Why Online Reviews Matter, How to Get Them and How They Can Increase Your Revenue with Randy Garn at Joe Polish's Genius Network - Genius Network Episode #130

91% of customers read online reviews. Reviews account for 10% of your SEO ranking, so positive online reviews can reduce lead costs by more than 42%.

Randy Garn, creator of Scipio, has worked with thousands of companies to generate over 1.4 million online customer reviews. Raving online reviews are critical when looking to increase your revenue, and Randy knows the strategy to get them. In this episode, Randy explains how we've shifted our currency of trust and why the small town mentality exists on the World Wide Web. He'll reveal a referral strategy that's sure to get you great reviews that'll improve and increase your business. In this episode, you'll get hard facts that point to the Online reviews matter. Go to geniusnetwork.com 130 to access the show notes for this episode or along with an exercise to help you take action on what Randy teaches. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event, go to geniusnetworkevents.com if you've been in business at.

Least 20 years and if you can remember how exciting it was to open your mail and find a wonderful testimonial from a customer or client. If you were like me, you probably posted it somewhere on your office wall so your team members could read it. Maybe even used it in one of your marketing or sales pieces. How many of you have ever gotten such a wonderful letter or testimony in the ma? Today, everything has changed. Now people, not the company, are promoting their own products and services. Online reviews have become much more important and bigger than most consumers ever understand. Online reviews can be worth thousands, if not millions of dollars in additional revenue. If done wrong, it could also cost you millions. Did you know that Google Reviews can also increase your online SEO ranking and so much more? That's why Randy Garn, who created Scipio, has acquired an entirely new division called called Scipio Reviews. For the last four years, Randy and his team have worked with thousands of companies and have generated over 1.37 million online reviews for their customers. If you were to ask your customers to write you an online review, statistics show that 77% say they will. Yet only 1/10 of 1% actually do. But using Scipio reviews averages 31%. Sending in an online review, you're going to learn not only about online reviews, but why they matter, how to get them, and most important, how critical online reviews are in increasing your revenues. Now Randy's title is Online Reviews. Please help me welcome the awesome, the amazing stud of the universe, Randy Garr.

Good job brother. That's awesome. It's good to be here with you guys. I want to start with honestly telling a quick story, but I remember sitting with Joe. What was it? Joe, probably 10 years ago or more, when we were talking about what is the company? Ethical.

Ethical services.

Ethical services. I remember 10 years ago, and I woke up this morning, I was like, we talked about this over 10 years ago about ethical services and how you could actually rate your customers and how big it's going to be. Joe is always way ahead of the curb. And honestly, I think about it as, like, my gosh, dude, it is so relevant today. And I'm going to share with you guys some statistics around it, what you do and how you do it. So we were in San Diego. We finished our meetings early because they went so well, and we had about three hours, and we were all starving. Our plane didn't leave till 8, and we're like, my gosh, what do we feel like? Who feels like eating food? Let's get some food. So we go, what did we do? What do you think we did? Okay, either Yelp or what? I actually just. Siri. Best Indian food on the planet. Next to the airport, right? And what happened? What came up? What do you think came up? The reviews did, right? And so there was an Indian place, Indian Palace. It had three reviews and five stars like that. This is the place. The one below it had 4.8 stars, but 192 reviews. And I was like, oh, this is interesting. And then the one below that was 4.2 reviews with 72 reviews. Which one do you think we went and ate at? Why? It had more reviews. And I literally. And I just looked at that, and I was like, well, this one has way more reviews. It's a little lower, but it probably tastes better, right? So online reviews matter, and I'm gonna share with you guys a real important thing. So right now, the biggest one, and this is in order right now. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yelp. How many of you right now? And you think about trust. And Natalie Botman has a really, really good TED Talk on this about that. We've actually switched a currency, a humongous currency of trust. Like, we literally trust strangers more than we trust a company. Okay, how many of you trust the government? Raise your hand. No, really, Raise your hand. It was actually a question. How many of you trust the government? How many of you are invested in Bitcoin? What's up? Does that make sense, what I'm saying? We don't even know who's behind that. Are you serious? So we trust A complete stranger more than we trust our own government. So this is so freaking relevant. It's so true today. So right now, if you look at this, do you know what your ratings are? I have probably asked about 15 of you in this room if you knew what your ratings are. How many of you think that you did? Do you know what your ratings are? You're watching them, okay? It is so important. Every single person I asked did not know what their current ratings were. So it's important to watch. So as you look at that. So I just pulled this up and I asked Joe last night. He's like, joe, do you know what your ratings are? So if you look at Genius Network, we've got. What do we have up here? We've got Facebook. There's 42 reviews on Facebook, 4.9% rating on Yelp. The rating is. There's a five star rating, which is freaking awesome. But only three reviews. The biggest one is actually Google. And so I nicely put one on there for Joe. So it's really, really important to do this because after this, how many of you guys would give Genius Network an awesome rating? Right? Okay, so here's one that was from Genius right here. This was a Facebook review of a really real person. People who call themselves geniuses are dangerous. Adolf Hitler is a good example. So this is one of Joe's old girlfriends, probably, and just got mad at him and who knows what's happening. But the fun thing was, guess who corrected her? The whole community. If you go look at that, like, you know what, it's actually an amazing group and we're not calling ourselves geniuses. I mean, it was awesome. Because I grew up in a small town. Think about small town mentality. That's what's happened. We've taken the humongous communities and made them small town. I know who sold the best. Hey, I know who actually did this. I know that I stayed away from the Swinderman family because they would swindle you. Yeah. So you got it. Like, you just have to know that this is where things are going. So quality, quantity, and recency matter. So those are three really important things as you're looking at Google Reviews. So if you're in a service based business and if you're an author or a speaker or you're coaching training, you need to watch this. This is a friend of mine who runs Stack Real Estate. Okay. What's his rating right now? 2.3%. Okay. It's a multimillion dollar commercial real estate company and they actually have 2.3 stars. Here's what his complaint was. He only has how many reviews? 3. My complaint is that they only have women for janitorial services. As a result, the female janitors take the men's bathroom and block off access. So this complaint actually has nothing to do with how amazing his buildings are. And plus, the picture on there is horrible. They build the most beautiful technology businesses. And I'm like, andrew, you got to fix this. He's. I'm like, what do I do? I'm going to show you exactly how. So we're going to start working with him and I'll show you. I wanted to take a picture of that from before. So same thing. Quality matters and quantity matters. So even if you got the best ratings, you have to have a ton of them for people to be like, okay, that is a trusted resource. I'm going to go with that. So a lot of times if you are below 4.2%, they will not choose you. So are your online reviews recent? January 30th. Bill Phillips did one January 10th. So I'm going to show you guys one thing that you can do right now. So we invested in a company out of Dallas, Texas, and they have a really super, super easy way to do this. And what if you could stop negative reviews? When you ask for a review, we actually don't allow anybody to post it unless they'll send a referral. Okay. So when you do that, you say, will you give us a review? Would you refer this to a friend? If they say yes, then we know it's going to be a good review. If they say no, then it actually goes to customer service and you're able to fix stuff or to yourself so that you can resolve that issue and then allow them to post. Does that make sense? Super, super, super cool. It doesn't mean that you can stop anybody from just going and doing it, but you're allowing them to actually give you good feedback. And the number one thing for business, learn how to give good, solid referrals. And this is a huge economic boost. 91% of customers read online reviews. Reviews account for 10% of your SEO ranking. So positive online reviews can reduce lead costs by more than 42%. We have a dentist office that actually just opened up. They didn't have any reviews, so we've started helping them. They are now like killing it with reviews. They have three to four new walk ins coming in every single day. And he's projected to do over $2 million in just referrals from reviews that are coming in. So you think about that and how important this is. Again, 77% of customers would be willing to leave a review fast. Asking for reviews has never been easier. So three words you must never forget. Let's show it. Listen, this is Randy the Pig. We gotta have this. If there's anything you need to do from today is to remember this. Online reviews matter. Get it done. All right. So if there's anything you can do. Online reviews really do matter. They're going to get more relevant and relevant. Let's rock and roll. Online reviews matter.

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