Afraid of Bad Reviews? Watch This First!

We are now going over chapter 6 of your itty-bitty amazing visibility book, 15 Chapters to Marketing Made Easy. And chapter 6 is another one of my favorites, and that is all about reviews. Reviews are so important. I used to have in my email signature, reviews are the lifeblood of my business. Business owners hate asking for reviews, yet This is one of the best marketing strategies to implement. Reviews can make or break your business. They are the lifeblood of your business. Where do you need to collect reviews? So the first thing I want to talk about here is that the statement, business owners hate asking for reviews, and they do. And I think one of the big reasons is, is they are afraid they're going to get negative reviews. Well, there's several things about negative reviews. One, if you are that afraid of a negative review, you might be doing something wrong within the systems of your business. Just throwing that out there. Another thing about negative reviews is that it gives you the opportunity to fix something. So if somebody comments something negative on your Google account, for example, now you know what people are upset about. And if one person wrote about it, there's probably more than that that are thinking the same thing. So now you know what you need to do to address some issue within your business. Uh, so responding to those reviews in a way that lets the person feel validated for whatever it was that they wrote and lets them know that you are working to fix what whatever the issue is. That is more important than 100% positive reviews because it lets future people that are reading your reviews know that you care and that you want to fix issues and that you can communicate. The other interesting thing about negative reviews, I did a very non-scientific survey way back in the day. Uh, I was at a coffee shop and there was a lot of different people there, and I could tell that there was a lot of people there that were business people. So I went up to them, introduced myself, and I said, hey, tell me what it's like when you are looking for a new service or a new product and you're reading the reviews, like what's going through your mind? And I was surprised to hear that some people will not buy from a business that has 100% 5-star reviews because they feel like it's been manipulated somehow. Either they're paying people for the reviews or they're fake reviews or whatever. They don't feel comfortable with that number because logically speaking, people understand that you can't satisfy 100% of the people 100% of the time. And I just found that really interesting that they would rather buy from someone that's 4 point something. Than someone that is a 5.0. Just let that sink in for a little bit when you're thinking about reviews. Okay, the number one platform is Google as far as reviews go. They will do you a lot more good than putting reviews on your website because people know you can manipulate those reviews. And in Google, you have to sign in to leave a review. That's thing number one. Thing number two is Google loves it when you use their stuff. They're a little bit of what I would call a narcissistic company. They love you using their tools. So getting a Google review actually helps in your SEO rankings, believe it or not. Social media sites are great because you can share those reviews right on the platform, which is kind of cool. Share them out to different groups that you might be in, uh, even shout out the person that gave you the review in a tag. So it puts it back on their profile. Use review platforms that are relevant to your industry. So if you're a lawyer, I know that there are lawyer-specific review platforms. If you're a contractor, there's contractor-specific platforms. In fact, there's a lot of those. So if your industry has some sort of an online review platform already established, make sure that you are represented there. Now, why are reviews the lifeblood of your business? Number 1, potential clients look for reviews before they call you. They will look at your competition's reviews. If you don't have any, will they call you or your competition based on reviews? So think about that one. Reviews are social proof that you manage a quality business, and reviews show that you care about your clients. So now I've wrote a whole section in here about how to handle negative reviews because they really are not the end of the world. Now, if you have hundreds of negative reviews and just a few positive ones, you definitely have something wrong in your business that you need to handle. So negative reviews are opportunities to improve your business. People know that businesses don't please everyone every time. Some people won't buy from companies that only have perfect reviews. I already told you that story about that. They assume that the reviews have been manipulated. And there are a lot of companies out there that will sell you positive reviews, especially in the contractor world. You come across a contractor that has thousands of reviews and they've only been in business for a little while, there's a red flag there. I'm just saying, buying reviews is really not a good idea. You want to respond to all reviews, both negative and positive. People are watching to see how you treat your customers. I know a lot of people, when I talk to them about this, they're like, oh, it's a positive review. I don't need to respond to that. You do. And there's two reasons for it. You want to make sure that your customers know that you are thanking them for taking the time to leave the review, and future people will see that you're communicating that way. But the other thing is, if you know exactly what service you did for that customer, which the odds are you will, it's not like you're going to be getting hundreds of reviews every day. You're a service, you're a solopreneur, you're a small business owner. So you'll just get a few, maybe a few a week. You'd be great if you got a few a week. If you can call out the service that they did, thank them for whatever that is, it's getting more keywords into your Google Business Profile, which will make your Google Business Profile move up higher on the list. So it's really a good thing to respond to every review. If a negative review reveals a flaw or problem, share how you plan to fix it or make it right. This is a perfect opportunity to turn a negative re— review into a positive and build goodwill. The other thing I wanna say is if it seems like it's just gonna end up being a back and forth beef fest, then I always try to just take it offline and ask them to call me or email me and provide it in there. Um, fake reviews are an entirely different problem. These are reviews from people who never used your business. Generally, they are purchased. However, on the negative side, if the review violates the platform's policies, you can report it and request that it's removed. I have done that a few successful times on Yelp. I've done that on Google a few times as well. And respond to fake reviews in a way that the public understands that the writer was not your customer. That's also important. Call them out on it. These are people who could be your competitors. They could be friends of your competitors. They could be someone who didn't like how you were driving and you have a logoed up vehicle and they come on there and leave some review about that. It could be anything. If they didn't use your services, make it clear in your response that that is what happened. The other thing that I would like to say, just in general about reviews, people read reviews before they call you. And I know this because when people find me on the internet, they call me, they're asking questions about websites. I ask them why did they call me? And they usually say something like, I found you online for such and such keyword. And they actually say it because generally they're calling me right when they found me. So they know what they did. And they'll say, I saw that you had so many reviews, or I listened to some of your reviews because I've probably got 20 that are on video on YouTube, and those show up differently in a different line item on the search results page. Meaning I've got my website that shows up cuz I have a reviews page on my website. So here's what a typical search looks like. They'll say website designer near me or website designer in Vancouver, Washington, or something along those lines, and they'll get a list of 3 or 4, um, website designers that were pretty much always position 1 through 4, and we kind of swap around places. Then they'll say, of that list, I went and I looked at the reviews for each company, and I have far more reviews than any of my competitors, and that's on purpose. And then they'll say, I felt comfortable calling you because of either what was said in a review, or they listened to my introduction video, which is a whole nother topic. But they felt comfortable to contact me because of something they either read, heard, or saw online. That is the power of reviews. And I urge you, if you are one of the people that really doesn't want to get reviews because you're afraid of what somebody might say, you need to get over it because it has been, like I said, the lifeblood of my business. Now, if you want to get your copy of this little 15 Chapters to Marketing Made Easy book, I will put the link down in the comments on this posting, wherever you're, you're seeing it. And tomorrow we are going to be talking about speaking and podcasts. So I hope to see you here tomorrow. Have a great day.