Reviews and Reputation Marketing

Step 1: Make a few choices that you can live with

Choose a business name, local phone number and domain name.  Sounds easy right?  It is by its also important to choose one and stick with it.

Business name and domain name (web site address):  There is some evidence that including the location name (i.e. city) and your industry in your business name and domain name is impactful for your search engine ranking.    However, before you name your company “[insert your city name] [insert your industry name]” consider that you may want to expand your service area and service offerings in the future.

Local phone number:  Lots of businesses have tracking numbers but there is some evidence that they will hurt your local search ranking.  On your web properties, in local directories and on all of your web presence pages (part 2 of this series), choose one phone number with a local area code.  For lots of business, marketing and search optimization reasons, don’t change your phone number.

Step 2: Choose your keywords

Before you start building your website properties, you need to determine what words potential customers use to find businesses like yours.  These are your keywords.  There are lots of good free tools out there to help you such as: Google Adwords,  Trellian and WordTracker.

Step 3: Set up website and blog

Having chosen a company name, purchased a website address and chosen some keywords, its time to create a basic web site.    Your site does not need to be “fancy”.  In fact there are some very simple websites that I know of that sign up more new customers than many other “cooler looking” sites with whom they compete.  However, there are some basics items you should include regardless of how much money you spend on your site:

• Include the business name, address, local phone number and hours of operation on your home page.
• Link to your web presence sites (discussed in Part 2 of this post) from your home page.
• Write content for people to read not for Google to optimize   Don’t stuff your keywords into each sentence but include them naturally as you would in a regular conversation with a prospect.
• Use your keywords as anchor text to link to other pages on your site.
• Write a unique and relevant page title and meta description for every page.  For your home page, use your main few keywords and location.
• Add a form on your website and blog to capture email addresses of potential and current customers who want access to special offers.
• Create a  Google Analytics account and add the analytics tracking to each page of your website and blog.
• Create a Google Webmaster Tools account and submit a site map.

Start a blog.  There are plenty of easy ways to do it including: Blogger and WordPress.  Some of you are thinking “do I really need a blog?  I am an [fill in your industry].  Who wants to read a blog about that?  What will I say?”  Prospects want to read what you have to say.  Share tips and tricks.  Tell people how to do what you do.  They will not do it but they want to know you are an expert.  This is a stunningly easy way to generate leads, increase your website ranking and create durable value for your local business.   I work with someone whose brother is an electrician who wrote 6 blog posts over a year ago and he still gets leads from his blog.  It works.

When you create your website,  either work with a web developer or software package that will create a mobile-ready site (i.e. responsive design) or create a mobile site.  Why?  Its a huge competitive advantage for your new business because only 2% of local SMBs websites are mobile optimized (vSplash DigitalScape Quarterly Audit of US SMB websites, Q2/2012) and over 25% of searches are made from a mobile device.  (Update:  74% of Google’s local search volume comes from mobile devices)   That means that your competitors are delivering a sub-standard experience to your potential customers and that creates an opportunity for you to shine.

Step 4: Send out and confirm your NAP

Claim or list your new business listing  in Infogroup, Localeze and CityGrid.  Make sure you business name, address and phone number are exact and are listed the same way in every location.  Get Listed also does a great job with checking your listings across sites.

Step 5: Build your email list and start using it

Based on how few local businesses make a real effort to collect their customers and/or prospects email addresses, I can only conclude that most businesses have decided it is not worth the effort.  Wow.  What if I told you that there is a multi-billion dollar industry that in effect collects a businesses’ customer email list for them and then rents it back to them in exchange for 40-50% of the revenue from the next time that customer comes in?  Oh, and they do not give the business the email address.  That is the essence of the deals industry.

Build your customer email list.  Build your prospect email list.  Send them special offers.  Ask for reviews.  Ask for referrals.  Send reminders.  Send coupons.  This is some of the most cost effective marketing you will ever do.  There are lots of companies that can help including Constant Contact and Mail Chimp.  Customer Lobby also includes a solution to automatically ask for reviews, send reminders, send coupons, ask for referrals and manage the entire process.

More to come in part 2 but that should keep you going for a while.  

Service businesses can expect a greater share of their new customers to come from the web as the practice of researching online to buy offline (ROBO) has become a standard part of the local buying process. Contrary to some persistent misconceptions, this form of Internet research is not reserved for young, tech-savvy consumers looking up trendy bars and restaurants in their area.

According to the most recent Local Insights Digital Report by YP.com, three of the top local search categories were auto repair, building contractors, and professional services, such as legal and financial. In fact, two of the fastest growing categories were HVAC & AC contractors and Landscape & Lawn Services.

Consequently, local businesses will continue to increase the number advertising dollars allocated for online marketing, with much of the emphasis is on Google Local optimization. To be clear: that is a very good idea, but it is also worth acknowledging that a significant percentage of leads from online come via local directory listings and Internet Yellow Pages (IYP).

We have written before about the Local SEO benefits of claiming and matching data across listings. Aside from ranking higher in Google+ Local, competitive differentiation within the directories themselves can increase business from the web. So, as a first action step, it is worth finding, claiming, and filling out to completion your business listing on as many of the top local directories as possible. As always, Andrew Shotland provides a resource for finding and claiming listings.

As with Google+ Local, customer reviews remain the best way to achieve competitive differentiation on directories. The same logic applies: Customer reviews are a sought-after and valued resource for consumers conducting Internet research. It seems obvious that business listings with the most positive reviews would be more competitive, but what is less obvious is how to ensure your customer reviews populate across directories. To that end, it is worth getting to know CityGrid.

Self-described as the largest local ad and content network, CityGrid content, including customer reviews and ratings, populate in many of the top local directories, such as CitySearch, Kudzu, Judy’s Book, and Superpages. Reviews cannot be posted directly onto CitySearch.  Instead, reviews come from syndication partners and participating directories.  Once in CityGrid, the content then spreads across the network. To ensure content distribution, CityGrid should to be one of the first stops in the process of claiming listings and matching data.

I had the opportunity to spend a few days at the BIA Kelsey small and medium sized business (SMB) digital marketing conference this week in Chicago.  It is very exciting to see so many smart people and interesting companies looking for ways to better help local businesses market their services and products.

In addition to lots of evidence of major trends continuing (e.g. marketing is continuing to shift online from offline sources; consumers are increasingly using mobile devices to research and interact with businesses; etc.), lots of interesting ideas were discussed.  Here are some key take away thoughts from the conference:

1)  Digital presence is more (and may be more important) than just your web site

In the BIA Kelsey’s most recent Local Commerce Monitor survey, local businesses are spending more (30% growth) on their web sites and their web presence (e.g. Facebook, Customer Lobby, website video production, etc.).  Consumers are now clicking into over 4 sites on average that display information about a particular business before making a decision to choose that business.

That means that a good web site is just not enough today in any competitive industry.  Local businesses now need to build and maintain multiple places on the web for consumers to check out before they will buy.  Examples include:  Google+ and Google+Local, Facebook, Customer Lobby, Twitter, Yelp, Citysearch, blog, Pinterest,  etc.

2)  Remain focused on potential disruption in your industry from Online to Offline (O2O) portals

Online to offline (O2O) commerce has long been thought of as a huge opportunity.   In certain industries, these businesses are highly disruptive and often very welcome …at first….

Years ago, I remember talking to restaurant owners about how happy they were with the new clients coming in from Open Table.  The same owners now complain about the fees they pay to Open Table and how they feel totally at the mercy of any fee changes that Open Table might want to pass on.  The lesson is: be warned!  O2O might be coming to your industry so defend yourself by enabling online reservations/appointments and purchase options.  In fact, don’t just enable it, incentivize it because those customers will cost you less to capture.

3)  Focus on ‘new customer acquisition’ is understandable but probably missing a big opportunity

On average, local businesses generate 40% of their revenue from new customers each year.  That number is shocking to me.  However, a local business’ focus on new customer acquisition is totally understandable in this context.  However, a huge opportunity is being missed.

Because it is 4-10x more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one, businesses that retain 5% more customers increase their profit by over 25%.  How to do this?  Start by capturing your customer list and communicating regular offers and incentives to them including regularly asking for referrals.

4)  Adapt or Die

At no point in the history of the world has local business been changing faster than it is today.  The basis of competition is now includes your digital presence and digital customer interaction.  Not all companies want to or can adapt to the changing environment.  Those that do will take customers from those that don’t.  It will happen quickly.  It has already started.

I wonder if this is how the dinosaurs felt?

It is widely understood that third-party reviews are an essential ranking factor for local business listings in Google. In fact, David Mihm’s comprehensive survey Local Search Ranking Factors classifies reviews as one of  five “general ranking signals.” 

You can think of it this way: Reviews are their own Local SEO category. Besides the sheer quantity of third-party reviews, the quality of the reviews and the frequency with which the reviews are accrued are each separate signals used by Google to determine rank.

The key to Google finding your customer reviews, and thereby conferring a ranking benefit, comes down to three pieces of data — Name, Addresses, and Phone Number (NAP). I have written about the benefits of ensuring NAP consistency across directories before. Google is the most sophisticated search engine in the world, but that does not mean it couldn’t use a little help.

Google’s goal is to return the most relevant search results for its users. To ensure Google recognizes your business as a quality search result for local searches, find every website with customer reviews for your business and ensure the NAP data is consistent with your Google+ Local Page. Make the match as close as possible. Leave nothing to chance.

It is not always clear whether or not Google recognizes a business’s reviews on a given directory, but one way you can tell is by checking the “Reviews Around the Web” section of your Google+ Local page. You can be fairly certain that Google is factoring signals from pages it links to.

Superior Care Auto Center of Brooklyn is a good example:

As the founder of Customer Lobby, I regularly get asked “what is your exit strategy?”  More on this later….

We are in another internet bubble again.  There are lots of companies that are being started with the idea of being sold quickly and where the primary motivation of the founder(s) is money.  As has been the case with all bubbles/booms thus far, this bubble will come to an end.  The entrepreneurs as well as the  investors and customers that believed in them will be in  crisis.  Why?  Not only will funding be much harder to come by, motivation to keep going without the hope of a near-term pay-day will be hard to find.

For background, earlier in my career, I was a venture capitalist, a private equity investor and an investment banker.  One would think that an exit strategy would be very top-of-mind for me in creating and building a company. It was and is not.

I have some unsolicited advice for would-be entrepreneurs: if you can’t honestly say that your primary motivation is that you want to help  (fill in your target customer base here) do (fill in what you want to do to help here), then seriously reconsider what you are doing.   The truth is that running a business (even a very successful business) is often tough.  There are always set backs, delays, problems, etc.  In the hard times, if the only thing that is motivating you is money, it sucks.  Trust me, I have been there.

Don’t get me wrong, I like money and  I like the idea of being rewarded for doing right.   However, money is not a key motivator for me with one exception:  I really like the idea of helping to create wealth for the managers and employees of our company.  But in the times of my life when money has been a primary motivator, I have not been as happy as I am now.

My motivation?  I want to build something that matters.  I want to work with smart, happy people who share a common goal and enjoy working toward it.  I want to help our customers in ways they expect us to.  I want to help our customers in ways they don’t expect us to and, often, don’t even know about.  I want to believe in what I am doing.  I want to sell something that I know is a great value for those that buy it.  I want to learn from my mistakes and make new ones.

So what is my exit strategy?  Without directly answering the question, here is a story that illustrates my thinking.  As a private equity investor in 2002, I tried to buy part of GoDaddy from its then owner Bob Parsons.  Bob had founded/sold a company to Intuit before he founded GoDaddy and, as a result, was very wealthy.  For many reasons, it was a very memorable meeting for me.  Bob’s response to my interest in buying part or all of GoDaddy was to say “Why would I sell?  I need the company more than it needs me.”  I am not there yet, but I am trying.

I often speak with internet marketers who focus solely on getting reviews for the sake of the rating. Whether it be the Zagat-styled number rating displayed with Google+ local listings, CitySearch’s aggregate vote score, or the more common 5-star model, ratings are key to differentiation online.

At the end of the day, it is wise to work toward a high rating, but it is important not to lose site of the reviews themselves. After all, reviews get read.

Content, Content, Content

Everywhere you turn online, content marketing is being espoused by the experts. Broadly speaking, the idea is for businesses to create compelling content of real value to attract an audience, build affinity, and ultimately convert more customers. For local service businesses, content examples include how-to videos on YouTube and blog posts.

Intuitively, this seems like a great idea. Content creation is a way for small businesses to optimize their web presence and stand out from the pack. The problem is inputs for outputs. It takes a lot of time and resources to generate content with any regularity, and in the end, it is not clear how much it is valued by prospective customers.

User-Generated Content (UGC)

You may not think of customer reviews as part of a content-creation strategy, but reviews are user-generated content that consumers actually seek out as part of the buying process. A BrightLocal.com study on reviews consumption found that “65% of consumers read between 2-10 reviews” when researching local businesses online. As it turns out, the content you create may not be as meaningful to your prospective customers as the content created by your customers.

Armed with the knowledge that a typical consumer reads as many as 10 reviews as part of their buying process, business owners and their marketing surrogates would be wise to take a look at what is actually being written in the reviews themselves. There may be an opportunity to feature the most impactful content. It seems clear based on the numbers that consumers base their decisions as much on that they read as the ratings they encounter.

A few weeks ago, Google launched an aggressive filter of reviews that are displayed for businesses.  The filter is designed to eliminate fake reviews using a variety of signals including how a business asks for reviews.

As with many Google updates, these changes have created a flood of problems for local businesses.  Google’s Community Manager added a few thoughts to the string of complaints on the Google Forum on this topic.  Mike Blumenthal does a great job of summarizing the string of guidance from Google on this topic.  In short, Google noted  that asking for reviews is OK but just don’t do it in waves.

There are many points of view on the topic of asking for reviews vs. waiting for reviews but I think it comes down to what you want out of a review system.

Review System Alternatives

Before looking at the impact of asking vs. waiting for reviews, its important to reflect on what you want to measure with reviews in the first place.  There are at least 2 alternatives to what is measured in a review system:

• Opinions that are strongly held.  In some ways, these reviews are more entertaining to read.  People either love it (the thing being reviewed) or hate it.  The nature of a review system that does not allow solicitation of reviews will skew toward reviews from those with strongly held opinions and, over time, a review system of this type will have a higher percentage of 5 star reviews and 1 star reviews than would be found in a random sample of a businesses’ customer base.
• Opinions that are representative of the total customer base.  Reviews in this category result from a broad review solicitation.  Broad solicitation, by its nature, is more likely to be representative of the total customer base (this is an argument I have made before).  However, broad solicitation can be difficult.  How can you include non-internet-savvy customers?  How can you include opinions from those that do not want to join a new social network (e.g. Google+ or Yelp?) or are not committed to being regular publishers on those networks (if not, their content is likely to be filtered as spam)?

At a minimum, its a big mistake to read reviews that are of one type, assuming that they are of the other type.

Some Data From the 2 Alternatives

Some argue that if businesses are enabled/encouraged to ask for reviews, they will only ask for reviews from happy customers thereby skewing the results.   Over the last few years of seeing the results on a daily basis of proactive review solicitation, I believe that the vast majority of businesses simply don’t know if an individual customer is happy or not.  Its not easy to cherry-pick with the exception of the most vocal customers (who are the most likely to seek out a review forum without being asked).

We did a very interesting test of this topic recently albeit with a small sample size.  We got data from a multi-national product manufacturer and started with a list of over one thousand locations.  We randomly selected a group of locations.  We then gathered all of the pre-existing online reviews we could find on these businesses (none of which were proactively solicited).  The pre-existing review score distribution was much like Yelp’s total distribution (mostly positive but lots of 1 star reviews).  We then took the customer list over the prior 3 months of the selected businesses and randomly called (we called because we wanted a very high response rate to not skew the results) customers for reviews.

The review ratings were meaningfully higher than the pre-existing reviews but were very similar to the review distribution we see for many other companies in the same industry for whom we host their reviews.  Why?  The “Silent Happy Majority”.  Turns out most people are happy with the businesses they select.  The Silent Happy Majority are less likely to write reviews of businesses unless they are proactively asked.

Broad solicitation is in everyone’s interest

Broad solicitation of reviews results in a more accurate representation of the sentiment of the total customer base.  It does not skew toward the opinions of the tech-savvy.  In industries that are not experiential (most industries other than restaurants and hotels), broad review solicitation is the only means of generating a regular review flow that is more reflective of the current efforts of the business being reviewed.

What do you think?

A few months back, I began a series of posts in which I feature and break down actual responses that business owners have published alongside their customer reviews. See here and here.

Owner responses have a tremendous marketing value because prospective customers actually seek out reviews as part of their buying process. Consumers would prefer to see the business owner in action engaging with an actual customer rather than reading the carefully polished “About Us” section on their website.

Instead of telling your customers who you are, show them. That is what UNITS Mobile Storage of Houston did when they responded to a 4-star review written by a customer who was ultimately satisfied but had some critiques.

What they did there, you see that?

1. They Were Accountable.

UNITS of Houston owned the criticism 100%. This is always more impressive than making excuses because it communicates a high professional standard.

2. They Conveyed Genuine Empathy.

It is clear that this company operates with an appreciation for the incredible stress their clients are often under. Merely acknowledging “moving can be a very stressful event” is one thing, but they demonstrate a much deeper level of responsiveness by referencing the customer experience: “we realize our customers have other chores to complete.”

3. They Reassure Their Prospects.

It is one thing to own the criticism, but prospective customers still need some assurance their experience will be even better. Here, UNITS Mobile Storage of Houston knocks it out of the park. They at once offer insight into the growth of their company, while simultaneously explaining how they intend to cope with the huge demand for their services.

4. They Kept it Short.

Look how much UNITS was able to convey in just 4 short sentences. This is key because large bodies of text are seldom read on the Internet. This is a unique branding opportunity, so ensure your message is read by keeping the response short.

Using Google’s Consumer Survey tool, we created a survey to learn about consumers’ views of submitting online reviews.

No Wonder Getting Reviews is Hard

When asked about online reviews, 64% of US internet users said they do not write online reviews.

Remember, these are people filling out an online survey saying they do not do online reviews so the data may not be all that accurate.  However, directionally,  the data is clear: getting online reviews is hard because lots of potential customers are unlikely to write an online review.

Getting Reviews

There are countless studies pointing to the impact of customer reviews and, specifically, reviews’ importance in capturing new customers.  If reviews are important but hard to get, what should local businesses do?

In Andrew Shotland’s blog at Search Engine Land about tips to get more online reviews, he noted:

There are basically four ways to get an online customer review:

1. Via phone
2. Via email
3. Via a Website
4. Via transcription from a hand-written review

Which method is right for you depends on how you conduct your business.

Here is another alternative:  DO ALL 4!!  Customer Lobby offers free trials for 30 days to get reviews from all 4 methods.

Staying top-of-mind is key to ensuring repeat and referral business and drip marketing is one of the best ways to achieve that aim. “Drip marketing” may sound daunting for already busy small business owners, but in fact, drip marketing campaigns are perfect because you can set them up once and let them run on their own.

While drip marketing campaigns can take different forms, email remains one of the most cost-effective and successful channels. What distinguishes a drip campaign is that the emails are sent according to some predetermined pattern or schedule. Again, the whole idea is to put together a series of emails at one time and devise a sequence in which to send them automatically. The toughest part is determining what kind of content to email.

Rather than merely hammering your customers with the same offers, consider a more natural progression of emails that begins with a post-sale follow up. In the end, no single offer is going to be as effective as the branding effort itself. The idea is to stay in front of your customers without pestering them.

1. Review Invitation

Emailing your client an invitation to write a review may not seem like an obvious drip marketing touch, but it is one of the best ways to kick off a series of emails. For one thing, the review invitation is an immediate follow-up email, so it is a natural first touch in the sequence.

More importantly, a review invitation pays loyalty dividends beyond the review itself. When you ask your customers to review your business, you are signaling transparency and responsiveness, so there is tremendous branding value. Perhaps just as important, you have extended your two-way interaction beyond the sale.

2. Referral Offer

According to eMarketer, the number one reason consumers opt in to email lists is to receive deals and offers. The next logical touch in the drip marketing series is therefore the referral offer. The main rationale for sending the referral offer at this stage is proximity to the customer experience. You want to seize upon the good will you have engendered while the experience is still fresh in the customer’s mind.

The best referral offers include a gift, such as a small gift card card, which you would promise to your customer for referring a friend or relative. Your customers will refer you because they like you, they trust you, and you have a great deal for them to share. The gift is just there to keep the offer top-of-mind.

3. Promotional Offer

On the heels of the review invitation and referral email, it is a good idea to wait at least a few weeks before sending the next email in the series. We have already established that a primary reason consumers opt in to email lists is to receive deals and offers, but that does not mean they want to be hammered with emails.

It is a good idea to present a rationale for the next touch in the series beyond offering coupon for its own sake. Promotions related to events are especially popular, but that can be impractical in a drip campaign because your customers will receive the emails at different times depending on the date of the initial trigger. Instead, consider tying a discount offer to your social media efforts. You can offer a special coupon for Facebook followers or blog subscriptions.

4. Service Reminder

Discount offers are not necessarily the main reason customers return. For local service businesses especially, service reminders can be a key driver of repeat business. The interval for a service reminder is obviously dependent upon the nature and scope of the work provided. What’s less obvious is how to get the most mileage out of this touch. Include a small coupon with the service reminder email to encourage a possible referral as well as repeat business.

Every marketing effort is predicated on a goal. When you are marketing to previous customers, the ultimate goals are repeat business and referrals. The challenge is to stay in front of your customers without pushing them to tune you out.