7 Ways to Leverage Your Existing Reviews | Ep 18 | Trades Secrets: Contractor Marketing Podcast

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If you’ve ever looked up product or business reviews before making a decision, you’re in good company. They are the perfect way to get to know a business. Here’s our question for all you business owners. Are you using your online reviews to your advantage?

If the answer is yes, then congrats to you because you’re way ahead of the game. And we may have some new ideas for you to continue using your reviews to help you out. If you’re not using your reviews, then you’re in the right place.

In this latest episode we’re dishing out 7 snack-able ways for business owners to use their online reviews for their good. Here are a few things you’ll learn from episode 18: 

  1. How to respond to a review like an SEO pro
  2. Different ways to include reviews in your marketing materials
  3. Ways to use your competitor’s reviews to your advantage

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Transcription: 

Amanda:

Hi, I’m Amanda Joyce.

Devon:

And I’m Devon Hayes. And today we are talking about seven ways to leverage existing reviews. And here’s why it matters. As a contractor, you know getting online reviews is hard work, and massively important, but what you may not know is how to leverage what you have already worked so hard to obtain.

Hello.

Amanda:

Hi. Per usual, I think this is a brilliant topic. We talk about online reviews all the time, and most of the time, I feel like our clients just feel like all we’re doing is saying, “Get more, get more, get more.” But this is such a cool topic, because let’s talk about taking advantage of what you’ve already got available to you.

Devon:

Yeah, especially because I think lately Google has been so touchy, too, with reviews, and we had one for our business just appear, but the guy left it like three months ago. So getting reviews and having them actually published online or on your Google business profile is harder than it has been, and I know business owners are frustrated. And so I love today’s topic, because we’re really going to give business owners a way, seven snackable ways, that they can leverage the reviews they’ve already gotten that are already published online. And this is such a good, meaty topic, great easy takeaways, and you can give marching orders to the rest of your team to take care of this. So it’s-

Amanda:

Absolutely.

Devon:

Chef’s Kiss. Great topic.

Amanda:

Absolutely. One quick side note too, for anyone who’s listening, if you are experiencing that issue where you’ve been requesting reviews from your clients and they’re not showing up on your profile, you’re not alone. And as Devin was pointing out, we had one that was submitted several months ago that just showed up. All hope’s not lost, they could have eventually show up, but don’t throw your hands up in the air and quit trying to get them. It’s normal. We’ll talk about that on another podcast, but I just figured we should speak to that pain point, because we’re all experiencing it a little bit right now.

Devon:

Yes, we absolutely all are. So if you’re buying reviews, oh my gosh, don’t do it, because then your real ones are probably not getting posted. And then in the meantime, if you’ve got a lot of reviews that are on ice with Google, as their quality control team goes through everything, which they have an actual team now with a whole handbook, which is part of the reason we’re seeing the delay in publishing, or seeing some reviews disappear and then they’ll reappear. I know we’ve seen fluctuations in the numbers that were already posted and then they’re taken away. But maybe focus on your Facebook reviews for just a little bit. We’ll talk about this in another podcast, but Bing, they obviously don’t pull their reviews from Google Business profiles. They actually pull their reviews from Facebook. And while we laugh at Bing, who had less than two and a half percent of all search engine market share last year, this year with their integration of ChatGPT in their search platform, they are growing pretty quickly.

Last month, they got, I think, 100 billion or 100 million active users for the first time in the history of Bing, and that was within the same month of releasing their ChatGPT integration. So just a heads-up, Bing still has a tiny market share. I mean, in 100 million active users versus 200 billion active users that Google has each month, it’s a big difference, but don’t sleep on Bing this year. While you’re getting frustrated with Google, sneak in a couple of Facebook reviews. But that’s just a pro-tip. Thanks for listening. Now, we’ll dive into those seven ways to leverage your existing reviews, and how you can use them for your marketing now.

Amanda:

Absolutely. And this first one, I love, because it’s a super easy one, but it’s a little known fact. A lot of times when we start talking to a new client, this is something that’s been missed, they can go back and fix it, and keep doing it moving forward, and it’s gold. So let’s talk about responding to reviews like an SEO Pro.

Devon:

Yes. So instead of just… When someone says, “Oh my gosh, Ricky came out, and he fixed my leaky pipe, and he went above and beyond, his communication was so great. Love the plumbers over there at 212 Plumbing. Hey Ricky, shout out.” But instead of saying… When you reply to that review, number one, always reply to your reviews, whether they’re good or bad. But number two, instead of saying, “Thanks so much, Devin. It was a pleasure.” You just missed out on an opportunity to tell Google what service you provide and where you provided it. So you would edit that response to say, “Thank you for trusting 212 Plumbing. We appreciate your business. We know you have your choice of plumbers for pipe repair in Littleton, and we can’t thank you enough for choosing us. We’ll hope to not see you again for any plumbing issues soon.” I don’t know, you can sum it up pretty nicely.

But what I did there was I sprinkled in the service and the location that was provided. What the service was, where the location was that it was provided. Chances are if you perform that service in that location, you would like to do that again. And in using these SEO tactics, search engine optimization tactics, you are putting your service and your keyword on Google’s own product, which it will crawl and read before it refers to another third party site. So you’re doing yourself a favor. You’re getting, we call it SEO juice, but you’re getting it… You’re leveraging your existing platform, and just reinforcing trust, and telling Google, again, what you do and where you do it, before it has to look elsewhere. Large explanation.

Amanda:

And also one of the things that Google grades your Google Business profile on as well, is your responsiveness. And part of that is just how quickly you respond. But I feel like Google is also smart enough to look at that, and realize you’re not just slapping a canned response on every single one of those reviews. You’re actually going in and really providing a nice meaty response. And that’s only going to help your overall quality score that they’re giving your Google business profile.

Devon:

Totally. So that’s a great SEO pro-tip when responding to reviews. And that’s for a positive one. But on the opposite side, when there’s a negative review, this is an opportunity for you and your brand to show your customer how you respond when things go south. Because it’s construction, typically, sometimes projects go perfectly, but oftentimes they don’t. And it’s not your fault if there’s a supply chain delay, and so the schedule gets pushed back, or there’s unforeseen obstacles when you pull down the drywall, and you’re like, “Oh, wait a minute, we see all these issues. The job is going to take three weeks, not two weeks.”

I don’t know, whatever it is. How you respond to those negative reviews is massively important for your brand. And it can also be an SEO play. So keep that in your back pocket. Don’t just ignore them and walk away from them. I’m sure… I’m not sure. I hope that this juncture, maybe you’ve heard through other podcasts, and other reading and things that you know about your business, that it’s best to always reply to every review, not just those shiny four and five star reviews.

Amanda:

Absolutely. Okay. So without going into too much detail, I think that was a nice way to sum it up. So another great way to take advantage of your existing reviews is to use them in your marketing materials. Your so social media posts, email marketing, direct mail, any pieces of print ads, any marketing materials you’re creating, see if you can come up with a creative way to go ahead and include a quick snack bite of a review. If it’s an email newsletter, just kind of feature it midway through your newsletter. Reinforcing those positive reviews that you’re getting out there from homeowners or property owners can really help to instill trust in people that are maybe higher up in the sales process, and maybe haven’t quite decided they’re going to go with you, but as they get to know your brand a little bit more, and learn… Kind of see the consistency in your views, whatever it is people continuously kind of rave about about your company, continuing to share those reviews with people can really help sell your brand.

Devon:

Definitely. Use it in your sales process. We have a number of clients who take those reviews, and it’s part of their sales presentation when they’re sitting there with a homeowner. You can refer them to the internet and say, “Go check us out online,” but it’s great to have some of those reviews for them to just kind of browse through as they’re looking at a sales presentation on an iPad. I love seeing five star reviews with the little Google logo on truck wraps, on job site marketing, use user reviews visually wherever you can. And sometimes that goes without saying, but maybe you haven’t thought to put it in your sales presentation. Maybe you haven’t thought to post it on social media, or include it on any sort of marketing collateral that you’re handing out, or hanging on someone’s door. So really leveraging that trust factor and illustrating, quite literally, to customers that you’re a gold star, five star contractor.

Amanda:

Absolutely. And I love the next one. I think this is such a creative way to take advantage of your… I mean, this is more taking advantage of your competitors’ reviews, but go dig in. Corporate espionage. Go look at your top competitors. Maybe they’ve got a ton of reviews, but they can’t all be positive. Dig through them. Go look for those negative reviews, and look for consistency in those. What processes are broken? What are people complaining about? What is it that they’re not doing right that you can do better, and then brag about to pull people in that are maybe considering them, but are having some apprehension?

Devon:

Definitely. So this is where you can take a review that maybe is a customer who is complaining about poor communication, not hearing from a project manager for a couple of weeks, not really sure what’s going on, they don’t understand what the delay is, maybe it’s poor workmanship, this is where you can shine. You can talk about your automation, if your process includes a weekly touch base, just to let the client know where they’re at in case there was a delay in materials, or a change of scope, or somebody had a big emergency and you had to take care of that before you could get to a renovation or an improvement project, letting the customer know what’s going on. So taking those reviews and seeing what was bad and then bragging about how you do it better, and bragging on your process, your communication, your workmanship, do you offer a labor warranty? A materials warranty? And talking about those things individually when maybe you see someone had a really horrible experience, and just leveraging that.

An easy way to sort this, too, we all know how to sort reviews by star count, like five star reviews, one star reviews. But at the top on Google reviews, when you click on the reviews button of a Google business profile, there are topic clusters, or word clusters, at the top, and you can kind of click those, and you can use that… Read the… If it says leak, and then you read all the reviews that contain the word leak in them, and see what people are saying, then you can use that… You can turn that into content for yourself. You can, again, talk about… Sorry, excuse me, I’ve got a little frog in my throat here. One second. You know what I’m saying? Let me drink water here.

Amanda:

No, exactly. You can use that. And on the same note, you can look at maybe what people are raving about with them. Click on that leak and then see if they’re saying, “Oh my gosh, they were so responsive. This is how they made the process better for me.” And that’s another thing to learn from too. Maybe they have some kind of responsive rate with how quickly they come out and tarp your roof or something along those lines. Learn about what they’re also doing right in those reviews, and make sure that you’re competing with them across the board. Really just beating them at every aspect of the business model.

Devon:

Totally. I love it. So it’s spying on your competitors. That’s such a great one. And then we kind of touched on this next one, is taking those and using them for process improvement. And I think we already kind of talked about that, but-

Amanda:

Exactly.

Devon:

[inaudible 00:13:59].

Amanda:

But it’s kind of the same thing, too. Let’s not only just dig in on your competitor’s reviews, also take some time to go back and look at your own reviews, and take a good hard look in the mirror. Look at those negative ones. Like we said, you need to go back and respond to them if you haven’t, even though it could be painful to go pick at that scab, but you have to make sure that Google sees that you’ve responded to all those reviews. And then on that same note, look at them. Like, where are we failing? Let’s talk internally about how we can make this better.

Devon:

Absolutely. And so we have here, it’s process improvement, but really, is your process on your website? When you read through your competitions reviews and you read through your own, as Amanda was just saying, is there a cog missing in the wheel? Or are all of your reviews bragging about your process? Is that illustrated on your website? Is that a piece of collateral when you sit down with a customer? Is that in your sales presentation? Are you using it? And maybe you don’t realize that your streamlined process is a big selling point. So finding what a common theme is throughout your reviews, and I don’t know, kind of threading that needle and tying it into your website and your social media, and some of those free marketing channels that you have available to you, is going to make your messaging that much more effective.

Amanda:

Absolutely. I love that. It’s like crowdsourcing your key differentiators. Let your clients tell you what it is that you’re doing better than everybody else. And what you think is the most important to you as the business owner might not be what’s important to them. So let them tell you what it is you’re doing the best, and start bragging about it.

Devon:

Totally. And this next one here, we have using your reviews to create video testimonials. Now, as an agency, we have a really hard time getting this type of media from our clients, and it’s hard to ask a homeowner to sit down and share their experience. You’ve got to get a camera crew out there, maybe some lighting, maybe work on a script… That, we love. Shorts, especially short videos, short format video in 2023 is especially impactful and important. But if you can’t make that happen, what you can do is use a free tool like Canva, and create just a video reel of, kind of like a bragging reel of screenshots of all your four and five star reviews. Or you can beautify them with… Make them look prettier than how they look in Google.

But turn it into a video. Turn it into a short video. It’s taking what you already have, and turning it into another asset for yourself. And then you can share it on social, upload it to YouTube, post it to your website, of course, taking a thumbnail of what the video is and just having it linked to a video. Don’t actually upload video to your website, because that’ll slow it down. But make a brag reel, and don’t be afraid to clap for yourself and put it out there. Customers want to see it.

Amanda:

Absolutely. And the last one, we have kind of touched on it a little bit throughout the conversation, but we can’t say it enough. Make sure you’re using those five star reviews in your sales process. People… It’s user generated content. Your previous clients have… It’s in their own words, talking about who you are as a company, why they loved working with you. Help your salespeople help themselves by allowing them to leverage these. Like Devon said, just have them in your sales process so that they can flip through them on an iPad. You can tell somebody all day long, “Go check out our online reviews,” but you’re actually putting that on them to go find them. Bring them to your potential client in the sales process. And obviously, if they want to go out and dig a little bit more, and see maybe not just the reviews you cherry-picked, they can go look a little bit deeper. But again, brag on yourself. Maybe make that brag real and have that available so that your salesperson could just play it right there on an iPad in the middle of the sales process.

Devon:

Love it. Love it. So this is pretty short and sweet here. So again, we’ll just quickly kind of run down the list of these, the seven ways to leverage your existing reviews. Number one, respond to them like an SEO pro, number two, use them in your marketing materials, social media, email marketing, direct mail, print truck wraps, job site marketing, use that five star the image with Google everywhere you can. Number three, feature them on your website, number four, leverage your-

Amanda:

Corporate espionage. Yeah, go do some spying. Corporate espionage. Love that one.

Devon:

That’s a million dollar… What, a 25 cent word is what they call that? Number five, process improvement. Use this to get your house in order. If you notice a theme of maybe inconsistency in communication, get your shit together, or brag about things that you’re repeatedly seeing that you’re doing well. So number five, that was process improvement. Number six, create a video reel, a brag reel. And number seven is using those five star reviews in your sales process. Gotcha.

Amanda:

That’s what’s up.

Devon:

Yes.

Amanda:

Quick and easy. So we hope you guys found this useful. We definitely think that it could have a positive impact if you were to pass this on to whoever on your team is in charge of making some of this stuff happen. And we’d love to hear from you. Let us know if it’s working. Let us know if we missed something. Is there another way you’re using reviews in your business that we failed to mention today? We’d love to hear from you guys.

Devon:

Thank you.