Transcript
Speaker 1: Where we help businesses like yours become the go to business in your niche. So in other words, we help you dominate your online reputation and local Seo. We don’t have whole lot of time today. So I’m going to jump right into it. I’m interviewing our CEO Ryan Steinolfson with best strategies for online reviews. So I’ll start with my first question, Brian, which is why is having a good online reputation necessary
Speaker 2: at all? Thanks crystal for the introduction. So having a good reputation and I love how you just got right into it. That’s awesome. That’s a great. We try to model good behavior here and that’s, that’s really good behavior because, you know, people want to get right to the point and they want to get the answer and we’re going to deliver that and we’re going to get better retention by actually doing that. And you will as well. So, um, so why is a great reputation? Really important? Why? Because the numbers tell us. So, uh, we’ve been doing online, local Seo and um, and also reputation management marketing for almost a decade now. A accelerate marketing. And I want to tell you that I have seen businesses completely transformed by getting reviews on the major directories. Those would be google, bing, Yahoo, et cetera. Um, Chris, you can you hear me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you’re talking. OK. So those are the main directories out there. And I just want you guys to understand that when you get these reviews, it’s really, really important that you have a process for getting them. But, but why is it important? Because we know that bottom line is that it does affect your bottom line to the tune of a 10 percent increase in gross revenues from one specific study that was done by Yelp, that was, that was a harvard done study with Harvard sponsored study and they looked specifically at restaurants and this was done two or three years ago. And we have seen this across the board without anything else changing in the business. All they did is they increased their star rating by one star and that corresponded to a 10 percent increase in gross revenues. If that doesn’t ring your bell, if you’re a CTO, etc.
Speaker 2: Then you definitely want to, you want to pay attention. So hopefully That makes sense. Was that answering your question there for summer? So yeah, there’s so many things. I mean there’s, there’s so many other studies. I mean that one study is just one of many, many studies that are out there and you know, we look at, you know, we look at other studies that were done by another company that we, that we use is, it’s just unbelievable. More than 2000 people studied and it’s unbelievable. What we see is that when you are, when you have a less than a two star rating, you have like a 20 percent chance of somebody clicking on your link on the maps or in the organic section. Whereas if you have a four or higher rating, a four star or higher rating, you have over an eighty percent chance at the 60 percent difference. You can’t tell me that you have your website. The average web website is probably exposed on google on an average of 100 times a week. Ok? If you have 100 times that you’re being exposed to people and you, that that means that you have a 60 percent difference in people actually clicking and calling you. So that means 20 versus 80 three people will call you. That’s a significant difference in those hundred people that visit your website or they see you in the search results. That’s a big, big difference.
Speaker 1: yeah. A great huge difference. and what about um, what are some ways that a reputation can be damaged?
Speaker 2: Yeah. And by the way, I call this the silent killer. You know why? Because businesses don’t know that this is going on because it’s silent. Like you don’t knoW. It’s like, it’s like having, I had to use the c word, but it’s like having, you know, something like a disease or something like you don’t know until you start getting the symptoms. By the time you get the symptoms though, it’s too late. The symptoms are, our gross revenues are down by 30, 40 percent. Why is that happening? Well, so it’s a silent business killer. Just like, you know, if we get some sort or you know, have some sort of disease, you might not have symptoms of that disease until it’s too late and so you need to pay attention to. My suggestion is pay attention to stuff ahead of time and get ahead of it. Just like taking care of your health, take care of your health, you know, drink green juice, you know, do the things get exercise in order to take preventative action. It’s no, it’s the same thing with your reputation. Help no different. What was your question again? Sorry.
Speaker 1: It was what are some ways that a reputation can be damaged?
Speaker 2: Ok. A reputation can be damaged and it’s, it’s as simple as not doing anything. I’m going to say that again. It’s a simple. Just like with your health using the same health analogy, it’s just not doing anything. If you don’t do anything about it, you, you’re at risk. If you don’t exercise, if you don’t eat right, if you don’t have a reputation, standard operating procedure for your staff and did them and talk about in your weekly huddle meetings about what we do. At our, at our company, you know, where do we have an opportunity to get a review if you don’t talk about this stuff and you don’t incorporate this, we do what we. That’s what separates us. We’ve realized that the reason why we’ve been, we’ve been able to get 300 plus reviews for businesses in less than two months on google, five star reviews by the way, 311 is the record is because we do the reputation and we call it review culture.
Speaker 2: Training’s different because when you actually train your staff on how to do this and you and they and you educate them, then they’re participants in this process and they understand in the training that we do the connection between why it’s important to them and basically like the review itself. In other words, we make them feel the pain and understand by showing them the results where they’re at in the search results. Because by the way, if you don’t get reviews, you’re not going to show up in the searches. All this high is if you do get five star reviews. So we helped them understand if they’re a salesperson, look this can, this affects the number of leads you get, then you think you’re going to pay attention. Do you think you’re going to get more reviews? Do you think they’re going to have people mentioned their nameS
Speaker 1: in the reviews
Speaker 2: they are, because then that person, that salesperson is probably going to be asked for by name just from the review. So there’s a, there’s a motivation. We’re all motivated to do things that are going to benefit us well if we don’t put two and two together for them and we don’t help them understand the connection between the why and the how, then they’re not going to do it. That’s the bottom line. So does that mean to your questIon though?
Speaker 1: Thanks ryan.
Speaker 2: The question was specifically was what was it again? It was, it was, um,
Speaker 1: what are ways that our reputations can be damaged?
Speaker 2: Ok. So let me expand on it so it can be damaged by just not doing anything. But this was the obvious. The obvious is, is by people leaving negative reviews for your business and, or are you not responding to the reviews that people leave? So there’s all these subtle little variations of that question. That’s why I wanted to go back to it because it’s a, it’s a very multi-faceted question that can be answered in many ways. I mean, the, the business has reputation can be damaged obviously by getting one star reviews on multiple different directories. Maybe all those reviews though, or just on one directory and, and on, on, you know, maybe they’re just on google, maybe they’re on just on yelp, you know, it could be as simple as on yelp, for example, your reviews being sent to the section where they don’t give you were there, they’re listed.
Speaker 2: In other words, they’re, they’re not prominent reviews and that happens a lot. We got a lot of questions about that. So, um, they’re, they’re called, they call unfiltered reviews. So that could damage your reputatIon. You can be damaging your reputation by without knowing it, by not showing the reviews on your website. I would submit that is, you know, in other words, if you’re not marketing your business with your reviews, then I would say that yeah, you’re, you’re potentially even damaging your reputation by doing that because you don’t have a reputation and if you don’t have a reputation, it’s almost as bad as having a bad reputation. In other words, if people don’t care if they’re just ambivalent about your business, what does that say about your business?
Speaker 1: Yes, I agree. And the thing too that I like about google is that they’re now encouraging this and giving, you know, kitson such so that you can market your reviews because it is really important. And another thing that I like that you always say all the time, ryan, is something is better than nothing.
Speaker 2: Yes, at least leave a response. Doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t leave a response and that way at least people see that you care. If you don’t respond at all, then it’s like crickets. And it’s like that’s even another way. Like I said, that you can actually be damaging your reputation is just by not responding. Being, being apathetic.
Speaker 1: I’m not responding. Is is responding though?
Speaker 2: Exactly. It is a hundred percent. It’s saying I’m apathetic to what you’re saying. I don’t care about tall people are going to interpret it.
Speaker 1: Now it’s 30 percent of individuals that are searching those reviews are now looking to see how the companies are responding back before they base their decision of whether or not they’re going to walk into that business or give that business to phone call. So by not responding you’re missing out on all of that.
Speaker 2: not only that, but when you do respond and you respond and you make the person feel heard, which we’ve got a template of 10 different response templates that we suggested. In other words, if you’re just hot headed and you just cannot even see straight, then just copy and paste one of these [inaudible] responses and don’t even think about it. Just, you know, you’ve got to replace a few things in there to customize it, but then you just, you just send it and that way, you know, it’s just like you take the emotion out of it. Um, but yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And, and my other question, which was how does an online reputation affect revenue? You’ve kind of touched base on that earlier. I didn’t know if you had any additional suggestions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely affects revenue. I mean obviously like the harvard study that I mentioned, um, it affects revenue specifically by not only people not seeing, seeing that you’ve got a bad reputation potentially on google, yelp, bing, yahoo. I want to point your attention to the fact that you can actually have the star show up with your website as well by using what we call are called first party reviews. Meaning those reviews are only published on your website, in google actually gives you preferential treatment or gives those reviews, believe it or not, preferential treatment in the search results, meaning that you can actually have the stars show up with your website. Say that again. Not all the businesses know this. You can actually have the five stars show up organically. We call it organically, which not, I’m not talking about on naps guys. Ok? For you savvy guys out there, I’m not talking about getting the stars show up and now anybody can do that.
Speaker 2: Ok? What I’m talking about is getting the stars show up with your website, with your website in the organic section outside of maps. Ok? Um, and so you know that if people don’t see the stars with your website, if they don’t see the stars with, by the way, you used to be the dad, you had to have at least five reviews in order to have the star show up. I think it’s like three now. So at least get three to five good. Did enough for goodness sake, so that at least the stars will start showing up with your maps listing, you know, at the very least. But we know that based again on the results that your business is not trusted enough and until you have 10 reviews and they don’t have enough reviews to make a decision based on the study of 2000 people, uh, the local level report that they have done for four years now, almost five years.
Speaker 2: I’m 60 percent difference in, in who’s going to call you, but bottom line is it 10 reviews is what you need for people to make a decision to pick up the phone and call you and to be able to trust your business. And so I would shoot for that for years. I’m going to give you a little tip for all of the review sites that are on the first page for your business. When you type in your business name and your city, and the word reviews business name for us would be accelerated marketing. we’re located in san diego and the word reviews, ok business name, city word reviews. When you do that, that’s the reason why I’m saying that is because that’s the string of words that people type in about 60 percent of the time when they’re referred to your business. Say that again when they’re referred to your business, that’s what they’re typing in.
Speaker 2: And to prove it, go to google and look at how it auto suggests when you type in your, your, your business name and the city, it’ll will auto suggest the word reviews for you. And that’s proof that, that, that is what people are. There you go, great example. And you want to make sure that anything that shows up this page has five stars on it. So, um, that’s a, that’s a really, really big point that we need to. So glass door is a great example, angie’s list, um, and, and we need to, you know, one of the things that, ok, the, ok, so we get that one page that’s got the third party reviews on it. That’s why that page is not showing up in the search results with the stars. That’s a great example. See that? That’s our third party review page, but eventually here we’re gonna make it.
Speaker 2: We’re going to have it so that, um, those, let me just go back here. You will, you will be able to see our first party. Yes, you’ll be so. And you also, by the way, you want a video thumbnail on that first page as well. You want everything on that first page, so just be five stars. Yes. There’s a thumbnail right there. And that’s part of, you know, reputation Management and marketing. ok. It’s not just reputated social, we call it social proof marketing. We own the domain social proof marketing.com. It is social proof marketing. It’s, it’s taking those reviews and marketing your business with those reviews to get more customers. That is what it is.
Speaker 1: Ryan, our time is up. It definitely appreciate you taking the time to be part of this show today. For anyone that’s listening, we’d like to invite you to take our reputation quiz. so if you just type in the comments reputation quiz, we’ll get that link over to you so that you can find out what your online reputation is. A monday through friday,
Speaker 2: what we’re going to do is we’re gonna put the linkedin. There’s going to be a link that crystal is going to put our reputation quiz link. That is going to be even easier for you. We want to make it as easy as possible for you guys just to click and go, right, so all you gotta do is click on the link. It’ll take you right over to messenger, it’ll ask you one question to start the quiz, and it’s literally a 45 second quiz. At the end of it, you’re going to get a. You’re going to get a quiz score immediately out of 10 so you’ll know where you stand in terms of your reputation and what you can. You’ll know very, very powerful strategy by taking that quiz to help you improve immediately your reputation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I’ll put that link in there and then monday through friday, I’m live sharing some successful strategies With you on how to become the go to business in your niche. This week we talked about online reviews and your online reputation. Next week is going to be all about local seo, and then the week after that is google my business because that beast is beautiful. And so my homework for you today is to type in your business, your city, and the word reviews to see what your page is showing. Um, I’m still created a great rest of your day and see you on mondays.
Speaker 2: Ok.
*We use voice dictation so please forgive any spelling or syntax errors
