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Contractor Marketing Quick Tips: Online Reviews

Prospective Customers Are Looking For Proof That They Can Trust You.
Let Your Past Customers Do Your Talking FOR You.

Written by Rich Harshaw

Note: This article is part of Monopolize Your Marketplace’s ongoing “Contractor Marketing Quick Tips” series. This information is not meant to be comprehensive; it’s simply meant to give you some quick ideas.

Just about every contractor I talk to understands the value of gathering and posting customer reviews on their website. Makes total sense, right?

So then why do less than 25% of contractors have a systematic, consistent method for gathering and posting them?

Let me try to monetize the difference between HAVING and NOT HAVING customer reviews on your home improvement website. It’s about 30% of your total sales volume. If you’re doing $2 million in sales and you don’t have reviews, you should be doing $2.6 million. It’s just that simple.

Here are some quick tips to get you started:

Tip 1: Automate The Process: The failure of most remodelers to gather and post online reviews lies in their systems—or lack of systems They try to set aside time to work on it, and it just never happen. Here’s a better plan: use a 3rd party company that specializes in this kind of stuff. They’ll handle EVERYTHING for you, from contacting your customers, to posting the comments, to dealing with negative reviews. All you have to do is remember to fork over your customer list every month so they can do the rest. Monopolize Your Marketplace has teamed up with the best online reviews companies in the industry to make all of this easy and affordable. Just fill out the form on this page for more information. 

Tip 2: Make It Easy For Customers: Sure, it’s got to be easy for you to manage—but what about your poor customers? One of the WORST ways to handle online reviews is Google Reviews. Some people like it because it’s FREE, but one of the huge negatives is that your customers must HAVE and LOG IN TO their Google account in order to leave a review. Talk about a major road bump! Make sure that your customers don’t have to try very hard at all; remember, they’re doing YOU a favor! You might even want to consider giving them some kind of reward for doing so… a $10 Starbucks card or something similar.

Tip 3: Use Multiple Contact Methods: The fact is a relatively small percentage of your customers will fill out an online review if you contact them and ask them to do so via email—somewhere in the range of 10% to 30% depending on factors like the size of the project, whether or not you reward them, and the number of times you ask (2 to 3 seems to be the best). But you can boost that percentage dramatically by CALLING them on the phone as well as just emailing them. Sure it costs a bit more, but like everything else in life, things that cost a little more money tend to be worth it. Again, this is something you should probably leave to specialist or else it will probably never get done. Fill out the form below!

Tip 4: Protect Against Bogus Negative Reviews: Another downside of some online review companies is the lack of protection against negative reviews—particularly anonymous, phony negative reviews. Look, if your company just sucks—or even just makes a major mistake—and your customers call you out on it, you have to own that in the form of a bad review. It happens. But the bigger problem is the vast, anonymous internet where any jack-hole with a keyboard can ruin your reputation. If you get a false negative Google review, there’s just about nothing you can do about it.

Our system is different—and better. Any 4- or 5-star reviews are automatically posted to your profile and site. Reviews that come in 3-star or less are immediately “quarantined,” meaning, they don’t get posted live. Instead, we contact the reviewer FOR YOU (read: you do nothing) and make them verify that they are actually a customer of yours (sales receipt required). If they can’t, don’t, or won’t verify within 7 days, then the review is automatically discarded—it never sees the light of day. In the event the negative review CAN confirm they are bona fide customer, then we contact YOU and give you 7 days to fix the matter, if possible. If you can, then you can also ask the reviewer to amend their comment. If they won’t, then either you deserve the negative comment and you should own it, or if not (the customer is just a jerk), then you can post a rebuttal, which actually can work powerfully in your favor. Regardless, make sure you don’t just leave yourself exposed!

Tip 5: Post Reviews Front & Center: How many times have I seen a company go to great lengths to gather online reviews only to fumble on the 1-yard line by failing to post them in a conspicuous place (read: HOME PAGE!!!) on their website? With contractors, lots of times, that’s how many! I recommend that your reviews show up on your home page at least 3 times—once at the top of the page, once on the side in a widget, and a third on the main navigation (under ‘reputation’ or ‘reviews’). You can also use your reviews as part of your pre-positioning by emailing links and/or actual reviews to people who have set appointments with you before you show up for the meeting. And don’t be afraid to crack out an iPad in the middle of a sales meeting and show people your reviews. USE THEM!!!

Want more information on MYM’s Online Reputation Management Service? Click here for a FREE Reputation Audit, and we’ll tell you exactly where you stand in the eyes of Google.

© 2014 – 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.

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