Testimonial Archives - Creative Agency Secrets

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How to Deal with Negative Online Reviews

5 June, 2017/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

Online reviews are a cornerstone of how consumers make decisions whether to buy a product or not. If you see a product that you want, you will read through the reviews to make sure that you are going to be getting what you need from the product. If the product website does not have reviews, the odds are good that you are searching online for one that does have them. But what if you are the business that is getting reviewed? There is a certain level of expectation that you are not going to have 100% positive reviews, right? Here we discuss some ways that you can handle negative reviews online.

The Site Does Not Matter

It does not matter if the review was posted on a very well-known site or one that you might have never heard of, people will find it online. That means you have to take all of them seriously and get a plan in order so that you can defend your business against them. The first time that you see a negative online review about your business you are probably wishing that you had an online public relations degree. Build a plan and stick to it and then reviews will eventually get taken care of on all the sites they are posted to.

Contact the Review Site First

Depending on the review site where you found the negative review, you might be able to contact them about it. Take a minute and search through the site to see if you can find contact information relevant to your review and how to handle it properly. If you think the review was added by a competitor, you may have a leg to stand on to get it removed, but the process will have to be fool proof.

Join In and Engage The Reviewer

If the website that you find the negative reviews on allows you to respond to them, take a minute and do just that. Being able to explain the situation to them and possibly clear up the reasons they left the review is the first step to repairing your reputation. There is not really any need to hire a public relations expert for this, but an intern working towards an online masters in public relations might not be a bad place to start looking for help.

Always Encourage Positive Reviews from Customers

In many cases, and to keep things fair, you might find that negative reviews are not going to disappear from the internet. If that is the case, you can combat them by asking your future customers to leave positive reviews if they are satisfied with your business. There is nothing wrong with asking for some help if they are truly happy with your services. Over time, this will push the negative reviews and bring your overall average rating up, helping your business.

Take a minute to take a look at your business and if there is anything that might cause a negative review. There could be a few easy fixes that you can do to keep the negative reviews to a minimum. Good luck!

Testimonial & Case Study from Apartment Specialists realtors

15 November, 2016/0 Comments/in B2C, Case Studies /by Rebecca Caroe

We worked with Creative Agency Secrets to streamline our website and the customer experience. We have two major client types – buyers and sellers. The team helped us to filter website visitors so we could present different messages to each audience and drive engagement with the right team member from Apartment Specialists.

Andrew Murray, Apartment Specialists after a website assessment, CRM implementation and re-write of marketing communications (ebooks) to capture email addresses from website visitors and drive traffic to key landing pages.

Case study of realtor website improvements

What was neat about the solution we found for Andrew is a quick way to filter the website’s visitors using prominent buttons on the home page. The image below shows the percentage of website traffic going to each of the three destination pages. 46% of visitors want to buy an apartment – these folks don’t need to discuss how to sell or value an apartment.

Driving visitors to the right landing page focuses traffic

And now look at the previous attempt to segment the traffic – it’s still on the site but the most valuable customers (those wanting a valuation prior to selling) are not clicking on the links at all.

Ebooks drive fewer clicks for Apartment Specialists

Ebooks drive fewer clicks and nobody clicks the online valuation box.

So why is the offer of an ebook not compelling?

We analysed the website traffic and sought to understand the “buyer personas” of visitors. When an apartment owner is thinking of selling the first thing they do is to get their property valued. Hence the need to put valuation front and centre of the offer.

But an ebook explaining the process and showcasing the skill of the team is not enough in itself to get visitors to click. Many don’t want an ebook – but they do want other things. There were no clicks on the left box which offered valuations. This was a problem for the firm.

Creating a landing page with ALL the information a buyer, a seller or a seller wanting a valuation needs was the solution – the ebook is also offered there but so is a tonne of other useful data including podcast episodes, contact details and other resources appropriate for their needs.

Interestingly, the top menu includes a link to “buy” but this gets only around 3% of all clicks whereas the big button has 300% more.

Result? More clicks, more valuation enquiries.

Don’t Be Boring Is The Best Way To Gather Customer Feedback

22 September, 2016/0 Comments/in Data, Marketing /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

Customer feedback. These simple words are in every businessman’s mouth (and 2-hour long Powerpoint presentations) and can give you priceless insights if done right. This data is essential to measure customers’ satisfaction and make your products/services meet their needs. But let’s be honest, the ways people use to collect it are not thought through like they should. From annoying guys with clipboards knocking on your door to spammy messages in your inbox, research is carelessly planned by most companies. Fear not, though: we have a few suggestions for you on how to seize your customers’ opinion.

Yeah, you know where I’m going: the infamous surveys. Right now, as I mention the words “fill a form”, I can almost hear your eyes rolling. It’s something loathed by most of us, and some planners consider just a necessary evil. Doesn’t matter if you are the poor soul who’s spreadsheeting the results for that damn thing or, God forbid, the one answering to an endless questionnaire.

Understanding the importance of this kind of research, many companies offer rewards to customers in a hopeless attempt of getting useful information to work with. Burger King, for example, used to encourage customer feedback offering FREE FOOD if you completed their online survey. However, even a free burger was not incentive enough to make me bother to finish those.

Ok, so where are those brands failing miserably?

The process itself is outdated. If the activity is too laborious, doesn’t matter what “prize” you are offering. People tend to quit or, even worse, answer rubbish by mindlessly marking “x” on random fields just to be done with it, giving you worthless data.

Now you are probably asking yourself the million dollar question: is there a way to avoid wasting your resources while collecting useful data?

Make it fun

Surveys must be dynamic, well designed and lighthearted. No one can stand boring lists of questions and tiny “tick boxes” in this day and age. You can use a tool like Typeform, a Spanish startup that is mastering user experience for all kinds of forms, from a simple suggestion box to a more intricate survey. You can check an example at the end of this article. Their innovative service promises to keep “focused and engaged respondents” with a beautiful interface, responsible for a 59% completion rate on the platform. That’s a MASSIVE result.

Make it meaningful

Your customer has to understand the objective of giving you feedback and see that you are actually listening. You can start showing your appreciation by making him part of the creative development of new products, like McDonald’s did with the “Create Your Taste” campaign. There was no money involved, just a warm feeling of belonging and the thrill of signing your own McDonald’s sandwich. Crowdsourcing at its finest, bringing excellent results (and funny memes, because internet).

Here at Creative Agency Secrets, we made a testimonials campaign for ourselves by partnering with a charity called StarJam. Offering donations in exchange for a few words from our clients, we turned their feedback into social proof for our own brand on the internet. You can check more details reading our case study.

Customer feedback formpowered by Typeform

How to get testimonials for your business

21 June, 2016/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Case Studies, Marketing ideas /by Rebecca Caroe

Firstly get a page set up on your domain where you can drop in all the quotes we get from clients.

Recommendations:

Lay out the page so the most recent testimonial is at the top and the reader scrolls down to see others.
Take all testimonials and make a long and a short “sound bite” version. Put the short version on the Testimonials page.
Copy the long version of each testimonial to a blog post – and link to it from the short version on the testimonials page.
Link to the client website (like we do on the Creative Agency Secrets Testimonials page). It’s nice to give back some strong SEO link juice.
Have a plan about how you are going to set up the business process to get new testimonials regularly from clients and customers.
Also ask for testimonials on your Google My Business page. Note, you have to have a gmail address in order to upload these so it can be a big ‘ask’ for some clients for whom that’d be a challenge to set up.

Here’s a case study of a cute campaign we ran to get testimonials and support a good cause.

Now, where else can you get testimonials….. Linked In, Facebook, Neighbourly (NZ local media), Yelp, Finda….. over to you to share yours.

Be Innovative with How You Get Testimonials

25 February, 2016/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Email, Marketing, Social Media /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

When you’re new, or growing, and need social proof to prove your worth to the world

So, you’re starting out your business and you know you’ve got a good thing going. But something you don’t have yet from your clients: their endorsement of you and your brand or your product. Sure, they’ve told you they liked working with you and, of course, that made you feel good on the inside. But, with the interwebs, you need to have hard proof that says someone used your services and liked it enough to write it down in a social internet space. Like Google Reviews. Or Facebook. Or even just in an email and with your clients’ blessing. Okay, so, how do you do it?

As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, or deduced from the title of this blog post, we’re talking about testimonials. Or reviews. Either or, they can be one in the same, if they contain ratings and words as friendly companions in whatever social app you’re using. There are multiple ways to get those testimonials so that, when a new possible client happens to Google you, lo and behold, they see other people like you and have used you and have provided their friendly feedback. Well, we rolled out with a fun and ‘give-back sort’ of way to request from our clients and those that have worked with us in the past. I think you’ll like it.

Before the holidays, our Chief in Command, Rebecca, came across a non-profit organization called StarJam. Briefly, I just want to let you know that what they do is amazing. Through music and performing arts, StarJam lifts kids with disabilities up, helps them to learn new skills, and gives them confidence. Just take a look at the photos they have on their website, every time I do I just want to be a part of that! Anyway, back to the story. Rebecca wanted Creative Agency Secrets to be able to give to StarJam. We also, you guessed it, wanted to get testimonials. Testimonials in one hand, giving to a good cause in the other… hmm. There’s got to be a good way to put these two together.

And SMASH!

It’s the holidays, right? We can send out a good will email to our clients! WE will donate money in your name to StarJam if you can write a few words on Google about your time with Creative Agency Secrets. So, we reached out to StarJam to get their permission, find out if they felt comfortable with our plan, requested a few images to use and then started crafting an email.

Key items we made sure to have in our email

Make your headline engaging
Make your text interesting to read
Tell the reader what you’re doing or what you’re asking them to do

4. Hyperlink to wherever they need to go or whatever you’re referring to

5. Use images

The main thing we wanted to make sure to do was inform our followers HOW to submit a review. Some people don’t have Gmail. I know, crazy world, but we had to come up with a foolproof way to say ‘This is easy! Here, we’ll show you’.

Voila! We created this easy to read image with everything needed to tell our audience how to do what we were asking them to do.

Then what? Well, we could wait around with baited breath. But, by this time, it was Christmas and we decided we’d come back to it in the New Year with fresh eyes and suntans.

And when we did… no reviews! We could have been sad and wallowed a bit but that’s now how you get good reviews. So we sent a follow-up email. Sort of a, “Hey, we know you were busy over the holidays, but…” reminder. Good idea, right? Of course.

But when you’ve asked the same way twice and you still get no response

You try another tactic. This time, we called, or in some cases walked over to, those who had worked with us in the past to ask them, oh so kindly, to provide us with a review while we donated to a good cause in their name. Sometimes it just takes the glimmer in your eye, the inflection in your voice, or just good ole human contact to make the connection you need.

And now we’re on the MAP!

Tips to those using Google reviews!

For one, you need 5 reviews to be able to see your star rating.
For two… even if you have 5 star ratings for all 5 of your Google reviews… somehow you still only rate 4.8 stars

Number two will remain a bit of a mystery.

I hope this helps any startup businesses out there looking to get on the map as well with testimonials and reviews. As they say, right now, the BEST way to get business is by word of mouth. And online rating systems like Google, Facebook, and others are the next best things with the worldwide web!

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