- Welcome to The Journey.
Have you ever gotten a bad review online?
Well, today we're gonna talk about it,
and how to boost your credibility.
Let's jump in.
Hey, I'm Nealey, your internal marketing specialist
here at GoDaddy.
Today, I have my guest, Emma.
We're gonna talk about getting reviews
for your online business. - Hey.
- Hey Emma - How's it going?
- Phenomenal, how are you?
- Are you ready to get some social proof?
- Absolutely!
Most important question I have is,
how do I actually just get reviews?
Like, if I'm sitting at zero, how does that start?
- Let's just first be very honest,
most people do not write reviews.
Your customers?
Nah.
They're reading them.
So you do have to be proactive.
And one of my favorite ways to get people to leave
you a review is by just simple responding to
the ones you have.
'Cause that's gonna show everyone else just landing
on your page like, "Oh, you're listening."
But let's say you have zero reviews.
Well, a great way to start getting more reviews is,
of course, asking offline, but then encouraging
on your social media platforms.
I've seen some great Facebook posts and Tweets where
the business is actually encouraging to
learn more about the customer experience.
- Right. - Like,
"Hey, when you come in our restaurant,
"what's your favorite thing to order off the menu?"
And then, you know, it happens.
They start writing their favorite menu items.
- I always see those. - Yeah.
- If I go to a restaurant there's usually a sign,
"Leave us a review on Yelp."
- Totally. - Yeah.
- And that's because it's today's word of mouth.
That is gonna be credible.
Most people believe a complete stranger more than
an ad.
- Right.
So, I've seen on there where there are
some pretty bad reviews.
If I'm a business owner, how do I handle that?
- First and foremost,
I just wanna say,
I'm very empathetic to a bad review.
I have, oh my gosh, I've heard some horrible stories.
But I will say this:
look at it as an opportunity.
It's an opportunity to show everyone else
that you have great customer service.
So if you do get that negative review,
which every business does at some point or another,
take it as an opportunity to neutralize it.
Respond in a personal manner, really highlight
what it was that the customer was complaining about.
And then there's this fine line between defending
your business and apologizing?
- Okay. - It's like,
there's some finesse there.
- It's a little balance.
- A little balance.
- And you really want to sort out actual feedback
versus trolls, right?
Cause I know there's probably some trolls
on the Yelp reviews that are just doing it to do it.
- Yeah, and the good thing is, too, there is
an opportunity for you to flag a review.
So, sometimes you're gonna get a review
from a customer that,
maybe they used
some poor language, that violates the guidelines,
or maybe they were never your customer,
or an ex-employee. (winces)
So, with that, that actually violates the guidelines
for some of these pages.
I encourage you to look into flagging reviews,
and that's your potential to get them removed.
But it has to violate the guidelines,
and definitely don't hold your breath on that.
Still respond.
'Cause that new potential customer, they don't know
that side of the story, right?
Another thing, too, I love.
This is one my favorite things that I see local
businesses doing, and not enough are
taking advantage of this.
This is a little secret inside tip,
is when you get a great review on Yelp,
or a great review on Google,
why leave it there?
Cross-promote!
Cross-pollinate, turn it into a Tweet,
or an Instagram post.
You can simply just quote it,
and then make it look
a little pretty using Canva.
We were talking about Canva the other day.
- Love Canva!
- Yeah, put a good graphic.
I saw this car wash on Twitter,
and they did a,
they took a Google review.
Just quoted the customer, the happy customer,
and then background behind the actual text of
what the review said was like rain droplets in a car.
I was like, "Oh, that's
"bringing it all to life!" - [Nealy] That's pretty rad!
- [Emma] Yeah, it was very cool.
Very cool.
- I probably wouldn't stop at social, right?
You have a website, people are going to that website,
add that social proof, add those reviews to
- Definitely. - your website.
- Also have links to click there, so if I land on your
website, it's really easy to navigate over to your
Yelp, Google, Facebook.
- And that just adds trust 'cause anybody can
write just a fake review, but have a link to it?
Boom.
Instant credibility.
- Also, with getting social proof,
the other thing that I want to bring up
that comes up all the time, is I'll get asked,
"What about the filtered reviews?
"Why are these reviews filtered on Yelp?"
- Yep. - And there's a lot of
reasons for that, and the algorithm,
but still respond to those as well.
'Cause every customer that has taken time to write
about you, is really, it's an opportunity.
To spread more word of mouth, to protect your reputation,
and essentially get more reviews in the end.
Which is social proof.
- So, one of the cool things that I saw when
I was in a restaurant was, it had a little flyer
on the table and it said, "Leave us a review on Yelp,
"and we'll give you an appetizer."
- Yep. - So, if
we don't have a restaurateur watching this video
right now, what else could we do to help
reward people for leaving their comments?
- Yeah, so I think of it
like the old, almost the
punch card style?
- Okay.
- You know, the boost customer loyalty?
- I have some of those in my wallet right now.
- Yeah?
I'm impressed.
He's such a tech guy, I'm surprised he has a punch card
in his pocket.
Yeah, restaurant's kind of a no-brainer,
but I've also seen where, for example, my yoga studio,
to encourage just getting in there,
gettin' that zen, if you do so many visits they'll reward you.
But also, (both laugh) but also they'll do,
maybe a discount on their merchandise if you
leave a review.
So they really are incentivizing you without
paying you directly,
they're just encouraging you
to leave feedback.
'Cause you don't want to solicit your customers.
Oh, no no.
- What you also don't want to do is say,
"Leave a five star review and I'll give you this."
- Yeah. - It's a huge no-no,
and even I know that, right?
- Besides what I mentioned, responding to reviews
will help you get more reviews; cross-promoting,
so posting about them on social media, quoting the customer.
Another one, too, is actually if you know you're gonna
send an email receipt,
I've seen this, this happened to me recently.
They send the email to you, your receipt,
and then encourage you there, which makes sense!
'Cause I'm already online when I go to my email
and look at this receipt, so I'm just one step
closer to making that happen.
So, you don't want to just rely on asking
offline, offline, offline, 'cause you know what happens.
- Right.
- I leave your business, I go do a million other things.
- And you forget. - And I forget!
- It's gone. - Yeah.
- I did freelancing way back in the day where I just
built websites and the thing that I would do is,
after every build I would say, "Cool, here's your
"great website, here's all the feedback you had,
"and when we're all finished, if you could, just leave
"me just a quick review of how I did, it would definitely
"be appreciated."
And most of the time, having a
personal tailored email like that, I got that review.
One thing I saw on a couple of accounts was,
they would get awesome reviews and either the
business owner just doesn't respond or they respond with,
"Thanks!"
- [Emma] Yeah, it's a, uh, and you see why right?
'Cause they're probably like, "I got a great review!
"What else do I need to do, besides pat myself on the back?"
Right? - "I'm awesome, yay!"
- "Yay, yeah, I did a good job!"
But actually, think about what that customer's
doing for you.
One, they took the time to recommend your business,
but also you can boost customer retention by letting
them know, "Hey, I heard you.
"Thank you so much," but be very mindful about
how your responding.
So, I strongly encourage a couple things.
Personalize your response.
You can do this simply by using the customer's name.
Take something that they mentioned like, "Mike was
"amazing! He was the best server there!"
Then tell 'em, "Hey, we're gonna let Mike know that
"you think he's the best server here."
And so, really personalize it by using what
they wrote about in your review in your response.
It's like active listening.
Do it just like you have the great customer service
in-person underneath the roof of your business.
Make sure you're replicating that online,
'cause that's where people are deciding if they're
gonna do business with you first.
They're on their smart phone, they're on the go,
and about 80% of people are gonna read online reviews
before making a buying decision, and they're gonna read
up to 10 reviews on average.
- How often should I be looking at these review sites?
- Anything could happen in the next hour or the next day,
so as much as you can, monitor it.
But between 24 to 48 hours is a good time frame.
I know that's what we hold true over at GoDaddy Social
when we manage Yelp and Google for thousands of
businesses in the U.S.
- I've seen some businesses that, on Yelp for example,
that say, "claim this business."
"Is this yours?"
What's the deal with that?
- This is just taking ownership of your listing
and you want to do that, because you can't get anything
that we talked about unless you actually take ownership of
your page, which is claiming the page.
And then you can actually update your hours, photos,
your about-the-business section, and make sure everything
there is accurate.
You don't want your customers to have full control
of this.
You do want their word of mouth, you want their feedback,
but you want to make sure you are managing that page,
you've optimized it, and you're active on it.
It's not a set it and forget it sort of platform.
- What are some other advantages, maybe one last tidbit
that you can give the audience on reviews?
- Ooh, I'm glad you asked that.
SEO: search engine optimization!
Because the more reviews you have and the more
optimized your page is, you have all the
correct information, those categories that you fall under,
the more likely you are to be found.
- That's all we have for you for getting reviews
for your business.
If you like what you saw, go ahead and leave us a review
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This is The Journey.
We'll see you next time.