The New Zealand Commerce Commission is investigating online retailers who they claim have manipulated customer reviews and testimonials in
“…conduct that was liable to mislead consumers by creating artificially positive impressions…”
NZ Commerce Commission website
What actions constitute “misleading consumers”?
Read moreReviews are essential for businesses building brand visibility online.
But bad reviews make my toes curl. Sometimes they are fair, sometimes not. What can the marketing team do about this?
Treating different customers differently is a core principle of good CRM. But until the review is published, you won’t know whether the customer is going to give you a good or a bad review.
Take a look at this – an alternative pathway for your “less good” business reviews.
Starting from a review page set up within our software, your customer then moves down three possible pathways. If they give you a 4 or 5 star review, they arrive here.
And this is of course, the normal Google Business Reviews page.
If the customer selects a 1,2 or 3 star in the first screen they head off a different path, to this page. Where the review is captured and forwarded to the business. But the crucial difference it’s not on your public Google Business page.
The red square links to the Google Business page, so the customer can post a public review.
You choose – would you do this for your brand?
I have the contacts to set up this service for any business – get in touch.
Campbell Naish, Partner at export strategy and marketing consultancy Katabolt, wrote a generous testimonial for Creative Agency Secrets. Many thanks!
Rebecca provided Katabolt with a valuable specialised set of marketing recommendations with a specific focus on services which was a great match with what we needed. Her B2B expertise and international experience and perspective helped our team refocus marketing plans and bring new skills into the fold. Thanks
Read other Testimonials or see our Client List
Every business needs a strong plan of action to get and publish testimonials for the business from customers and clients. As the internet becomes the strongest recommendation engine, because it’s easily searched and free to use, your business MUST get a strong profile in places where testimonials and reviews can be seen and shared.
Don’t forget that recent reviews are more powerful than old ones. So this is a tactic you need to implement weekly or monthly.
Read this Case Study – 3 ways to increase referrals which should give you some ideas for your business.
We implemented TrustPilot for an ecommerce client who needed to improve visibility of its amazing customer service. Based around the world, TrustPilot has local sites for each country – this one was in the UK. The integration of their free version with ecommerce platform was seamless – every time a customer buys, they are invited to leave a review a fixed time period after the purchase is complete.
As a mail order business, the time delay between online purchase and receiving goods can be a while and so the flexibility to specify when the review request email is sent was appreciated.
On the reviews page, you can respond to each one which gives full visibility to your prompt response to feedback. And when you upgrade to the paid version, the option to enable reviews by product, not just for the company as a whole, gives a host of new options.
Read more blog posts about Step 5 Relationship Development by clicking the image below – it will take you to that category on our blog. Teach yourself how to build relationships with people who will bring new custom to your business.
Dear Globally Successful Technology Business Owner,
Sumo.com logo and header
I am delighted that you have successfully bought a new domain for your business sumo.com and are seeking to transfer the strong SEO from SumoMe.com to the new domain.
Tough job.
Your marketing coordinator wrote to me with a list of URLs on my site which are pointing to the old domain. I understand how much easier it will be for you to regain Search Engine first page results if these are redirected to the new domain.
She asked “do us a huge favor” to change the hyperlinks and to “change any mentions of SumoMe to Sumo“.
This is actually a lot of work on my website.
So I wrote back
Dear Nxxxxx, This is a big ask. May I suggest you offer us something to compensate us for our time? Maybe two free months of usage?
Waiting for a response…. since April 7th, 2017.
Lots of love
Rebecca (Pissed off business owner)
It does NOT have to be like this.
Be innovative with how you ask for Testimonials [or other favours]. How about offering a charity donation, an internship, some free consulting with your experts…. so many choices and so little cost to the business.
I am sick and tired of corporations taking advantage of their hapless customers and when the ONE TIME that I have some influence over the situation – they expect me to roll over and act dumb.
What would you do?
PS. No, none of the links are active – so the lady doesn’t have to do more SEO work to resolve the redirects [free little joke from me there!]
Client acquisition. I need to IDENTIFY the most likely prospects for my agency. How do I do that?
Testimonials are self-evidently a great way to win new clients and grow your business profile. If you want to consider adding them to your tactical marketing armoury, there are some prior considerations to resolve.
If you aren’t a long-established business, then it will be more difficult to encourage spontaneous outpourings of delight and joy.
Never fear, we’ve got a plan for you.
Start with any existing documented positive feedback that you or your client can find. And plan
a page on your domain where you can drop in all the quotes from clients.
Make it easy to find e.g. www.yourdomain.co.nz/testimonials.
Make the most of the page so the viewer finds it a helpful resource, not a chore. Lay out the page so the most recent testimonial is at the top and the reader scrolls down to see others. If there are obvious different services or products which have received reviews, clearly separate them too. A series of embedded tabs can be a neat solution here.
Tabbed testimonials example
A different opportunity exists for businesses without any rave reviews. You may feel it’s hard to ask for favours, to ask for sales or to ask for testimonials. Let us help you make it easy.
Business “workflows” are a trendy catchphrase that is a way of describing ‘how-we-do-things-round-here’. Any marketing activity which you do more than once deserves a workflow process. The reason is that it becomes part of normal business life and is easier to reproduce if you do it frequently.
Think about how you are going to set up the business process to get new testimonials regularly from clients and customers.
Here’s ours.
Our marketing meeting has “Testimonials” as an agenda item. We review a list of recent clients and pick a couple to approach. The lead person who works on the client phones up and asks (using a pre-agreed script) if we can have a testimonial. Further, we ask for it in three places – spoken, on LinkedIn and on Google. The spoken one we write down as we chat and then send back to the client for approval.
What’s so easy about this is that the client doesn’t have to actually write anything – they just talk. Most people find that easier.
Then we upload the testimonial or ask the client to do it on social pages. Interestingly, almost 88% of sales are influenced by social media and 59% of consumers say Facebook is the most influential. We also link back to the client’s website (like we do on the Creative Agency Secrets Testimonials page). It’s nice to give them back some strong SEO link juice.
Task completed!
Ask for testimonials on your Google My Business page. Note, you have to have a gmail address in order to create these so it can be a challenge for some clients if they have to create an account. The great output from this is that your testimonials are visible in public search (alongside the search map) and when you have over 5 published, you get a star rating too. That makes you stand out even more from competitors.
Remember I suggested you get clients to ‘just talk’ and you write the testimonial? Well that chatting will almost certainly contain a lot of information. Take all your testimonials and copywrite a long and a short “sound bite” version of each. Put the short version on the website testimonials page. Copy the long version of each to a blog post – and link to it from the short version on the testimonials page. Creating on-site links is good (reduces bounce rate) and also helps show an expanded authentic “customer voice” to each one.
Inspired by Gabriel McIntyre’s “Getting Paid Faster with the Invoice Challenge”, we set about adapting it to suit our need for client testimonials. [Seriously, watch the video – it’s genius.]
Here’s the case study of the campaign we ran to get testimonials and support a good cause.
Now, where else can you get and share testimonials? We know they’re on Linked In, Facebook, Neighbourly (NZ local media), Yelp, Finda, Localist….. There are heaps of places – but don’t try to game the system. Just pick the site(s) you know your clients and prospects use.
Over to you to share your favourites.
This article was first written for publication in Marketing Online Magazine