Reviews are Your Best Lead Generation Tool - Hillary Sciscoe

Website: harmonyinmarketing.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hsciscoe/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hiansc

00:01 If you want to know if your marketing investments are fully supported, you are in the right place because today I'm going to show you how online reviews are the secret sauce behind all of your marketing efforts and how you can harness that power and let it build for you so here we go. All right, I'm Hillary. I have a mix of backgrounds, a lot of the service tech and marketing, and when I mix it all together, I help service providers increase the customer activity for their business and get a better return out of their marketing investment.

00:42 I started building websites in 2000 and dove off deeper into tech, working for nonprofit and government IT roles. Went into the high tech industry where I grew customer success team and then formed a voicing voice of customer program. So I got tired of all that, wanted to work with small businesses again and make a bigger impact for the community and see that ripple effect. We're going to learn today about the real power of online reviews, what makes a good online reputation and being proactive with your review management and how to leverage those positive reviews. And there's a couple more things in there too so let's get started the power of online reviews.

01:30 Have your notebook out and something to write with because you're going to need it. All right every customer journey starts with a need or a problem. They become aware of that problem to solve, they begin to search, they begin to get referrals from neighbors, cousins friends, and they use that information to make a decision. And then if they have a good experience, or maybe if they have a horrible experience, they leave a review, right? That review starts back in the middle of that customer journey for the next person. So there's a cycle.

02:13 It goes from being your advocate to your lead magnet. 98 % of people read online reviews. That's right. Amazon, Yelp, HomeAdvisor, TripAdvisor, Google, Facebook they're everywhere. And 88 % of people want to know if you respond to your reviews, OK, that tells them who you are, what values you have. Reviews act today as the modern word of mouth marketing. I was always a big word of mouth marketing fan because it's about trust and credibility and your potential customers see the opinions of these people online that they don't know.

02:59 Just as worthy and trust trustworthy as what their neighbor told them or what their cousin told them. So the social proof is extremely important. 03:13 And right here I'm going to prove that it is critical, not just an optional task. So think about the first half of May not quite i did this on the thirteenth i gather these new numbers and it's over 60.000 thousand searches in May for the term landscapers near me. Let's say each job is an average of thirty five hundred dollars. So for the whole US that is over two hundred million dollars in opportunity.

03:47 Let's just say 500 of those searches are in your local area and you own a landscape business. That's almost 2000000$ and at opportunity in the 1st 13 days, right? That's a lot. If you see the little keyword variations there, that's like landscape companies near me so different ways of saying the same thing.

04:15 Almost 800,000 thousand searches. Ok, so that's people with money in their hand ready to find the right person for them. And what if you don't stick out? What if you do stick out? Every ad referral campaign is either boosted or blocked by your online reputation so if you look at the word side, we have the chambers, the associations, the referrals, the ad sites, the paper ads, radio ads, you've got them all. They Google you. Well, at that point, your business is either going to stand out or or not.

05:01 Your competitors going to stand out or not nobody's going to stand out and they're going to be like, whatever, I'm going to go look around my yard, see if I can move my own rocks, right? So don't make them go. I'll, I'll look at this a different time. Make sure you stand out. You don't have to let them wait another day. Let them call you today. All right, So what makes a good reputation? Average review, total number of reviews, frequency of reviews, age of reviews, how you respond to reviews and the words, the meaning of the review.

05:42 This is, in my opinion, how you build your trust with your future clients. They're used to reading reviews, right? So you can bring more customers to your door to your phone by ensuring that you are taking care of your reviews.

06:05 All right, so let's put our our customer hat on Now we need this landscaping company. We want to find the best one in town. And right here we have several that have over A4 rating. 06:21 Which one would you choose?

06:27 The one's A5 that's great, perfect five star rating. Awesome but there's only 10 of them at the bottom. It's over a four and they've got a few dozen reviews there you know, the top one though is almost A5 and they have over 150 reviews that's quite a lot of reviews. So that's who I would call. That's who I would choose over their competitors. 06:58 All right, So what do you need to be doing to be proactive in your reviews? One, don't ignore them, just like you won't ignore your comments on your social media posts.

07:13 Communicate right, Don't just focus on the positive ones. Do not ignore your negative reviews. It matters very much we will talk about that. Don't let your reviews look stale. Do not respond with emotion. Write it out, put it down, come back to it tomorrow after you've slept. Take the emotion out of it and then post it.

07:39 And don't ignore your industry related review sites, all right? What you need to do is establish a goal for yourself of number of reviews per month. Make it easy provide several opportunities for them to leave you a review. Respond as they come in and personalize it don't just copy and paste the same thing to every single review. Not what you want to do. And then when they do have critical feedback, listen to them understand where they're coming from and how you can improve that for the next person.

08:20 And the reality of getting reviews is that people forget, they get sidetracked, they have other priorities or they don't know how so we have to make it easy for them. We have several ways of doing that you can create your own dedicated page you can make little cards with QR codes on it and there's all kinds of ways you can leave opportunities for people to leave you a review and remind them, I am guilty i do not leave a review on the first email.

08:53 I say, yes, I want to do that. And then I forget. So the second time I get the email I'm like, yeah, thank you, because I did want to leave a review. I just couldn't do it then. So this multiple emails really helps. It helps me. All right and another nice thing you can do is ask every customer, or at least every happy customer, and tell them exactly where you would like them to leave you a review at. They don't know which sites you want, so send them the exact link or give them a choice.

09:34 Maybe they don't have a Facebook account and they only want to leave it on Google. That works.

09:43 And if you have a dedicated page and a thumbs down, you can have that thumbs down lead to a feedback form so that they can let you know about their experience. This doesn't stop them from leaving a review, and it does help connect them directly with you to work with them and make it better. They can still leave that negative review so we're not gatekeeping them. We're just connecting with them.

10:19 All right, Time to promote yourself through your reviews. It's great to get them out on Facebook. You can pin them i think I go through that in a minute you can pin them to your Google profile on your Google reviews can you send those out to your social media accounts, post them on your website, have the carousel or pop up on your website. You can put them in your email signatures you can have a review of the month section in your newsletter. You can have badges like the Five Star Review, all kinds of options you can put them right in your sales presentations and proposals.

11:03 All right, let's go back to negative reviews. Some things to remember you want to do the negative review response as soon as possible. So you want to be reminded or notified there you go you want to be notified when one is left you and always thank them for their feedback, acknowledge their experience and lead them to a resolution so give them a next step. Contact me here, email us here, come to the office so let's have coffee. I don't know so there's all kinds of options, but keep it short, keep it sweet, and always let them know that you're paying attention, that you want to improve the experience and you appreciate what they have to say because other people are going to see how you respond to that as well.

11:57 Here's a quick way to respond. Thank you for your feedback we're sorry to hear about your experience and appreciate you bringing it to our attention. We strive to provide excellent service and would like to make things right. Please contact us so we can discuss this further. Simple, nice. Give them a next step. All right, so I have homework for you. The first homework.

12:26 Is to review which platforms are best for you.

12:31 Google reviews are very common and they're great for boosting your visibility in searches, especially in local search. Google Maps, they're trusted, very credible as one of those trusted search engines and a lot of people trust them to make their decisions with.

12:53 Facebook is another big one. It's where in people build community, there's social proof visibility on your pages, which is great. Now there's also industry specific ones like Yelp started as a restaurant review site. We have TripAdvisor, HomeAdvisor House, there's all kinds of different ones on here and that is very credible for your specific industries.

13:29 Homework number two, select 5 customers, send them a link or the links to your review site and and make sure to use their name, address them personally. Ask for review homework number two homework number three is reply to any existing reviews, address them personally, thanks them short and sweet.

13:58 All right, And just to show you guys my system a little bit of it, when you're intentional about your reviews, you can move up the whole star rating in just a month When you're intentional about it. And I would love to get your free reputation report card ready for you. So go ahead and scan this QR code and I will reach out to talk to you further. We can also connect on LinkedIn and Facebook. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me today and I hope to talk to you soon.