EP 565 - You Need More Google Reviews

0:00Google reviews are some important and it's easy to overlook them but it can be overcome by just implementing a system and a process and then being consistent with it. People are going to go, oh well people are using AI for search more. Where is that information going to come from? In a world of AI we're not going to be able to fake the genuineness of people in their words saying how they found an experience or talking about that. You can't fake them and they are going to bring authenticity to a market that's drowning out being an authentic. One of the final pieces of the process for your business should be collecting a review from your clients or your customers but it's often the thing that is overlooked so today a good reminder to get it done. Mate that is a sensational top tip for business owners out there because it is so often neglected, me included and when we talk about these often my mind goes to the logical space of let's talk about a P&L and a balance sheet top down and we get to the profit line and we pay some tax and all is good but then we forget about the other things that are going

1:02to improve the asset value of the business that we so often talk about and one of those is getting reviews on Google which are highly trusted and creates credibility. Yeah even yesterday I was looking for bars in a specific area and in my mind I thought I'll go to the one with the most reviews because that's other people saying that this must be a good bar. I'm absolutely intrigued to know why you're having a Google and you don't know what the top bars are. Laser for me. I haven't been to this area before. Surprisingly. Yeah okay. Yeah and did Google live up to expectations? Certainly did. Even on the map it had the different bars locally in this area and then it was popping up with how many five star reviews that they had. Yeah very thorough. Awesome. So I picked the one of the most and said bang that's where we'll meet to see it. Did you, were you specific with Google and saying recommend me five star bars that do charcoal marks? No I just looked for bars in that area and was like whoever's got the most is going to have it and if I get them they don't

2:05have margaritas I'm going to leave a one star review. But the point of it is they do pay off because we've had people get in touch with us and again just using our own experience because it's lived in their full genuine. Get in touch and say hello. We've checked you guys out. We've seen that you do this and then even on Google searches and bits and pieces at Paul Surin says hey look you guys are really good at talking shit. People are going to get in touch with us. How to present and even yesterday we had a client message who said one of the success stories from the 90 day program with you is it's helped me get new business and immediate trust and they went from zero a couple of months ago to 150 Google reviews that quickly. So then it was a bit of a project of you've been in business for some time you haven't been asking for them. That's low hanging fruit. Let's go out to some past customers and say hey it's some of you've neglected and you need to be doing and they actually then went on to say how it has helped them secure work

3:05that they may not have got because people are googling them or hearing about them and getting in from a word of mouth recommendation and having a look and going okay well there's hundreds of Google reviews. I'm going to trust people that they know what they're talking about and if you've got this fire in the pod well done and let's give you some top tips on actually implementing some of this stuff and I think first and foremost you've got to make sure that you've got your Google business listing set up. I mean you're not going to be able to collect any reviews if you do not have a Google business listing and I think it's really important to make sure that it's got your right business name appropriate photos contact information all the kind of that basic stuff then you want to go out there and go right I need to ask for reviews and I know I'm sitting on right now a five star Google review that I need to do because I've had a fantastic experience and I want to sing the praises if you will of the business that I have been to and I know that that business has got one of those little cards on the counter where you pay where you can scan a

4:06QR code lazy from me not to do it there and then but that's a quick low hang through hack hack I know and I have seen hospitality venues they've got there's one and tack a pointer that I've recently been to and I've got this little thing on the little counter where you go to and same thing scan it QR code five star review both off you go other ways of collecting them if you don't have like a pointer sales thing with your customers would be when the invoices sent and I think a lot of businesses out there are using zero and you can add in or customize rather the format of the zero invoices and you can go and get the link to the Google review from Google copy and paste that and put that into your invoice yeah that's something that we tried we didn't have a lot of success with it it's definitely worth doing it to reinforce for people 100% and I think like that's where I think a lot of businesses one don't know the individual steps to try and if you don't know the steps to try

5:09you're not going to know what it's work and we would just like hey when you Google reviews there's all these different touch points where are we interacting or engaging with our client base to can't actually ask them and yet we put it on our invoices and most people because it's the same invoice every single month aren't going to open it we're not offended but then even if you're accountant sending you an invoice and you don't open it or you do open it don't leave a Google review I look we're not offended the other one I mean we're engaging with our clients so often on email now at the bottom of the footer these days it's like you know your mobile phone number and your email address and don't print me saved the environment and here's my pronouns scrap that put the link to a Google review yeah yeah I think the key for people to remember is that you've got to make it easy and even that Google listing before reviews will give you a direct link that if they click on it it will load those up and I think at some of those restaurants they even have I carry what the technology is called but instead of scanning the QR code because I don't know how many people actually scan QR codes it's it's slowly increasing but you can tap your phone

6:11on it and it then loads yeah loads the pay way types yeah which it's like scan here or tap here I thought oh that's quite they're just trying to remove the friction a tap and go it's what we like very impressive the other thing I think people need to remember is that with AI it's becoming so easy to fake perfect and people aren't making mistakes anymore they've got these perfectly drafted social media posts as even watching something recently where you could give an app lyrics plus a type of genre of music and I would split you out a song within 30 seconds you can have a song for your business or anything and it actually sounds you can't even really tell that it's AI generated especially this one was like country music and I didn't listen to a lot of that so I thought this is legit some country singer singing this but we're not going to be in a world of AI we're not going to be able to fake the geniusness of of people in their words saying how they found an experience or talking about that and interestingly speaking to an e-commerce business

7:16it's quite large basically they said that unless their ads are user generated content of users of the product and service they're fucking tank and they're like we just blow money so all of their ads he said are basically just people running effectively then running testimonials of what their clients think of the product brilliant and that's why I think this stuff is important because we're gonna we rely on what other people think just like me booking we're going through the pub based on how many people have been there that's the same do do other people trust this I think that the currency of today's business into the future with AI is going to be authenticity I firmly believe the amount of times I've been on the scroll hole when Grace is watching maths and saying hey feel pay attention keep up and I'm like hang on I'm in the scroll hole and the amount of AI content that is coming through on the feed and I've got to look at it and pause and go it captures your attention because it's just something out the gate and you've got to look at it and I've found myself recently a couple of times going it's real or is this AI

8:19and on some of them you've actually got to go into the description and at the bottom it's just like oh this is this is AI generated content it's just like oh I realized that I should trust in my gut and this scrolled on but that's the beauty of reviews you can't fake them and they are going to bring authenticity to a market that's drowning out being authentic and I think over time that stuff will rise to the surface. If you want to go a layer deeper with that I think one thing that we see perform quite well for clients is that they run as ads they run videos of their customers so instead of them as the business talking in their words which basically like user generated content we're explaining for the e-commerce business they will get their clients to explain something that they've liked that they're the business that they do can you film a video about that and I will then use it as an ad and they run that with their marketing agency again it's the same thing where trust is so low that we need to see other people doing or using a business to go okay I'm gonna go to that or I'm gonna trust them. Big goal start with planning and that's

9:24why we run 90 day business planning sessions one-on-one with aspirational business owners. Together we help you set clear targets and start taking actions straight away and action on the things that matter like pricing, margin, cash flow, ideal customers and making sure that you're moving the needle to get closer to where you want to be. We've got tons of strong Google reviews in this space so go and check those out this could be perfect for you if you're after no fluff business planning and a keen on accountability. If you want to apply to book your 90 day plan go to nextadvisory.nz and let's see if this is a good fit for you. The other top tip hack that I would recommend and it's out of your playbook make would be the old text message nothing beats a text message you've got the stand on how often text messages are open it escapes me for the moment but I've got on my MacBook the notes app and I've got one particular note if that's what you call it where I've got all these shortcut links and on there there's like our booking links and cash flow links and all that

10:27and one of them is our Google review and I can just copy and paste that and just send it wherever it needs to be I can access that from my phone and I've played around with sending text messages to clients and hey look really enjoy working with you on such and such project all the best for it I hope goes well hey look would you do us a favor we'd really appreciate a Google review here's the link make it easy boom and it works I fired it out maybe two weeks ago later that day all that night boom Google review and I thought well I'll spice things up a little bit and I'll try to put email on the next one thinking oh gee I'm going to be let down here because no one's going to open an email but boom it landed and they did it but I think where you are delivering value and quality and being authentic and all that good stuff in business people are going to leave your reviews they'll take the time yeah so try and turn it into a process is off the what we said a client said like don't just do this once or twice try and think okay how can it be the final loop clothes and I think even a lot of the franchises now when you go there they they've got like they're a lot more systemized because that's what they've really got to optimize for but they

11:31often have the very end of the process once you've spent money with them is them trying to then build the asset value and the social proof by saying by email text or some other means you know can you please do a Google review for us so how can we learn from those businesses and think okay if they're doing it that scale what why why aren't we the sparkly that I've used on a few occasions now get the invoice pay it and sometime between getting the invoice and paying it or even somewhere along every single time the office admin lady it comes from her email I don't know whether it's automated or not it's asking for a review wow every single time yeah and I don't know whether I mean I haven't left the review so whether they're ticking off and going oh he hasn't left one I've seen a minima all whether it's just part of a process I was like good on them not going out there and asking there are platforms I won't name any because I can't remember the names but if you Google it there are platforms we can automate that process but even if it's negative it won't then capture it it'll collect high level feedback to start with and if it's negative it'll say okay

12:36well like here's a way to tell us more about that to really learn from it and if it's positive it'll then shoot them to Google or Facebook and people use those to build up their reviews a lot faster make sure you know that's automation but you've got to pay for it but if you've got large scales of it it might be worth googling and finding one of those yeah I think so from my side Google reviews are some important it's easy to overlook them but it can be overcome by just implementing a system and a process and then being consistent with it and I think the good thing that we've found with Google reviews is it creates user generated content that we can then create ads from and then go hey look so and so has worked with us and we've done this for them this is their feedback so then we can say to a much wider audience oh hey look we do this type of work and so and so has had a really good experience and this is their outcome that then other people in similar situation come oh wow okay these guys aren't cowboys yes and as much as we're saying oh you know Google reviews people are going to go oh well people are using AI for search more

13:40where is that information going to come from so even if we're moving to an AI search type world that's got to take the information from the internet and if you don't have any then if someone says oh hey tell me the you know top five electricians in my area like how is AI going to know what top five actually is it's still going to suggest you five but you might say actually I want to know the five that have got the most Google reviews for instance and then if you don't have any well you're not going to you're not going to feature but also tell me what those Google reviews saying about this business again if you're not capturing any of that data it's not going to be able to look at that and I think brand is going to become something that is going to be so much more important than it already is and people will start talking about it in three years time we'll go okay we've had these moments before um but you know those who don't focus on brand are going to get left behind and their shiny hack in three years time will be oh I need to start doing this apparently it's real good for your brand and we're going to go yeah we would you know trying to encourage people to build into a process years ago make a random question that's just come to my

14:43mind for people that have got thus far into the pod and are saying I already collect reviews but I get my reviews on Facebook or I'm collecting my reviews on my website and they're giving me individual I might sell three different products of honey for example and you can rate the product on the website and they're not collecting the Google reviews you reckon there's a degree of importance of one over the other well I guess every uh service or sorry every industry has different types of reviews that I think the customer has a lot of weight on with it's like trust pilot or those types of things but I think people are increasingly not using Facebook as much website I think is a consumer and you know maybe people are different but I do I really want to trust someone's like drafted when I go to a new website and they've got three reviews or really I think how the fuck do you have you told me this is a start up and now there's a photo of these three people that don't even look like kiwi people yeah that uh the brilliant ones are brand new ones and they've got hundreds of years yeah they think we'll hang on so I think that's the danger of

15:49trying to trick the customer and this is where I think you can't really fake the Google review piece why it's still such a trusted element and the decision making process I wonder as well as AI becomes more important whether it would be searchable on individual websites or whether it's just going to look to Google because that's the easy place I think you know because I've had conversations with clients before where they've had they've asked for reviews and ratings of their product to their website and I'm like people are only going to see that and know the experience if they're specifically looking for your business in that particular product yeah let's go bigger picture and just go generally speaking of your business when people are Google searching you want to come to the top Google's going to make sure the cream rises to the top to help with the algorithm I believe Google's reviews play a part and if you're highly rated highly reviewed Google's going to go you must be authentic you can do something well so I would be encouraging customers to leave Google reviews over website or Facebook reviews yet even these days with a lot of

16:56websites you can embed the Google reviews so that if they are coming through and they're new you're not so they're oh well that you know if you're implanting it on there yourself oh that's two years ago that they left that review you know lots changed in that time so people have embedded Google reviews that are refreshing so that that's also like an easy thing that you can that you can do to ensure that they're fresh and my final point will be at my mind is just flick the switch to DD and so often we cover off those intangible assets that we talk about and I think Google reviews are one of those because we're constantly saying to the vendor in a business hey what have you got let's make sure that we're moving them over to the purchase so all of that kind of stuff and they are important because it gives that credibility and I think so long as you create the process and you're asking for them you're embedding them and leveraging off to them you're building the value of the asset of your business yeah couple of final things for me one I think reply to them and if you've got volumes that becomes tricky but also if you do

17:58get a negative review reply to that and often because I think the mind goes to the negative so when people do look at the reviews and want to read them they will they will want to figure out okay what are the negative ones and sometimes people even filter them and then track those to the top to have a look and see what's the negative stuff they're saying about this business you want to address that stuff and then lastly collect it as close to the happiness moment as you can so don't wait weeks after you've sold them the service or the good or whatever and say I could you please do this now like they don't care anymore they're on to their 64 other problems and the dog chat on the carpet or whatever you know they're far too busy to be worried about your Google review so do it in the moment where they are like really happy with the good or the service that you've provided for them smart easy or nay