how they're doing if they're successful. Maybe they did something that's not successful and you can definitely learn as much from your competition as you can learn from your own experiences with your business

image of Angela

Right. Absolutely. Okay, awesome day and I appreciate the questions. Those are all great questions and very informative and we love it when you asked because someone else may be thinking the same thing and and not be you know, they maybe they're shy and they don't ask that once again just ask. Okay, awesome. So and by the way speaking of just asking if you've enjoyed this webinar today and found it valuable, I have to just ask myself and practice what we preach here and say please go to Google and leave SEO Rocket a review for the webinar today. And you know, give us some feedback there. We always love hearing that so we certainly would appreciate you taking the time to do that today or tomorrow this webinar.

 I'm going to go ahead and start wrapping up this webinar if you'd like to revisit it or share it with anyone. It's going to be on our YouTube channel and on our website shortly.

You can check our social media for announcement that it's up and also you know while you're on YouTube go to our Channel click that little bell icon. And so you will be subscribe to our Channel and alerted every time one of our webinar videos is posted. That'll save you some time. They are right our next webinar.

Our next webinar is going to be April 28 and that would be on how to decide whether SEO or PPC is right for you presented by yours truly. I will be presenting that so, you know, we're going to go over this.  A lot of times people will think. Oh, I need SEO where I need PPC or you know, maybe you really need the other or maybe you need both. We're going to talk about the pros and cons of both SEO and PPC their timelines their budgets also which candid questions you need to ask yourself before considering either strategy. Then also what your site needs to have in place to be prepared to launch each of them.

So how do you decide which works for you and your competitive environment? Hint there it is not always about budget and timeline. It can be about many different things. So please join us on April 28th so we can discuss this and you can decide which is the best way for you to invest your time and money.

To register for this webinar, go to our website SEORocket.com. There's a registration page there. You may have you may be on our mailing list already. If you are you'll get a mailer about two weeks before to let you know. It's on our website and our social media all the time. So go ahead and register there and save your seat for this because I think it's going to be really informative. Great stuff here.

I promised you fun things too! SEO Rocket has launched the new service with special pricing through the end of April. So we are now doing Advanced SEO audits these take more time actually than we are willing to admit so they're very in depth and you know full of actionable information for you. We go through a hundred plus point SEO site audit. It's always performed by one of our experts like Zane here. He would be one of the people that are doing these, an executive summary of the findings that of course you get to keep and looking at the critical issues affecting your SEO and your performance and then a one-hour call with the actual person who did your audit to go through all of that and explain it to you.

So you have that consultation with that SEO specialist regarding the findings and the key recommendations from that. This is a special we're doing 20% off through April 30th. And actually you're hearing it here first. We haven't told anyone out about it yet. You can go to our website and check it out. I'll put that link in the chat here and just a second and then also to you know, we talked today about your reviews being a crucial part of your Google My Business listings. Well, guess what the rest of your Google My Business profile needs to be stellar also. We are offering a Google My Business optimization checklist. And this is totally free absolutely free. You can go to our site and download it. It’s a $300 value and then I’ll pop that link up here in the chat too and just a second.

But anyway, that is just a thank you that we're giving to you as being a friend of ours attending our webinars, coming to our site, etc. It's totally free. You can share it with people to send them that link as well. So I'm going to pop that up. I should have done it earlier, but I was waiting for us to discuss it first. So sorry about that, but you can go to our site and see that here. Let's put it up right now because the advanced SEO audit is in the chat coming to you. There you go and our Google my business optimization checklist putting that up here for you to right now. So there's some resources for you. Zane put it together actually based on another webinar that he did on on Google My Business for a for a business organization here locally.

We've taken that info made an optimization checklist for you. So please take advantage of that.

I want to thank you all for your time today. I really appreciate you joining. We love it when you do and when you ask questions. So check out those links in the chat box. We hope to see you again at the end of April on the 28th to talk about SEO and PPC and the pros and cons of each. I will see you then for now. Bye-bye everyone, bye-bye.

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