Do you remember playing that Whack-a-Mole game when you were a kid?

You had a mallet, and you’d bonk any mole that popped its head out of the hole.

At MYM, we have our own version of Whack-a-Mole. We call it “Whack-a-Review.”

Here are the rules…

• Your online reputation is the “player.”
• MYM’s Online Reputation Management (ORM) is the “mallet.”
• Whenever a negative review about you pops up online, ORM instantly whacks it on the head, potentially forcing it back into the hole it crawled out from.

Our ORM “whacks” bad internet reviews about your company in two ways:

1. It immediately alerts you to any negative reviews that pop up or already exist on 170+ review websites across the internet. This allows you the opportunity to contact the customer that left the review to fix the situation, or respond to the review directly on the website (here’s the right way to do that).
2. When customers leave an online review directly from your website, it sends them through a review funnel. If they plan to leave you a negative online review, they are given the opportunity to discuss their experience with you first. This gives you the chance to talk to the customer, fix the problem, and get that customer to either not to post a negative review or change their negative review into a positive one. (Here’s an example of MYM ORM on a client’s website.)

In both instances, you “win the game.”

Not only do you have the ability to prevent reputation-damaging bad reviews from seeing the light of day… but you can also transform the existing ones (ones you may not know even exist) into favorable feedback about your company.

And “Whack-a-Review” is just one of the great features of our Online Reputation Management.

It also builds your online reputation by getting more of your customers to leave good online reviews. By sending your customers through a review funnel on your website, you build a strong online reputation in no time.

For instance, we recently signed up a new ORM client that had a substantial customer list they provided us.

Within the first week, our ORM generated eight new positive customer reviews for the client on Google and Facebook (two of the sites the client wants to target).

The amount of new online reviews you get per week depends on a number of factors, such as the amount of customers you have and how quickly/aggressively you want to build your online reputation.

Truthfully, creating a stout online reputation is like when the Romans built Rome—it won’t get done in a day.

But let’s assume our ORM generates you two to three new positive online reviews per week.
That’s…

• About 8 to 12 a month…
• 104 to 156 in one year…
• 208 to 312 in two years…
• 520 to 780 in five years.

Considering that studies show 9 out of 10 prospects read online reviews before contacting a contractor, don’t you think having hundreds of positive online reviews will convince people to pick up the phone and call you?

I’d bet my retirement fund on it.

So you can see just how important it is to start building your online reputation NOW.

Visit our ORM page now to find out more about how we can build, manage, and maintain a healthy, robust online reputation for your company.

And if you want to see if there are currently any negative online reviews about your company that need “whacking,” sign up for a free Lead Generation Audit. We’ll sniff them out for you.

Ready those mallets.

What if you put your customer references directly on your website?

I’m talking names, phone numbers, and email addresses of at least 15 past customers… and putting them on your website for the world to see. No opt-in required.

Do you think that would help your website conversions?

A better question…

How could putting customer references on your website NOT help conversions?

Think about it…

If you have a strong Identity that’s powerfully communicated on your website, you’re going to need to provide social proof to back up all your big claims.

And there aren’t many better ways to do that than giving prospects an instant way to talk to living, breathing people who have hired you, worked with you, and love you.

Putting references directly on your site—instead of providing them to prospects only when asked for—is also a supreme show of confidence.

You’re telling your prospects, “I’m so confident in my work, I’m giving you the names and numbers of 27 of my customers you can call right here, right now.”

Since calling a stranger can be first date levels of awkward, it’s also a good idea to provide the prospect with a list of “ice-breaker” questions to ask your references. These can include…

• Were you satisfied with the results produced by the company?
• Were there any issues during the project? If so, were they handled appropriately?
• If you needed the company, were they easy to reach and responsive?
• Did you ever feel pressured or stressed by them?
• If you had to do it over, would you choose them again?

Of course, I’ve had contractors object to putting references on their website. Here are the most common ones…

Objection 1: What if my customers don’t want to be on my website?

Easy—don’t put them on your list!

Getting a customer’s written permission is necessary, but you’ll find it is much easier to get than you think.

For example: If you’ve completed 500 jobs, and you’re shooting for a reference list with 20 names, that’s only 4% of your past customer base. Doesn’t that seem doable?

Objection 2: What if my references get too many phone calls?

Then, by all means, remove them from the list.

Let your references know up front that they can request to be taken off your list at any time, whether permanently or just for a breather.

A good solution is to rotate two or three different lists once or twice per month. You will quickly find out that only your most earnestly interested prospects actually take the time to call your list. And most of them actually WAIT until after they’ve engaged you in conversation to actually pick up the phone.

Objection 3: What about my customers’ privacy?

If you don’t want your customers’ names showing up in Google searches, have one of your website geeks code your reference page so it’s not indexed by search engines. This way if someone searches your customer’s name, your webpage will not show up in the results.

Objection 4: What if my competitors see my customer list?

Big deal.

What could your competitors do with the information, exactly? Call your customers, tell them you’re awful and try to make them talk crap about you to your prospects?

Remember, the people on your reference list are HAPPY customers. Your competitors aren’t going to do anything with this list, and even if they did, it wouldn’t affect you in any way.

Asking Can’t Hurt…

Ultimately, there’s no harm in asking your customers to be on your online reference list.

The worst that can happen is that they say “no.” The best that can happen is that you create a powerful form of social proof on your website—one that NONE of your competitors have the guts to utilize.

P.S. Is putting customer references directly on your website a gamble? No, not at all. Simply follow the steps above, and you’ve got a powerful new persuasion tool for your website. Give it a shot!

If you’re serious about getting to $10MM, you’re going to have to Master internet marketing.

That’s Master, with a capital M.

Like Steph Curry is the Master of the 3-point shot.

But honestly, most remodelers are more like a fat kid hoisting 3’s in his driveway. They’re just not very good at internet marketing

But Mastery is non-negotiable—if you want to get to $10MM. Here’s why:

1.    Every lead you ever get from any source is going to check out your website. All of them. And if you’re not careful, your website will scare them off—without you even knowing it.

2.    There are a TON of prospects wandering around the internet just waiting to be captured by you… or somebody else who is better at doing so.

To learn more about the Make The Jump Event click here.

In terms of websites: yours MUST be fresh, clean, and current. It has to turn LOOKERS into BUYERS. You have to build a case for why you’re different and better than your competitors. You have to show them plenty of evidence. You have to be convincing.

Especially considering your prices are going to be 50% to 150% higher than your competitors.

Fat kid in the driveway isn’t going to cut it.

Want to see what your website SHOULD look like? Click here, here, here, or here.

If you want to learn more about what goes into a great website, watch this webinar.

Now let’s shift gears and talk about SEO & PPC.

These are two of the least understood weapons in the remodeler’s toolkits—because sellers of SEO & PPC have been ripping remodelers off for well over a decade now.

Everyone has stories of failure and doom. And most of them are true. You do have to be careful when wading into these waters.

But flushing SEO & PPC down the toilet because some company ripped you off makes no more sense than homeowners flushing remodeling down the toilet because contractors have a bad reputation.

Get over it—there are hundreds and hundreds of leads just WAITING to be captured.

Obviously, you have to have a killer website or else the prospects that land on your site are going to draw the natural conclusion that you suck. Airball.

But beyond that, what are the rules? How does it work? What should you do?

For SEO, it’s simple. You have to add TONS and TONS and TONS of relevant, interesting, and well-written content and add it to your site.

Every. Single. Month.

Content can mean articles, blog posts, videos, geographic-specific pages, product-specific pages, case studies, project photos, online reviews—just to name a few.

Google sees all that stuff and rates you higher than your competitors who don’t put in the time and effort to do so. It’s just that simple.

But still, most SEO companies try to shortcut the process. The key words above were “relevant, interesting, and well-written.” Most companies settle for poorly written, irrelevant, and uninteresting.

Fat kid hoisting 3’s in the driveway.

And they wonder why Google keeps crucifying them.

SEO to the level you need to get to $10MM is going to cost you about $1,200 to $3,000 a month—and it strictly depends on how aggressive and good your competitors are (at SEO).

Most of our clients are on a $1,200 a month plan and are riding first page (and many #1) rankings… and rising. A few of our clients pay double that because they are in super competitive markets, or they have a few really bad reviews that we have to bury. (note: bad reviews does NOT necessarily mean they are a bad company. It often means that some idiot jack-wagon has a vendetta against them. You also need to actively manage your online reputation and reviews).

Not doing SEO is not an option. It’s 100% mandatory.

But what about PPC?

To be a $10MM company, you’re going to want to Master this one as well.

To learn more about the Make The Jump Event click here.

Google recently changed the way its search results look. The top FOUR spots are now ads, then a map, and then the “organic” (SEO) results.

Take a look:

Let me give you the short course on PPC, then give you some links to read more if you want.

PPC providers are worse than the SEO guys. There are a TON of them that have ZERO clue what they are doing. Most of them are simply taking your money and putting it on an online automated bidding platform that takes a huge chunk of the money you paid to use. You never know this except when you get crappy results. I want to emphasize—they literally have no idea what they are doing. None.

Fat kid in the driveway trying to shoot a medicine ball.

The few that don’t use an automated system have SOME clue, but almost always are generating fewer leads than you should be getting.

To get to $10MM, you have to find a great PPC company, then once you’re satisfied they’re good, SPEND AS MUCH MONEY AS POSSIBLE WITH THEM!

Why? Because every dollar they spend is going to bring you leads.

But not just leads. Leads from the people who are actively trying to find somebody to buy from!!!!

Once you have a great website and you’ve Mastered SEO & PPC, you’re ready to talk about MEDIA advertising. Radio and TV.

And radio and TV is what is going to make you a millionaire.

Next post, I’ll explain how.

Happy Marketing! For info about the upcoming 2-day seminar, click here.

P.S. Here’s a great webinar I did on SEO & PPC called “The No BS Webinar On SEO & PPC”

Click here to read more posts in my “Make The Jump” series:

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26,380

That’s the number of reviews posted per minute to one of the major online review websites.

Not per week.

Not per day.

Not per hour.

PER MINUTE.

And this is just ONE review website; consumers are leaving thousands of reviews on the 170+ other review websites every minute of every day, too. Who knows how giant the actual number of online reviews posted per minute is across all sites.

The point?

The internet is THE information superhighway, and online reviews fly fast and furious. You’re dead meat you’re not constantly up to date on your online reputation.

If you think I’m joking, consider this…

92% of consumers now read online reviews. And just one to three bad online reviews is enough to deter 67% of those consumers from doing business with a company.

I’m no math whiz, but even I can see how these numbers can completely destroy a company with bad online reviews.

And the worst part is that if you don’t constantly monitor your online reputation, you’ll never know why your sales are tanking, why your appointment book is empty, and why all the leads have dried up.

This is where MYM Online Reputation Management (ORM) swoops in to save the day.

When you utilize our ORM services, we provide you with in-depth weekly reporting covering every single detail of your online reputation.

You’ll know where your online reviews are coming from, your average score, changes to your overall rating, and a whole lot more.

Here’s a look at some of the details in our weekly report:

Reputation Overview

Review Volume And Distribution

New Reviews

And we don’t just keep our finger on the pulse of your online reputation. We actively bolster it by generating more positive reviews for your company… and potentially preventing negative reviews from ever being posted.

Our ORM leads your customers through a highly effective review funnel, sifting the good reviews from the bad.

The good reviews get posted online; the bad reviews are sent to you, so you have the opportunity to address the unsatisfied customer’s problem BEFORE they submit their review to a third-party review website.

Bottom Line: You could be hemorrhaging thousands of dollars—per day!—if you’re not up to date on your online reputation. (Remember, just one bad review can influence over two-thirds of people considering you.)

With MYM ORM, you get deep insights into your online reputation on a weekly basis. So you not only stop “bleeding green,” you also make more green. MUCH, MUCH more.

Visit our ORM webpage to find out more and get in touch with us about getting set up with our Online Reputation Management.

Be sure to use the free Review Scanner for an instant snapshot of your online reputation’s health.

P.S. You demand to be kept in the loop in every other part of your business—sales, lead flow, budget, production, scheduling, etc.—right? So why neglect your online reputation, which is one of THE most vital factors of your business’s lead generation and revenue?

P.P.S. Next post, I’ll tell you whether buying unsold ad space at a discounted price is ACTUALLY worth it… or whether you’d be better off throwing your money in a pile and lighting it on fire.

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