Kevin Dieny: 00:00:00

Hello, welcome to the Close the Loop podcast.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:03

I'm Kevin Dieny, and today we're going to be talking about generating

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:07

customer reviews for small businesses.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:10

Specifically I think it really matters when we're talking about online

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:13

reviews for the local business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:15

A lot of customers who are looking at local businesses are looking at reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:19

I think it's happening at all scales of business...

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:20

but generating the reviews can seem a little tough.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:25

Especially since there's a lot of channels that business could be thinking, okay,

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:28

um uh I've got so much, I'm doing here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:30

I'm working on marketing and emails and social media and

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:33

advertisements and direct mail.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:35

And gosh, now, now there's reviews I have to be thinking about.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:39

And it's not necessarily something new it's been around for a little while here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:43

People have been looking at reviews before they purchase or to figure out who

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:46

they're going to buy from for a long time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:48

So to help me talk about this topic, I have a very special

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:51

guest, her name is Jen Cornwell.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:53

Jen is the director of digital strategy at Ignite Visibility, where she's a

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:58

strategic manager and SEO investigator.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:00

I love that by the way.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:01

Jen currently manages a team of 13 SEO professionals, and a

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:05

few enterprise level clients.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:07

She invests a lot of her time in reporting efficiency and

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:11

effectiveness to drive results.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:13

Jen grew up in central New York and left the snow behind six years ago

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:17

for sunny San Diego, where she started learning SEO and hoarding plants.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:21

So she's got a green thumb.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:22

So welcome, Jen.

Jen Cornwell: 00:01:23

Hi, thanks.

Jen Cornwell: 00:01:24

Thanks, Kevin, nice to see you.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:26

Yeah.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:26

Thank you.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:27

We are more than just a little excited to talk about this because gosh, reviews

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:34

and how businesses are supposed to handle them has been a hot topic for a long time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:38

Our teams here have heard about this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:40

This is something that's come out of a lot of businesses wanting, okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:44

Reviews are maybe hurting me and reviews are helping me.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:47

How do I manage all that?

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:49

How do I get more?

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:49

So to talk about this, Jen, I've got a question for you.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:54

How valuable are reviews for a local business?

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:56

Like how should a business...

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:57

How should a business be thinking about how valuable it would be to

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:01

start focusing on their review game?

Jen Cornwell: 00:02:04

Reviews have become more and more important.

Jen Cornwell: 00:02:06

I think one of the bigger business drivers, especially for

Jen Cornwell: 00:02:09

local, is word of mouth, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:02:12

And reviews are really like this digital word of mouth for users

Jen Cornwell: 00:02:15

when they're coming in, trying to understand what's the best decision to

Jen Cornwell: 00:02:19

make, what's the service to go with.

Jen Cornwell: 00:02:22

Google has made them more and more ever-present.

Jen Cornwell: 00:02:25

Yelp has existed for a long time now.

Jen Cornwell: 00:02:28

So yeah, super important, a really important part of it's a local strategy.

Jen Cornwell: 00:02:33

And the impact it has on the consumer experiences is major.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:38

Yeah, back in the day a business was maybe thinking well...

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:41

All I got to do is have a store in downtown, and then it became,

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:45

well, now I need to have a website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:47

And then it's like, okay, now my website has to rank and now it's.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:51

The right business, it needs to rank, but I also need to have good reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:55

So there's quite a bit going there for a business and that, or that

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:59

more and more is required more and more is giving businesses, advantages

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:03

over other businesses to say like, okay, customer shopping around.

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:08

A review may swing it in their favor or in your favor.

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:11

So it gets, I think it gets to be a lot for a business to think, man,

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:16

I have to manage all these reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:18

I have to do a website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:19

I have to do all this stuff.

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:20

So why do you think businesses are feeling discouraged about

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:24

managing reviews these days?

Jen Cornwell: 00:03:27

I think the hardest thing and a lot of the questions we get when

Jen Cornwell: 00:03:29

we're talking about like review management in general is bad reviews, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:03:33

People are scared to hear the feedback from customers.

Jen Cornwell: 00:03:37

Well, and they're not scared.

Jen Cornwell: 00:03:38

I think business owners are generally like, they want to know

Jen Cornwell: 00:03:41

they want to hear that feedback.

Jen Cornwell: 00:03:43

But they don't know how to manage it or handle it when it's poor feedback.

Jen Cornwell: 00:03:46

And then when it is poor feedback, they'd rather privately fix it than

Jen Cornwell: 00:03:50

let everybody know their business.

Jen Cornwell: 00:03:52

I think there's a lot of value in, in those opportunities, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:03:57

To, inform that customer who maybe had a poor experience or show other customers

Jen Cornwell: 00:04:02

how you handle a poor experience.

Jen Cornwell: 00:04:04

I think that's the biggest holdup.

Jen Cornwell: 00:04:06

I think it also feels a little bit daunting if you're not super tech savvy.

Jen Cornwell: 00:04:10

There's a ton of platforms that help you do it.

Jen Cornwell: 00:04:12

Google my business has really automated the process to some level.

Jen Cornwell: 00:04:16

They let you know when someone shows up, they give you tips on how to do it.

Jen Cornwell: 00:04:20

Things like that.

Jen Cornwell: 00:04:21

There's a lot of stuff built in now that maybe didn't exist when reviews

Jen Cornwell: 00:04:24

first became important or a thing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:28

When we talk about generating reviews, that kind of

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:32

implies, we are asking the customer to provide us some feedback.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:35

There's usually like a, I dunno, a star or a point based rating system.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:39

Sometimes it's out of four or 10, or I think the most common is five.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:43

And then, they have the option usually to leave a comment.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:47

So when we're generating reviews, there is that possibility where for every 10,

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:54

5, 25 or whatever, we struggle to get some of those make negative reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:59

I don't think it's reasonable to say a business should start freaking out

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:03

if like a percent or five or if some fraction of their reviews are negative.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:07

I think that's a fairly healthy thing for a business to have a good amount

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:11

of reviews that land in either court.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:13

So then the question would be okay, so are negative reviews that bad,

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:19

and what can be done about them?

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:22

I think users are conditioned to look at reviews now.

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:25

Right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:25

I think Amazon is a great example.

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:27

Then you go look at an Amazon product, it has 10,000 reviews and they're all five

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:33

stars and that's immediately a red flag.

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:35

I know me personally, I actually will go and look at the bad reviews.

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:40

So if they don't have that five star reading, they're in

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:42

that like four to five range.

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:44

What are people rating poorly on?

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:47

A lot of the time, I think restaurants, that's a great example.

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:50

You go and it's like, oh yeah, the food was amazing, but we just

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:53

had this one bad experience with this one person in the business.

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:56

And that's not enough to sway me personally as a consumer.

Jen Cornwell: 00:05:59

And I think, I think that's generally true.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:02

So when you get the bad reviews, it's really about the

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:04

response and how it's handled.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:05

If I do see that.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:06

Oh yeah, the service was poor.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:08

Food was great, but then the business owner comes in and tries

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:12

to justify or gets defensive, right.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:15

Instead of apologizing.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:17

Reaching out and that's another good option with bad reviews.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:20

Right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:21

Reach out.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:21

How can they solve your problem?

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:23

Looking forward, sorry that happened to you.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:25

So there's a way to manage poor reviews.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:27

Definitely.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:28

I don't want to say you want bad reviews.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:30

That's definitely not it.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:31

I don't go generate bad reviews by any means, but having all

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:35

five star reviews, isn't isn't a great look either in general.

Jen Cornwell: 00:06:38

I think now.

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:39

Yeah.

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:40

There's two things that I was thinking about that right at the end there,

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:44

and the first one was the customer experience that you're describing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:48

When someone goes to, let's say Google My Business, which is

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:52

probably the, one of the most popular review aggregators, to see, how are

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:56

people responding to this business?

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:59

They could see a business that has stacked all five star reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:03

They could see one that has more of like a, maybe a healthier distribution.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:07

They have some in the five and the fours and the threes and

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:10

the two stars and the one stars.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:12

And.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:12

You know, a customer may be like, well, I want to see what the one stars are.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:15

And if it's like, okay, food was amazing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:17

I had to wait 10 more minutes on a Friday busy night, on the Eve of

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:20

Christmas, yeah, that's a busy time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:22

The content of what's happening in the reviews like that, that matters.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:25

But at the same time, the whole thing is I think impacting the customer

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:29

experience to know this business is real trustworthy, things like that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:33

So how important is...

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:35

The experience of consumers, patients, anyone who's looking to buy something

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:40

or get service from something.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:42

How important are reviews for the customer experience?

Jen Cornwell: 00:07:46

Right now they're incredibly important.

Jen Cornwell: 00:07:48

I think if you talk to a lot of local businesses, I work with a couple of local

Jen Cornwell: 00:07:52

clients who are in service industry.

Jen Cornwell: 00:07:55

And they're like, yeah, our top patient generator, actually, I'm

Jen Cornwell: 00:07:58

going to very specifically refer to a medical client, um, their top patient

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:02

generators, word of mouth, right.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:04

It's somebody who says, Hey, I go to this person.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:06

They're great.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:07

They're amazing.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:07

I recommend them.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:08

When you can't do that, when you don't have that network developed, the reviews

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:11

are important for that instead, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:14

So it really replaces that.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:15

I think on the flip, when they're researching, they don't even

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:19

know where they're starting.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:20

They aren't searching for you.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:21

It's just a general term.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:23

They want to see some context.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:25

They want to, they're going to have questions.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:27

They want to know.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:28

Well, your website says this, that you provide this, but I have

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:31

some, some questions about that.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:33

And sometimes the review content has that, those answers in it,

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:37

Google and I think Yelp have both gotten pretty good about pulling

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:41

out some frequently asked question.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:42

Amazon does it now, too.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:44

I think that's something else that people are looking for.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:46

And, and that's some of the value as well.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:48

The common questions for your users are going to get answered by other people.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:52

That's actually less work for you, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:54

As a business owner.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:55

It's a lot of value.

Jen Cornwell: 00:08:56

There's also a lot of opportunity in the reviews to improve

Jen Cornwell: 00:09:00

your customer experience.

Jen Cornwell: 00:09:02

So you're getting feedback from people who are really there and there's things that

Jen Cornwell: 00:09:06

you could improve or change, or maybe it's not even improvements, it's just growth.

Jen Cornwell: 00:09:10

Right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:09:10

It's just like these really great ideas that come from suggestions

Jen Cornwell: 00:09:13

from people who love your business.

Jen Cornwell: 00:09:15

It can be very positive also, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:09:17

So I think there's a lot of opportunity for business owners to connect with

Jen Cornwell: 00:09:22

customers and users through those reviews.

Jen Cornwell: 00:09:25

As well as the information it provides to new patients or patients,

Jen Cornwell: 00:09:29

consumers, customers, et cetera.

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:32

We get into that, descriptive, what do

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:34

we call a lead, all the time?

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:36

Is it a prospect?

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:37

Is it a lead, is it a consumer, is it a client, is it a customer,

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:39

there's a lot of things.

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:40

And all those things are, can be driven from reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:43

Like you said, like referrals, word of mouth.

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:45

It's like the new word of mouth and then sort of a digital context.

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:48

So.

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:49

One other interesting thing that you've just described, which I think highlights

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:52

the importance of continually making reviews a part of your let's say strategy.

Kevin Dieny: 00:09:57

Is the, if you did, if you go ham, let's say go crazy and you get a bunch

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:03

of reviews in one month and then you're like, okay, I'm done with that for now.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:07

You get, let's say 50 and they're all pretty good ratings.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:10

Well...

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:11

Most of the reviews systems have like, okay, they're going to, you know, reviews

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:15

are still gonna be coming in, but now you're not emphasizing, gathering reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:19

So if you get like a couple of bad, like a couple negative or even a

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:22

one or two negative reviews after that, the top reviews usually are

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:28

sorted by most recent, it could be sorted by, only the five star ones.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:32

Only the ones that have to do with a certain, question or something

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:36

like that are most helpful review, something like that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:39

But I think reviews have a necessity to continually be trying to generate them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:46

So that way there's not just a big bubble of one month where a

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:49

business had all their reviews, like two years ago, customers want

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:52

to see reviews that are recent too.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:54

They want to see, okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:55

The business was good two years ago.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:57

Is it still good today?

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:58

I mean, it's still important and relevant.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:00

I think not just the, okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:01

Is it a four or five?

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:02

I think it's also important to see, like in the most recent month or two

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:06

months, how has the business been ranking just in that period of time?

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:10

I think that's also something important that you kind of highlighted.

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:13

Yeah, no, totally.

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:14

I had an experience where I was looking for a salon and I go into

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:18

the reviews and it's like, all five stars, like tons of five stars

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:21

reviews in the last, few months.

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:23

And there's one review in there, that's three stars.

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:25

And I look at it and it's, hey, this business is running a promotion,

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:28

to write all five star reviews, and that is why you see all of

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:32

these is because they're getting, a discounted service or whatever it is.

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:36

And I was like, oh, okay.

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:37

And then all of a sudden, all of those five star reviews really didn't matter.

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:40

But yes, I think the consistency is important.

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:42

If those have been staffed with a handful of other reviews that weren't

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:46

five stars and wasn't happening in a set period of time only, that wouldn't have

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:52

been a red flag for me as a consumer.

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:54

I think the important part too, is that your consumer, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:11:58

Because once you're asking for their review at that point, they've come

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:02

to your business, they've experienced the service and now you're trying

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:05

to turn them into a return customer.

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:08

So those return customers, I think, will also notice when you're looking

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:12

for reviews in a short period of time, it should be natural.

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:16

It should be, hey, uh, I experienced the service and I

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:20

want to get your feedback now.

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:22

You came to this appointment or you visited us in the store and

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:25

now I want to hear back from you.

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:27

That's what's really important.

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:28

And that's, what's going to make it natural too.

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:30

I think strategically it's generating reviews over time, and showing

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:35

up at the right opportunity.

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:36

For the review.

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:38

I think the other piece of it, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:39

It's like asking someone who visited your business six months ago.

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:43

They A) may not be interested in doing it because they forgot about it

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:47

or B) they just don't have the time.

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:50

Right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:50

They are not as close to the experience.

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:51

So even if it was an amazing experience, they're going to forget some of the stuff

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:54

potentially that they could have included if you asked them two weeks after instead.

Jen Cornwell: 00:12:58

So yeah, I think that helps create a better framework, for consistency, but it

Jen Cornwell: 00:13:03

also just helps you provide better quality feedback, which is really important.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:08

Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:09

I think this is a good opportunity now to switch toward, we were talking about

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:13

what are reviews, why is it important?

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:16

How it impacts the business by having them, the consumer, customer, patient

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:19

experience from having them for, creating a better engagement the

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:22

business may have with its consumers.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:24

Generating what may be called, like a digital word of mouth referring business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:30

So now, okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:32

If it's so simple impotant, how do, how does a business

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:35

go about generating reviews?

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:37

And like you mentioned, trying to generate reviews right after the experience

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:42

with the business has been completed.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:44

How does a business go about asking for reviews?

Jen Cornwell: 00:13:48

Yeah, I think there are a lot of different ways you can do that.

Jen Cornwell: 00:13:51

I started my SEO career in local.

Jen Cornwell: 00:13:53

I was working with chiropractors, optometrists, vets.

Jen Cornwell: 00:13:56

Reviews are like such a major part of their business.

Jen Cornwell: 00:13:58

I've seen people do things from a, the patient had a good experience in

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:03

the appointment room and they put a green sticker on their folder and then

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:08

hand it off to the office manager.

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:10

And then the office manager that was their cue to say, hey, if you'd like,

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:14

go ahead and write us a review, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:15

So is this a little bit of like real time a review gating and in real

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:19

life, but I do think that's important.

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:21

I think you have repeat customers.

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:23

You have people that come in.

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:24

You have people that are brand loyal.

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:26

And those are the people who you really want to tap into.

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:29

Those are the people you've built good relationships with.

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:32

I'd say that's really phase one, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:34

Is these people that you already know are having a great experience?

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:37

Phase two would be looking to generate reviews, I think, across all customers.

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:42

And that's where you're probably going to get into like, oh, I'm a

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:44

little nervous because what if they don't all have great things to say?

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:49

But that's where, thinking about how are we going to respond?

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:52

What are we going to respond with if that does happen?

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:55

That's where that starts to become important.

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:57

Those review generation tactics can really vary.

Jen Cornwell: 00:14:59

I've seen a lot of businesses do different things, but it's

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:02

really just about the ask.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:03

I think it's just reminding people, asking people in your email list.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:08

I've had clients who include review platform options in their email signature.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:13

Just a really easy way to be like, Hey, if you like us,

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:16

here's a place to write a review.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:18

Things like that, that are simple.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:20

You're just showing up often enough where you're giving the user the opportunity

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:23

or the customer really is what it is.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:25

The likelihood of them going out of their way to write your review.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:28

Uh, It's either because they had a really bad experience.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:32

Right.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:33

And they want to go out and talk about it, or they had a great experience and

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:36

they're like, wow, this is amazing.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:37

I want to support this business.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:39

And figuring out how to reach the people in between, I think is what you

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:42

need to think about with your, your generation tactics and strategies.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:45

And it's, it's getting the opportunity in front of them.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:48

I've had businesses, that have put iPads in their lobbies.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:51

And they're like, hey, if you are interested on your way out.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:54

Give us some feedback.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:55

That's a commitment you can totally make.

Jen Cornwell: 00:15:57

It's providing them with all the tools that they need to, to write up

Jen Cornwell: 00:16:00

the review that you're asking for.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:02

I think it's really important to make review creation

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:06

for the consumer fairly easy.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:09

I think it's also something where there it is putting a little bit

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:12

of power in the consumer's hands.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:14

Right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:14

You're you're kind of shifting a little bit of the power of the success

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:18

of your business, to the consumer.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:20

Because as a consumer, it's like, well, if I write a negative

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:23

review, is it gonna matter?

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:24

Is it going to change their behavior?

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:26

Is it going to make anything better?

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:27

Is it going to help the next person that comes in?

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:29

I think that as a consumer, you're like, I hope this review helps.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:33

It may not be, I hope this business tanks and falls through the floor.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:36

I mean, sometimes you're that mad, but I think a lot of times it's

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:39

like I'm leaving this review for the benefit of the next person.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:43

So the business realizes something was wrong, something.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:48

Maybe something that's repeatedly been a problem.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:51

I want to bring it to their attention.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:52

It may not.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:53

It's hard I think for some businesses to have, even for the owners to,

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:56

to relinquish control, to all their employees, to manage, everything,

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:59

but at the same time, once they do, it's hard for them to know, okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:03

Is every customer experience going out, going fine, going well.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:09

And so reviews are one more feedback point if it was just to help businesses.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:14

Know, no, and it wasn't public knowledge.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:16

I don't know that some of them would care and some of them may not.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:19

I think of how easy it can be to buy reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:21

I've seen ads where it's like, oh yeah, we'll shoot 500 reviews into your thing

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:25

from some bot-farmed Fiverr account.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:28

Or something where it's like, we'll get you a ton of reviews,

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:31

really fast in a burst.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:32

You know, for 50 bucks.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:34

And it's like, oh, maybe I should do that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:36

But like you said, the natural, organic way of doing it, is I think great.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:39

And making it easy for a consumer to leave a review, if it's like, okay, you got to

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:43

jump through this hoop, that's on fire.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:44

And then you have to leap and do a perfect twist to leave a review

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:48

and the consumer is going to be like, ugh, I don't want to do that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:50

If it's like, okay, leave a review, not just on Google, but on these 10 other

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:52

sites, I don't have time for that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:54

So how have you, besides the iPad example, what were your thoughts

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:59

on like how a business can make it easier for someone to leave a review?

Kevin Dieny: 00:18:04

Do you have anything about that?

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:06

Yeah, your email list, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:08

If you're emailing a customer prior to their service.

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:12

Email them after also.

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:14

Give them that touch point a week later.

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:16

I've also seen, I mean, SMS has become a lot more popular now.

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:19

So if it's a text service and you, hey, I saw you checked in,

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:23

did you have a good experience?

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:24

Reply?

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:25

Yes, no.

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:26

Send them a link that works really well.

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:29

Some other methods we have tapped into before, uh, QR codes actually.

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:34

Which I think probably two years ago it was like, umm, are they

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:38

really going to scan a QR code?

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:39

But now after COVID people are very adjusted to that behavior.

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:43

So sending them exactly to where you need to send them to is what

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:47

I think is really important.

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:48

There's a lot of review platforms and tools that you

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:51

can embed onto your website too.

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:53

If it's inside of like your contact us page or, the thank you page, after

Jen Cornwell: 00:18:58

they've applied for a service or, they're a return customer on some level, you

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:02

can request it at that point as well.

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:05

But let them know.

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:05

I think something I've seen fail is when we give them too many

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:11

options, which I think you mentioned.

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:12

You can review this over here and you can review us on Google and then also this

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:16

other platform that you've never heard of, but we want to have reviews there.

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:20

I think it's really important to be specific about what your call to

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:24

action is for your customers, and what behavior you want them to take.

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:28

You'll just see more success if you're asking them to write a review

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:31

in three places instead of just one.

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:33

I think that's an important part of strategy also.

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:36

It's like, where do you really want to build up that reputation right now?

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:39

Yeah, that's really important.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:41

And something that you'd mentioned earlier, which I did want to make sure

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:43

and clarify for everyone who's listening.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:45

You just mentioned the gating.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:46

So I had the question review gating.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:48

So what is that?

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:50

And why have I heard that Google doesn't like that?

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:55

I can't say I haven't done some review

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:56

gating setups maybe in my past.

Jen Cornwell: 00:19:59

Basically, it's where you reach out to your customers and you say,

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:03

was your experience good or bad?

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:04

And you probably maybe see the page before it's got like a thumbs up or thumbs

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:08

down or a smiley face and a sad face.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:10

They make it really easy.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:11

You click on the smiley face.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:13

Oh, great.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:13

Like that is our gate.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:15

That's our fence, the filter to know that we should suggest to

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:19

you to write a review for us.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:20

If they click the poor right or experience, typically we're going to

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:24

send them to a contact form and you're going to say, hey, okay, let us know what

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:27

was wrong with your, your experience.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:29

Structurally that totally makes sense.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:31

That's a great way of generating good reviews.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:33

Great way to get feedback still.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:35

Right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:35

You still give the client or the customer an outlet to give the feedback.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:39

It's just, we're not going to make it public.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:41

I think Google has caught on to that more and more.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:43

They're looking at your website, there's crawlers that look at your website.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:46

There's also real people at Google that will look at your website at some point.

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:50

So looking at how you're managing your customers and how you're trying

Jen Cornwell: 00:20:55

to manage your presence online, is really what Google doesn't want to see.

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:00

It's it falls in line with buying reviews, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:03

The core of Google specifically, and I think this is true for any, um, Yelp,

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:08

anything that has some kind of search engine they're trying to provide the

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:11

customer or the user with the best option.

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:14

they want to give them the best information.

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:16

They want to give them the highest quality recommendations

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:19

for whatever their query is.

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:21

So when they see that and they realize, hey, like, yeah, actually

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:24

these reviews are not good or you aren't providing actual feedback.

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:29

That's when they're like, okay, yeah, lets shut it down, shut it

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:32

down is maybe not the right word, but they'll, they'll definitely ping you

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:35

for it or penalize you on some level.

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:38

There is the opportunity for Google to come in and say, oh, hey, we

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:41

noticed you're doing some like shady tactics to try to manage your

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:44

reviews and your online presence.

Jen Cornwell: 00:21:46

And we don't like that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:47

I've heard the question come up a lot around.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:51

Should I emphasize reviews to effect my or impact positively my SEO, like that gives

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:58

my Google My Business profile more punch.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:01

But is that giving my SEO ranking?

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:03

Is it influencing that?

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:05

And then the second half of that is okay, I'm getting reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:08

Should I be responding to them?

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:10

And is that helping the ecosystem of consumers in terms of SEO and reviews?

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:15

A lot of those two things have come up when regards to, okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:18

If I'm going to be spending time to generate reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:21

And if I am going to be responding to them positive and negative ones,

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:25

does all of that have an impact on my let's call it like the consumer

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:31

experience and the SEO areas?

Jen Cornwell: 00:22:33

Google's never come out and said more reviews, that's gonna be better.

Jen Cornwell: 00:22:37

But what the industry has found is that, updated Google My Business

Jen Cornwell: 00:22:41

activity is a positive indicator.

Jen Cornwell: 00:22:43

So going back to what we were talking about earlier, where you have

Jen Cornwell: 00:22:46

that consistency, you can have 500 reviews, but if they're were from

Jen Cornwell: 00:22:49

two years ago, Google could see that.

Jen Cornwell: 00:22:51

Being able to see that over time, your customers have continued to

Jen Cornwell: 00:22:55

give you positive feedback or just any feedback at all that's quality.

Jen Cornwell: 00:22:58

That's a positive indicator.

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:00

Your Google My Business profile specifically is tied back to your

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:04

website in some effect, or at least tied back to your business.

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:07

Right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:07

There's all of these, your website link, your address, your name, all of

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:10

the stuff that, that ropes all of your online footprint together, if you will.

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:16

So seeing that activity is an important piece of I'd say local strategy.

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:23

A lot of people really spend a lot of time on their website, which is great.

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:27

It's important for sure, but there's a lot of things that happen prior to the person

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:32

actually getting to your website, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:34

Google SERP, or search engine result page.

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:37

It's gotten really rich now.

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:39

It gives you so much information before you actually even get to a website.

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:42

So that, that local pack it's called that's underneath the maps.

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:47

You get the map, the three listings right below, that I think is where, when

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:51

we're talking about review generation and you can see, okay, business here has 15

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:56

reviews and their four and a half stars.

Jen Cornwell: 00:23:58

Business B has no reviews.

Jen Cornwell: 00:24:00

So what's the consumer more likely to click on, it's going to

Jen Cornwell: 00:24:03

be the one with reviews because it's like, okay, this is real.

Jen Cornwell: 00:24:06

And this is legitimate.

Jen Cornwell: 00:24:07

That's where I think that review diversity number, I guess.

Jen Cornwell: 00:24:10

Right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:24:11

Seeing that you have a lot and that they're not all five stars.

Jen Cornwell: 00:24:15

That's the initial choice the users make when they get into search and they

Jen Cornwell: 00:24:19

say, okay, what should I look at first and what should I start to investigate?

Jen Cornwell: 00:24:23

I think it's a lot of user experience when you do start to perform well.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:28

I like that a lot, because everything that happens before a visit

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:32

to a website is still really important to the business to think about.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:37

It's not all of, it's really easy to manage.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:39

You can't really customize a Google My Business page like you can your website

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:43

that when they get to the website thats your custom personalized take on

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:47

how and who you're going to talk to, what you're trying to help with and

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:50

can go a long way once they get there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:52

But before that you have to manage things like my SEO, are

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:55

they, how are they finding me?

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:56

How are my consumers today finding me?

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:59

When they find me, before they get to the website, which would maybe a query,

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:02

a search, or something like that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:04

How do I look?

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:04

What's my presence look like?

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:05

Is there a picture of my business?

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:07

Does it list an address or just a PO box?

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:09

Does it have a phone number there?

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:11

Does it say when I'm open, when I'm not.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:13

There's a lot there besides reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:15

So reviews are part of that and review is a unique thing in, I think, especially

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:22

for consumers, because when I get to that website, I doubt I'm going to see

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:28

any one-star stuff on that website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:30

That website is going to be like, we're the best thing ever.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:33

And it's going to be very specifically customized like that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:37

The review is so unique and that makes it an interesting thing for the

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:43

consumer to have that power in the community space, this is its ranking.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:48

This is the local ranking.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:49

And so.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:51

I had something come up before where it's like, hey look, I'm in a city.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:56

That's really small.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:58

There's like two plumbers.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:00

Let's say I only have one competitor.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:03

Or I don't have that many competitors or no, one's really competing with me.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:06

Do I really have to care about reviews?

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:08

And on the other side, it's like, look, there's tons of competitors.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:11

I'm going after reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:13

Is there a place where I don't need reviews anymore.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:16

Is there like a ceiling where once I'm there, I'm pretty much fine?

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:18

I don't really need to work hard on reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:20

So those are the two things I was curious about.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:23

If you have anything to say about that?

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:25

Yeah, let's say you both offer the exact same services.

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:28

Where's the difference, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:29

How are you showing the business difference?

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:31

And I think, yes, on your website, you have control over that.

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:34

You can say we're 24 hours.

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:35

We're going to pick up your call every time you call us.

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:37

If you're a plumber.

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:39

That's your business difference.

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:40

I think before they get there, though, they have to make a decision.

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:44

They have to decide to click on your website.

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:46

And there are a lot of factors there.

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:48

You can put some of that information in, but that's where I think

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:50

reviews are really what set you apart from your competitors?

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:54

When you're talking about capping reviews, man, I don't think I've ever had a

Jen Cornwell: 00:26:58

client be like, this is this too many.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:00

Like they want to see them roll in.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:03

I don't think there's a cap necessarily.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:06

As long as you're getting the quality feedback and you're getting the diverse

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:10

review response that we talked about before, you're not buying reviews, right.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:15

It's like, oh yeah, we'll, we'll add another 500 onto this review package.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:19

We're trying to purchase.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:21

Also terrible.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:22

Don't do that.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:23

I think there's no cap.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:25

It's about consistency.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:26

It's about quality.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:28

It's about just driving the good content that comes from user generated feedback

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:34

and seeing that happen over time.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:36

So, so yeah, there's no, I don't think there's cap, if you're a really

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:39

saturated market, I think it's the same answer as the first one is

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:42

like setting yourself apart from the competitor and for the customer.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:46

Because they just need to understand, like, why would they

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:48

choose you if you're one out of 30.

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:51

The same way, if it's just between two people there, there's going

Jen Cornwell: 00:27:54

to be something that really impacts the consumer decision.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:57

If you're getting reviews and as a business, you're

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:00

thinking, okay, that's great.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:01

It's helping me generate more top funnel like visitors to my website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:07

It's helping people who do come to my website, decide this is

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:10

the business I want to work with.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:12

It's providing people that word of mouth, it's getting them there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:15

Are there other ways that a business can, let's call it like monetize or

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:20

market, those reviews in other ways, like, are there other things a business

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:25

can do with reviews to help the business do more of what it's trying to do?

Jen Cornwell: 00:28:31

Yeah, so same local client.

Jen Cornwell: 00:28:33

They've been around for twenty-five years and they have

Jen Cornwell: 00:28:36

six locations here in San Diego.

Jen Cornwell: 00:28:38

They see those reviews come in and then a lot of the time

Jen Cornwell: 00:28:40

they know those people, right.

Jen Cornwell: 00:28:41

They've worked with them that person's been coming in.

Jen Cornwell: 00:28:43

It's a great review they left, they'll reach out to that person and they'll

Jen Cornwell: 00:28:47

actually turn that into other content that they can use for promotion.

Jen Cornwell: 00:28:50

So they'll say, hey, Wendy...

Jen Cornwell: 00:28:52

we saw you wrote a great review, would you mind doing a two minute

Jen Cornwell: 00:28:56

video for us and talking about your experience here with our business?

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:00

That's even better because then you share that onto your website, share

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:04

that onto your social platform, that user, or that, that customer is super

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:08

excited that you decided to talk to them and they want to share that video out.

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:13

And it's all stuff that you can generate and promote, I'd say

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:16

at a fairly low cost, right.

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:18

It doesn't have to be any sort of like high production commercial.

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:21

Honestly, a lot of the time, the organic video, performs better now.

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:25

That can feel really genuine.

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:27

I work with a client that is not, not local, but they do run some commercials.

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:33

And they found, they had like giant X spokesperson who was celebrity they ran

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:38

in those ads paid a ton of money for it.

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:41

And then they ran ads of real people who they, I mean, it was high production

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:46

value, but they had them come in.

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:48

They asked about their experience with the product and those performed way better.

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:52

They thought that the spokesperson was really going

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:54

to resonate with their audience.

Jen Cornwell: 00:29:56

Just because these were real people with real experiences that

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:00

actually was much better for them.

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:01

So we ran with that on their website.

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:03

Started actually including, that type of testimonial

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:07

content on their thank you page.

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:09

There is this concept of thank you page or lead warmers.

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:12

So they filled your form out, right.

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:14

And there's going to be a set amount of time between form fill and contact.

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:19

And if you can give them some more information, that's a great

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:22

place to put testimonials too.

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:24

Thanks for deciding to go with us.

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:26

Here's why, especially if they are not going to close at that point, right.

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:29

They're not closed after that form fill.

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:31

So yeah, there's a ton of ways to repurpose and really tap into those

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:36

customers, clients, consumers, and user experience for a business.

Jen Cornwell: 00:30:40

And usually if they're an advocate for you, they're really excited to do that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:44

Yeah.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:44

So let's say a business is thinking, okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:46

I would I would like to pay a little more attention to reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:50

I need some more reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:51

I want more positive reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:53

I just want more reviews generally, so what are some ideas you might

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:57

have for a business to generate more reviews in the next 90 days?

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:02

The next 90 days...

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:03

The thing I always tell my clients is do good business, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:07

Naturally you will get reviews if you're doing a great job and you're providing

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:11

great service and all of that good stuff.

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:13

Beyond that, it does take more than that to generate reviews.

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:16

For sure.

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:17

Providing the opportunity, like we talked about, think about what is your

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:21

customer journey from, I've never heard of your business before, to I'm now

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:26

want to come back for my second or third experience with you, whatever it is.

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:31

And where are the places inside of that customer journey, where they're

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:34

going to be either reading reviews and trying to understand those, or

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:38

they've now become an advocate and they're willing to write you a review.

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:41

So I think real actionable items is just figuring out how to slot things in.

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:46

Email list is like so great.

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:48

If you have an SMS service, that's a great way to reach out as well.

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:52

It can be really simple as just when they're on their way out the door.

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:56

Hey, we had a great conversation.

Jen Cornwell: 00:31:58

Thank you so much for this experience.

Jen Cornwell: 00:32:01

I would really appreciate it if you wrote a review.

Jen Cornwell: 00:32:04

And I think sometimes people feel a little bit awkward about that.

Jen Cornwell: 00:32:07

But it's not that weird.

Jen Cornwell: 00:32:08

And I think people do it all the time.

Jen Cornwell: 00:32:09

Customers, clients, consumers are really adjusted to being

Jen Cornwell: 00:32:13

asked for that at this point.

Jen Cornwell: 00:32:14

It's really just slotting in where are reviews going to matter for people?

Jen Cornwell: 00:32:18

And then where is the point in their experience that's going to make the most

Jen Cornwell: 00:32:23

sense for me to ask them for that review.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:25

Wow, yeah, that's some really good insight there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:28

The two things that I'd like to reiterate from what you just

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:31

said is figuring out first...

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:35

How I am going to help the consumer or my patient or my customers the best.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:39

And then second.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:39

Okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:40

Now I know what that process looks like.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:42

I know how I'm delivering my service.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:44

I know how people are coming in.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:46

I know how it's being delivered.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:48

In that, where is a good opportunity for me to ask, right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:53

When does it make sense?

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:55

I think a review, takes a minute or two to write.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:58

So when is someone going to have that two minutes that they're not going to be in

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:01

traffic driving and may get into a car accident while they're trying to do it?

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:04

When do they have that minute or two to do it?

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:06

When is a good opportunity to give them, you know, on their time, the

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:10

opportunity to come back and do that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:13

Those are all really tough questions.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:15

I don't know if there's necessarily one answer that for every business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:18

So in your business, where does it make sense to ask for a review?

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:21

If it's a personal request, a manager comes over to your table after you've

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:26

eaten and is like, Hey, I'd really like, if you have a review of however, your

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:30

experience was, I'd really appreciate it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:33

Thank you.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:33

Wow.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:34

This, a little bit more personal than an email, but an email is a reminder,

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:37

like, oh yeah, I forgot about that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:39

It's been maybe a half hour.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:41

I went on to other things I would like to leave a review.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:44

In some ways, maybe a couple asks, in some ways are you giving them too many options?

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:48

And then like you said, make it easy to get that thought, that comment,

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:56

that experience the consumers having into whatever platform it is.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:00

Making it a link, a QR code or something easy to, to deliver that review,

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:06

that experience that consumers had.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:08

With the intent, that that feedback is going to probably help others.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:11

I think that's a big reason why people are leaving reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:14

There are some people who are hardcore reviewers.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:16

I think, if you saw 10 people walk into your store and you're like, oh man, number

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:20

eight, he's left like 10,000 reviews and everybody else is hardly left any.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:24

That's the guy, I want to get reviews from, but it

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:25

doesn't really work like that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:26

So you have to treat everyone like that is a potential source of a review.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:31

And so how am I going to go about asking for a review, an

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:35

honest review of my business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:37

And when you get them, I think the last leg here is what I do with it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:42

You've had some great ideas for that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:44

Repurposing the review into testimonials, responding to them, maybe publishing

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:49

them on the website, all those things.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:51

Is there anything else that you wanted to add to all of that, Jen?

Jen Cornwell: 00:34:54

Yeah, I cannot believe I didn't use this example.

Jen Cornwell: 00:34:55

Just moved into this apartment complex.

Jen Cornwell: 00:34:58

Like six months ago.

Jen Cornwell: 00:34:59

We looked at five different apartment complexes in probably

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:03

two days because here in San Diego, you're going to look at it.

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:05

You're going to sign the next day.

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:07

We had a really great experience with the guy here who showed us the place.

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:11

And probably a month or so after he really took care of us, reached out

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:15

to us more than I've ever had happen in any building I've ever lived in.

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:19

And he asked us for review and I mentioned him by name.

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:21

I was like, yeah, this guy, he was great.

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:24

I wouldn't have moved into this building if it wasn't this guy here.

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:26

When you're thinking about reviews, I think we've also all had these personal

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:30

experiences of going out and searching for products or services or I'm in a

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:36

new area and I'm trying to understand like where the best restaurant is.

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:40

I need a new dentist, how do I find that?

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:42

And so I think understanding personally, the review process,

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:47

it's an important part of it too.

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:48

You get a better idea of this is really what motivates me, and

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:52

this is what I really think my consumer could relate to also.

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:56

Aligning that with what makes sense with your business.

Jen Cornwell: 00:35:58

I think the other piece is channels.

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:00

I didn't really talk about, what is your channel presence?

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:03

Is it your website, that's the best?

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:05

Do you see a lot of consumers coming in from Facebook or Instagram or?

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:10

I know salons, Instagram is awesome.

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:12

Instagram is so great.

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:13

There's no review generation there, but that's a great place to

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:15

connect with your consumer and talk to them about their experiences.

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:19

Right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:19

They're tagging you in stories.

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:21

They're having something they want to share, and then you're just asking

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:24

them to share a little bit more.

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:25

I think it is really, really business specific and it's really understanding

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:30

your consumer and your business process.

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:35

And then where are those touch points to, to speak with them?

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:39

Where the likelihood of them getting a review is improved.

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:41

So, yeah.

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:42

Yeah.

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:42

I think that's.

Jen Cornwell: 00:36:43

Reviews are so important now it's so crazy, it's really wild haha.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:50

I know!

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:51

It's another one of those things.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:52

Cause you know, as a small business owner, if I'm going to focus on this,

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:55

I have to not focus on something else.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:57

There's a lot going on in my business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:58

Knowing how to prioritize everything, it's like, oh man,

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:01

it's super important to get ads.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:03

It's super important for social media.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:04

It's super important for email.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:05

It's super important for reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:07

It's like ahh, what do I, what do I do?

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:09

What do I spend my time on?

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:10

From this it's like, yeah, reviews are super important.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:12

Yes.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:12

Reviews are helping a lot of your business and figure out what's important to you.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:17

What do you have?

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:18

What resources do you have, is getting more reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:21

Can it be a pretty easy switch for you?

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:23

If it's just, Hey, I want to tell my employees to ask for some reviews

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:26

at this point and they start asking, and you start getting reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:29

I mean, that wasn't maybe that tough or that big of a change if

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:32

it's like, okay, I need to start.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:33

I need to start gathering emails.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:35

I need to build my website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:36

It gets to be a lot of things that have happened before you

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:39

can start getting the reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:40

So the reviews are just one piece of a lot of things.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:45

Like you said, a lot of channels.

Jen Cornwell: 00:37:47

Yeah, I think make it organic, right?

Jen Cornwell: 00:37:49

That's the easiest way.

Jen Cornwell: 00:37:50

If you can figure out the organic way to do it, there's some upfront work of

Jen Cornwell: 00:37:53

planning and deciding, but you make it organic and automate it on some level.

Jen Cornwell: 00:37:59

Those are the best ways to go.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:01

Talking!

Jen Cornwell: 00:38:01

Haha yes that's right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:04

Thank you for coming on Jennifer for discussing all this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:06

Now, if someone wants to reach out to you, find out more about you, or

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:10

what you guys do at Ignite or anything like that, how can someone find you?

Jen Cornwell: 00:38:15

Yeah.

Jen Cornwell: 00:38:16

Find me on LinkedIn as Jen Cornwell.

Jen Cornwell: 00:38:18

I'm also on, SEO Twitter a little bit.

Jen Cornwell: 00:38:22

My handle is just Jen Cornwell with an underscore at the end.

Jen Cornwell: 00:38:26

Those are probably both the best places.

Jen Cornwell: 00:38:28

You can also reach out to Ignite.

Jen Cornwell: 00:38:29

We do some local management as well, a lot of local SEO.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:33

Great.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:33

Yeah, this has been fantastic.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:35

I think this has helped us uncover quite a bit about the importance of

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:40

reviews and some really good strategies.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:42

I think that applies to any business, how they can start asking for views

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:46

when to ask those types of things.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:48

So thank you so much, Jen, for coming on.

Jen Cornwell: 00:38:51

Yeah.

Jen Cornwell: 00:38:51

Thank you.