Before you get too excited, I’m NEVER going to tell you to buy reviews. It’s stupid, dangerous, and has the very likely potential to get your account labeled as fraudulent. I’m not even just making assumptions. We tested it by creating “new businesses” (that didn’t exist) and seeing if we could buy our way to fame and fortune. Nope! Every last service offering purchased reviews was easy to spot. Bad English… Seriously, this is a real screenshot. Would you trust your business to people who market like this?
Strange Geography Correlation (like an elite we later found was hired to write one of my clients a bad review who claimed she was willing to drive 27 hours for lip filler but they wouldn’t give her a price over the phone).
Remember the story of the amazing Tattoo parlor out in Woodacre where the Yelp Elite wrote a negative review because they refused to ink her? They refused because she was drunk off her ass. It was the right choice. But, it put them out of business. The phone stopped ringing. They had to change the name, and phone and monkey with the address to try and start a “new” business. It sorta kinda worked but not to the level that they once had. In that regard, Elites have power. But once they get caught selling reviews? Well, then EVERY review gets deleted. I helped one client after they’d been suckered for $10K for several Elite Reviews. All was well, for a year. Then those Elites vanished (we never did find out what happened) but along with them, all their reviews went too.
What about Review Trading with other members of your networking group so nobody is actually paying for reviews? That’s a big No No too! If you don’t know the backstory, Jeremy Stoppleman and I had it out over a decade ago after he deleted my personal profile (they left my biz) because I had reviewed a number of other eWomen and Ladies Who Launch members. I had paid and used their services so my reviews were 1000% legit. But the nexus was too small, and they picked it up and deleted all of us. Brutal. So don’t risk it. Now they flag you first and if you keep it up they delete. It’s just not worth it!
So, should you buy reviews? Hells, NO! You’ll spend 10% hiring someone to design a customer service program that will generate real positive reviews from your real customers and the majority of those will stick. Besides, you know you can tell the difference between real and fake. After reading what feels like millions of reviews, I can smell the difference. And so can Yelp!
Spread the Love
I just saw an infographic that revealed 93% of customers read online reviews before deciding to purchase from a company. Another showed how an increase in your rating of one star can lead to a 5-9% increase in your business’s revenue — and in the horrifying reverse, one negative review can cause you to lose 30 customers.
You need to collect reviews in more than one place. Don’t just focus on Yelp, Use Google, Facebook, and any industry specific ones you can. One of my last clients has thousands of 5 star reviews. Literally THOUSANDS! But Yelp, with only a few negative ones kept popping up on page 1 and she couldn’t shake it. They key to getting rid of Yelp was optimizing the 13 other links that contained 4.9 star ratings under the listing and getting those bumped to page one. Which we did. And then the phone started ringing off the hook.
We also optimized her Google My Business listing which hadn’t been touched in forever. I use easy to keep up tactics that any business owner can use to jump to the front page of Google. And that is where the free traffic is. But once you get to page 1 you better look good!
One popular method of generating reviews is to have an iPad or a laptop at your business and asking customers to use it to review you right at the point of transaction. Don’t do that! Do you remember the little girls princess parties tried that and got hammered!
Plan to Win – aka Making Yelp Irrelevant to Your Bottom Line
Business owners can’t afford to ignore reviews because they broadcast consumer perception and impact customer purchases. Reviews deserve acknowledgment and a response, as appropriate. And yes, a quick “thank you” to the positive ones, a fuller reply if you remember and enjoy the customer, and every negative review deserves a reply that makes them feel heard and conveys to those reading that this would never happen to them. If you haven’t seen my
The key is to be everywhere, be findable, and be easy to buy from. Having contact forms or online appointment booking, easy to see galleries of your work, lots of “Lead Magnets”, like online leave-behinds we used to use when we could leave the house, these digital versions give the customers all the things they need to know in a format that lets them absorb at their own pace and book when ready. These are GREAT for filling your pipeline of future work and once in place your calendar will soon be filled to the brim.
