209 – One Often Forgotten Free Way to Get New Customers with Jeremy Lessaris of irevu

Hi there.

You're listening to gift biz unwrapped episode 209 I think the

art of personal recommendations has gone by the wayside and people

look to the internet for the answer.

Attention gifters,

bakers, crafters and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one

now you are in the right place.

This is gift to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources and the support you need to grow your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Hi there,

It's Sue and thank you so much for joining me today.

I have something super special to chat with you about.

You know the number one question I get all the time

is how do I attract more customers?

How do I grow my business?

And to be quite honest,

that is a question that no matter what stage of your

business development you're in,

you'll always be striving for more.

Whether you're starting already established or have been in business for

20 years.

We're always looking to first off retain business but second to

continually attract new customers.

So today I'm going to be bringing you an idea that

clearly has not been on the charts for me,

never even gave it a thought,

but it makes perfect sense that this strategy can help grow

businesses. I met Jeremy's partner at a local chamber of commerce

networking event just a couple of months ago.

We talked about our businesses.

I understood a little bit about what he did,

but I wanted to know more.

So we met separately after the networking event,

had coffee,

really chatted about each other's businesses and that's when I saw

the value that could be brought to you guys and I

bring up this story specifically to show that this is the

way networking events are meant to work.

You go,

you meet someone,

you see if there's an opportunity or a reason to dive

in and know more and then you take it outside of

the networking event where you can really have a good conversation.

Those of you who've been hanging out with me for a

while, know that I am a proponent of face to face

networking, whether it's in your local market,

at a conference,

anywhere where you are interacting with people face to face,

it is worthwhile and you don't want to have opportunities pass

you by.

Real quickly before we get into the show,

I want to make sure that if you are not already

a part of my private Facebook group called gift biz breeze,

that you go in and join right away.

The group has been growing by leaps and bounds.

We have so engagement in there at this point and so

many wonderful minds who can help with any challenge or any

question that you have on your business.

It would be a downright shame if you weren't participating in

this resource for companionship advice,

help and to give back to other business owners too.

If you haven't joined the group already,

just jump over to gift biz breeze.com

and request to join.

Of course,

I'm going to let you in and now without any further

delay. Let's move on to my talk with Jeremy Today.

It is my pleasure to introduce you to Jeremy of I

review. Jeremy started his business at six years old,

his corporate career span 16 years as the global VP of

marketing and communications for a $16 billion a year U S

Chinese conglomerate.

build one of the fastest growing stocks in Illinois.

He is executed and integrated for mergers and acquisitions in tech

and manufacturing and sold two of his own ventures in tech

and healthcare today.

Jeremy is the owner of payment brokers,

a FinTech company.

I review an online reputation management company and original click,

a digital advertising application development and consulting agency.

Oh my gosh.

Does he have a lot going on?

Jeremy, welcome to the gift biz on wrapped podcast.

Thank you so much.

It's a pleasure to actually get to talk.

Well listen,

with all this high stuck tough,

I might challenge you with the first question of the day.

And that is we like to get to know all of

our guests in a creative way,

and that is through a motivational candle.

So if you were to picture a candle that speaks to

you, Jeremy,

what color would your candle be and what would be the

quote on your candle?

I think it would probably be whatever color a candle is

without any dyes or coloring.

So probably whatever natural color would be,

I kind of picture a off whitish bees wax or like

coconut wax candle.

I think that's probably what it looked like.

Really simple and plain.

But choosing a saying,

I have so many that I live by.

I feel like I have like a coffee book full of

them. So choosing one's kind of difficult,

but there's one that I think stands out the most and

that's, it's not what happens in life that matters.

It's all about how you react to it.

Oh, so true,

isn't it?

Yeah, I mean it defines everything for me,

especially how I started in business and just being an entrepreneur's

entrepreneur, right?

There's so many roll with the punches.

It's not really the punches.

It's really how you react and maneuver around them.

Yeah. It's how you react and also what you say to

yourself about what just happened.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Well there is so much I want to talk with

you about so we are just going to dive right in.

But I love that and that's an important point.

I could have gone down the road with that,

but I really want to stay and talk about what the

topic is going to be and that is reviews and what

that all could mean to our business.

And it's not a topic that we've talked about yet on

the show.

So I'm really,

really glad you're here to share all of your wisdom with

us. What is I review and how did it get started?

Sure. So I'll give you some background,

right? I'm a nerd and I have a group of nerds

that work together and I was in the public space and

I had this corporate career,

but I have never lost my entrepreneurial spirit.

I'm always coming up with listening to what's going on in

the market and trying to react.

Kind of going back to that saying,

it's not what happens,

it's how you react that counts.

So I think for me a lot of this was born

out of necessity of running a tech company.

So I left my corporate job,

got out of the cube farm and really started building a

web development graphic design agency.

And we were working with customers across the entire spectrum.

So from mom and pop all the way up to fortune

500 did some work for general motors and Caterpillar and other

people in that space.

But I was also looking at like the small business who

is really just trying to grow their professional group.

And I think for us what we listened to was what

was working for companies,

how did they grow,

and more oftentimes what didn't work.

And so the voice of our customer continue to push on

building referrals.

That's really what online reviews are,

right? It's a customer experience that's been published publicly as a

referral. And you were seeing success from those businesses because of

the increase of referrals.

Right? And so whether it was a personal referral or somebody

writing a review,

it made an impact and it makes an impact on multiple

levels. Right?

So being in the search engine optimization and development space,

what we found is that a lot of customers that were

putting a lot of effort and time and getting more frequent,

more relevant,

more recent reviews,

we're having better results with our optimization and search marketing efforts.

And so when we look to guys like Matt Cutts,

who's the head of search algorithm at Google and started listening

to what their issue was,

which is people were hacking the game,

right? When people were trying to be found online and get

the most visibility possible,

they were doing all of the same things.

So back in the late nineties and early two thousands you

had to have the right keywords and then everybody was using

the same keyword.

So how do you differentiate?

And then people were keyword stuffing to everything.

Yes. Everything had a billion keywords on it.

And you'd go to a webpage and you'd see like a

hundred words that didn't make sense.

Exactly. Yeah.

there was this into,

I have to have a bunch of links.

So everybody went out and got a bunch of links.

So Google has had this really hard path of how do

we provide natural results that people like that makes sense,

that quality,

because if they don't deliver quality,

it's probably stop using Google and go back to Yahoo or

someone else.

So beyond spending all this money and pay-per-click and all these

things that people are trying to do,

natural results are a product of a bunch of different,

let's just call them check boxes of things you have to

do as a company.

And I think one of the biggest things that you can't

gain is what people say about you online.

So reviews became a bigger focus for all of those companies.

shift. People spending a ton of their SEO budget in growing

their reviews.

And so we were asked by customers back then to help

them manage their online reviews.

So we did this manually,

which was somewhat difficult.

And I think back then even it was really challenging to

ask your customer to go to Google,

type in my name,

click on Google maps,

then go to the right hand corner,

click on my profile,

it slides out,

and click on write a review.

It's kind of like how getting reviews for podcasts are right

now to be quite honest,

cause it is.

It's very challenging.

So I totally get that.

So first we listened to our customers.

They said,

how do we manage this all in one place?

I got Yelp and TripAdvisor,

Google and Facebook,

and I could list a hundred different review sites.

Some of them like super specialty and niche like cars.com

and dealer rater where you're,

Hey, I want to go buy a car all the way

to picking an attorney and the lawyer reviews and there's so

many different niche market review sites.

How do I manage all this in one place?

So we set out to put this in a bite sized

way to manage your online reputation.

And that was Paul the reviews into one place.

So you can easily find out what's going on no matter

what channel it's on,

respond in one place and just make it simple.

But the impact there is just visibility,

right? So the,

so what of this is,

how does that impact my business?

Knowing what's going on,

being in tune with what your customer is saying and listening.

I think that's the key.

And really I think why people choose one business over another

is a huge piece of what other customers are saying.

If you have a bunch of raving lunatic fans,

like let's just talk about Apple,

and there's a really good book on this specifically.

Tony Robbins talks about it in his business mastery course.

Ken Blanchard,

I think his name is Sheldon Bowles.

They have a book called raving fans.

The main problem with having these fans is we don't ask

them and I think we lost the art of asking for

their help.

Can you please go right in review.

And then when you do,

you lose even a bigger percentage of people going online and

going all the way through that process to the end and

actually doing it.

I will,

I'll say just to Give you a little more insight into

the people who are listening here,

Jeremy, is we also are uncomfortable asking in the beginning.

So it's not only when a customer is willing,

it's hard for them to actually do it.

We find it hard to even ask.

See, but my sister's a scrapbooker.

She made me a scrapbook for my 21st birthday was amazing.

I mean,

she lives in this world and I think creatives pour their

hearts into their work and their customers rave about the attention,

the quality,

and those are the things that need to be public.

Right? So we lost the art of asking because I think

we're in this age of text and email where people even

barely handshake anymore.

And in this personalization world you have so much more depth

of your customer.

So makers and creators that are doing things like this,

I think they have a much bigger impact on their end

customer. Then you know,

somebody buying a widget from some random website.

Good point.

I agree with you because it's a much more personal purchase,

Right? So I think we expect people to go and do

it on their own,

but they just don't,

everybody gets busy and by the time you open your computer,

and at least I know this for me,

someone's like,

Hey, can you help me with this?

I look at the email and then another email comes and

then my phone rings and then it's gone.

Right now it's 400 emails deep and you kind of lose

it. So I think the personalization of that is the creatives

are delivering to their customers should be in the same respect

how they ask for people's opinion or help to better improve

their services and also help them grow their business.

I mean there's no shame in asking for help to grow

your business,

right? So I think saying,

Hey look,

this means the world to me.

Please help us by sharing the truth about your experience with

our services or with our product.

That personal ploy that's a dedicated request,

not at the bottom of a receipt or somewhere else and

not offering anything in exchange other than,

cause I think a lot of people are like,

well what do I have to give people to do that?

Nothing. You just have to ask.

Right? And you can make it simple too.

Like if someone says something,

this is a big thing.

If someone says something to you about your product,

Oh my gosh,

I love what you just said.

And then you repeat it to them and say,

would you be willing to do a review and say just

that. Because I think the other issue is so many people

don't know what to say in a review.

So they get to a blank page and they're like,

what are the words?

And we read so many of these reviews,

it's like great tacos.

That was it.

I'm like,

that was the review.

I mean not really descriptive.

Is that enough?

Does it make an impact?

Yes. Right.

So let's just say you're looking at it to dentist's office

and one's got 500 reviews and there are 4.9

star and the other one's got six in there are 3.6

star. Which one are you picking?

I mean the choice is obvious.

Not everybody's going the extra step to go through each individual

review and read them.

They do exist.

Those people are out there,

but I think there's more review conscious consumers than ever before

and Google has made it an absolute point and everybody can

take this homework back because I think it's something everyone should

do. Search your service and your local area and the first

thing beyond the ads that people pay for every click for

the first thing that shows up on Google now is reviews.

It's the number one thing and Yelp has built its back

off of being the first result in Google because people search

Google, they didn't originally search Yelp.

So when you look at this holistically,

people are looking for social proof to make that decision and

focusing some energy on this.

I'll say this as the single most impactful thing that a

business can do to impact their visibility,

what customers perceive about their business and ultimately their rank across

multiple channels.

And that's Yelp,

TripAdvisor, Google,

Facebook, you name it.

And I think social proofing has brought so much more value

to companies rather than investing in position.

So I would take your budget and shift it towards reviews

because it says much more about who you are than the

first result.

As you're talking about this,

I'm thinking of how we behave when we're purchasing,

let's just say Amazon cause everyone knows Amazon,

right? When you're looking at purchasing,

I don't care what it is,

whether it's a book or an outfit or a product,

whatever. What's the first thing you do is you look at

the reviews,

see the reviews,

see what people are talking about,

and then you make your choice on purchasing.

So it's interesting that as consumers we look at it and

we do that.

But then as business owners we forget that that's what people

are doing back to us on our whole business.

Nobody's stayed at a vacation hotel without looking nobody.

I think that's the number one thing.

People, they have good reviews,

restaurant recommendations,

you're looking at reviews.

I think the art of personal recommendations has gone by the

wayside and people look to the internet for the answer,

but that's only a fraction of it,

right? So growing your reviews is step one.

Now you have a ton of reviews,

you're getting good frequency,

you're getting more relevancy.

People are writing positive things about you.

That's a huge benefit.

It impacts SEO by 30% so if you're doing search engine

marketing and you're struggling and failing citations is one,

which is making sure that other sites,

multiple sites have the correct information across all of it.

But the second part of that is that there's activity in

those citations,

meaning that people are interacting with it and there's new random

content. Google loves that,

right? You can't fake,

well, you can fake reviews,

but you can't game the entire system with a bunch of

fake reviews.

At some point,

these people get caught Well,

and there's only so many people you also know to say,

Hey, I know you haven't used my product,

but will you just go write a review?

Which is why frequency is a big part of this.

People are like,

well now I have 500 reviews,

I'm good.

I'm like,

well, let's put that in perspective.

So let's take it to this step of I'm going to

stay at this hotel for vacation next week.

But they haven't had a review in two years.

I mean,

that's a pretty bad signal.

So it's current and regular reviews,

Right? Recent.

Frequent, relevant.

Okay. So I am going to make an admission here to

the full audience.

I haven't ever even looked at reviews at all until I

connected with Jeremy and Carter who also worked with I review

and just started using their system.

So I know nothing.

I'm a novice.

I think we had five reviews from like five years ago.

So like my account now,

Jeremy, I don't know if you took a look at it

in preparation for this call,

but there was like nothing there.

So I'm going to be a really good example as we

move forward of how this can help you.

But I also don't know a lot,

which is good cause that means I'm going to ask some

questions, hopefully give biz listeners that you would have,

but maybe some also some very basic questions.

So really quick cause I don't want to let this pass.

You're talking about how growing reviews helps you with SEO.

Well, SEO obviously we look at it as our websites for

keywords on our different pages.

All of that type of thing.

When you have reviews to your business,

is Google interacting with that and then seeing your SEO from

your website pages?

Is that how SEO increases?

So there's a million things that Google looks at.

They don't just look at Google reviews,

they look at Facebook reviews,

they look at Yelp reviews,

they aggregate all of this data together,

and they call that socialization.

They look at this and say,

how social are you?

How are interactive as a community talking about you?

How frequent and recent and relevant are those conversations?

So it's a big algorithm and nobody has all of the

answers to how that works.

What we do know is that from the experts who track

and trace search engine optimization specialists,

and even people from Google search team have said there's a

much bigger focus on what the community thinks is number one,

versus all the keywords you put in your website and how

many links blink back to your business.

So it's a big impact.

But then engaging with these customers and listening to what they

have to say is the second piece of how reviews can

help your business.

So responding to reviews,

listening to what people are saying in those reviews.

And I did look at just looking at your account specifically,

you've had more reviews in a short period of time since

January Cause that's when I started with you.

You've had 30% of all of your reviews came from the

last two months.

Right. That's amazing.

If had you been doing that before?

All of the efforts and time and focus in looking at

the business as a whole.

Somebody sees your business,

the story is they have hundreds of reviews over years.

They've obviously been trusted and I think this is the picture

of the generation who just looks at the reviews and they're

just like,

they either exist or they don't exist.

Right. It's not like they know the business personally,

like you know it.

So I think this just makes that voice of your business

public. So when you say listening and engaging,

obviously if someone is writing a review,

we want to thank them.

We're showing them that we're appreciating them reaching out and taking

this extra step for sure.

And then when you talk about the fact that Google is

looking at what else is happening on the other platforms,

does engaging,

for example,

with your audience on Facebook,

not a review,

but just within the feed.

Does that also count?

Yeah, and I'm happy to share with your listeners and you

personally a chart that was put together by a fairly large

company in the search engine optimization space.

These are the biggest brains in this business and they listed

all of the signals that they believe from their testing and

validation Google looks at and they put a percentage of weight

based on all of these things that you should doing as

it relates to how you rank on Google and other search

engines including search engines like Yelp and TripAdvisor and even some

of these other ones because they all have a similar interest,

which is to deliver quality first.

There's a ton of things you can do,

but reviews does about 30% of impact to your rank and

engaging with those customers,

including engaging on the reviews on Facebook,

makes an impact longterm.

So if you were to figure of all the activities and

I'd love to have that sheet,

by the way,

is it a link or something you can share with me?

I'll send you a,

it's a whole presentation,

but there's one page specifically that's super easy to digest and

it just basically lists out here are all of the things

that we believe Google looks at and here is the weight

of percentage of what,

how that impacts your search rank.

Beautiful. Okay.

Give biz listeners,

I will put that in the show notes so that you'll

be able to capture that and take a look at it

afterwards. Not now afterwards.

Of course.

Okay, so would you then say Jeremy,

that of all the different things people can be doing the

reviews at 30% if you start focusing on that and you

haven't before,

someone like me,

you're going to see some changes.

Yes. So I said this before and I stick to this.

It's the single most cost effective impact you can make as

it relates to marketing your business online in any way,

shape or form.

Cause paper clicks,

expensive. We all know that.

Search engine optimization as a guessing game that is expensive and

I've been in that business for a long time and I

understand it,

but it's just a very big expense to a lot of

companies for a long period of time.

It's still a viable thing that you should do.

Doing email and various other activities.

Asking somebody for review is free.

You don't have to use,

I review,

but you don't have to use any kind of reputation management

platform. You can simply ask and that act of asking is

worth so much more than everything else you're doing because it

impacts SEO.

It impacts your customers' experience of how they look at you.

It impacts what people do when they find you and could

ultimately make the purchase decision for somebody just on the generic

quality of how many reviews you have.

Yeah. You know,

I always say that word of mouth.

When someone is telling another friend about a product or a

service, that sale is almost made by the time someone comes

to you from a referral.

You just have to bring it over the finish line,

but they're already buying into your business or your product because

they've someone else they've trusted,

referred you.

Now when that's person to person,

it's a little bit more intense and I think successful than

online, but think of all the people that you can reach

when you have those reviews online.

Yeah, and I would tell you that,

I think I said this so that the art of personal

referrals has really significantly slowed because people just text and email

and there's really no more,

all you gotta use this.

We called it,

I got a guy,

I got a guy that does it.

Really, I think that age has kind of shifted and more

millennials and generations who are really focused on,

I can figure it out.

I'll just go online and see what everybody else is saying.

It's just at your fingertips.

So it makes it super easy for somebody to go on.

Look at it.

I see Yelp,

you're a 3.6

Google, you're a 2.1

everything's bad.

Probably not going to pick that company.

So it simplifies the decision making process.

But so it can be powerful,

but it can also be really impactful for people who don't

put energy into it.

Because most people don't take the energy to write good reviews.

But I can tell you from my personal experience,

I'm not a review writer,

but I've had some really bad experiences.

I'm happy to go.

Right? So people are more apt,

which is what Yelp built their business on was people writing.

It's kind of like complaint board.

They built their business on people writing negative reviews.

And that's what people are looking for.

I think most people from what we've read in studies,

they gravitate right towards the first negative review they can find

because they want to know the dirt.

Anybody can write a positive review,

but it's the negative ones that'll tell the story.

So I think people look for that.

And if you're not asking for the good ones,

you're more apt to get more bad ones than good.

Right. Because that's an action someone can take if they've had

a really bad experience.

Yeah. And I think I'm gonna change my candle.

Just, it should say you don't get what you don't ask

for. Okay.

I love it.

I'll allow you to have both.

Okay. Give biz listeners.

I'm sure you are truly recognizing the value of reviews.

As we've been talking through all of this,

we're going to continue sharing how you can make reviews work

for you after a word from our sponsor.

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Okay. I want to talk about these bad reviews again in

a second,

but I don't want to lose track of the first part

of what we were talking about,

which was talking about what actions to take.

The first thing you said was growing your reviews,

cause obviously you have to have those to do anything else.

Then second was engaging and listening.

Are those the only two things or is there something else?

The last step in that process is marketing those reviews.

Oh, talk about that.

So you have a good review on Google.

Not everybody's looking at Google.

So posting that positive review on Instagram,

posting it on Twitter,

on Facebook,

on LinkedIn,

so that you're showing proof that other people,

it's called social proofing,

that other places that are validated like Google,

people are writing positive things about your business.

So multichannel marketing those reviews is super impactful because those followers

that you built up,

they engage and they think a lot of people,

they post their crafts.

And I think that's just as important.

I think it's more important for people to see that other

people enjoy the quality and the service and the whatever it

is that you're delivering.

Right? So I think that has just a big of an

impact. And so taking those reviews and putting them on your

website, taking those reviews and posting them on social,

I think that's a huge value that a lot of companies

aren't doing.

I'm starting to see a trend more and more towards that

and I review it,

starting to build tools to automate that process.

But I think the point there is it's helpful and this

is all stuff you can do with little cost without having

a reputation management system ask,

listen and market them,

put them out there.

Perfect. In the marketing.

First off,

I'm really excited to hear that.

I review is looking at automating that.

So do that fast.

I'm really excited.

But do we have to ask a person who's left a

review if we can then post it?

No. So it's public domain,

right? It's a one sits on Google and it's public.

It's public domain to post other places.

Google doesn't have any terms or conditions of them not being

republished. There's been some cases we've seen in the past where

people use their profile picture in their Google profile.

So there are some sensitivity there.

So if it's a,

we have a customer who is a fertility clinic.

So some of those may be you don't want to republish,

it's already hard enough for them to write it.

So you have to think through it from your business.

But for crafters,

I don't see any reason why you can't republish a review.

No. And if anything,

it brings more eyes to your business.

And I think there's a way to say it too.

It warms my heart when we get reviews like this.

Thank you.

Mary loved that you came in and chatted with us today

in the shop,

but like something,

so you're giving back to the person who's reviewing and it's

not just like,

Oh look at me.

You know?

And the more people engage with that,

you can tag your customer and you can engage with their

customer in that social space.

It just replicates the total number of impressions that people see

this rather than it just sitting on Google's review platform.

Right. So,

and the fact that it came from Google and that it's

not this testimonial that you wrote on your website gives it

more clout.

I see a lot of websites that people have customer page

and I'm like,

all right,

let's go look at it.

And it's these generic written things that they just post.

So having a way to actually put a Google review with

a link back to the originated Google review,

that just further validates that it's real.

Right. So I think it just gives it some more benefit

than just being some Britten testimonial on your website platform that

you could have just as easily written and put John Smith

on. Right.

My mind is spinning now already.

That's good.

Yeah. So we'll get into,

I review a little bit more in a second,

but what I want to bring this up here now too

is the link that I have for you guys that I

can give people to go and leave a review includes Google

and Facebook.

Would you say those are the top,

well, they're the top two for me,

but why do we have Google and Facebook through I review.

So every business has a focus that I think is important

to them,

right? Google is number one for everybody.

I don't care if you're a restaurant or retail a hotel.

When we work with the hospitality industry,

TripAdvisor is the number one thing because people use TripAdvisor globally

to select their vacation property.

So when you start looking at what channels have the biggest

impact, we look at what's the goals of the business you're

trying to engage more socially.

Are you trying to impact SEO?

Google and Facebook are the big two where Yelp comes in

is really only restaurants and it's because Yelp has such a

reputation of so many bad reviews and so much confusion around

what actually makes it to Yelp and what doesn't.

We ask a lot of restaurants to focus on that specifically.

So for your group,

yes, go on Facebook a hundred percent we would most likely

consult you down that path because we think it will have

the biggest impact.

Absolutely. And I agree with it a hundred percent I was

just curious cause the other thing that I wanted to just

bring up to listeners too is there are lots of ways

you can also ask for reviews,

not just one on one.

Like if you have a customer that's on the phone with

you or they've been in the shop or you've done a

face to face transaction,

you can put a link at the bottom of your emails.

Now is that going to be clicked on as much as

other things?

Not necessarily,

but it could be worth one or two reviews a month

depending on how you worded it,

that type of thing.

The other thing you can do is you can put it

in onboarding customer service emails,

so if you're doing some type of a sequence through,

I don't care who constant contact a Weber,

whoever you use and you are thanking someone for being a

new customer of yours and another email talks a little bit

more about the business.

Whatever it is.

You can include an email in there about reviews too so

you can put things in that can automate the capturing of

reviews and that's what we're going to be doing with our,

I review Jeremy.

We haven't done it yet because we're right now going after

people who have already been in business kind of like with

us out for a while,

like making up for lost time with the people of course

and we don't want to bombard the system with too many

reviews cause that's going to look false.

That's going to flip a trigger somewhere about like,

Hey, even though they're real reviews,

if we do that all at once,

it's not going to look right.

Yeah. And I'm a further that for you.

Yes, please.

It's super important that people understand,

you know,

if you have 5,000

customers and you're like,

Hey, I'm just going to set out a mass email to

all 5,000

customers so I can have a bunch of reviews,

no review platform likes that,

right? You get one review over the last two years and

then all of a sudden you have 5,000

they're going to flag them all and they're going to even

potentially put your Google my business listing at risk.

So we always tell people to do this naturally as you

would as if these were natural customers.

So we generally take the list and we split it up

over a year because it's not about the short term growth,

it's also about frequency.

So you want to try to have a steady pace of

growth and frequency and consistency cause that's what impacts search engine

optimization and some of the other value pieces.

Also customers will look at it.

You have 500 reviews from yesterday and then today you have

none, Right?

And for the next three months you have nothing.

So definitely split it up.

You can email.

Text is the number one thing.

I know that there's some regulations around texting your customer,

so make sure you follow the direct marketing association rules of

text messaging.

But if you're already using text as a form of communication

with their customer,

it's the most common way to get all the way to

the end.

Email tends to get buried.

So if it's not dedicated,

when I say dedicated,

like it's gotta be a review specific email,

putting it at the bottom of your signature is as helpful.

The throughput's less than 1% posting it on social media.

Again, here you have 25,000

followers. I don't recommend it.

Well, how about messaging?

A new Facebook contact who's just purchased and you've just connected.

So not putting it out there publicly,

but sending them a message.

Hey, so happy that you love this.

If you could,

here's a link to a review or do a review on

Facebook. Something like that,

but a little more managed than mass.

I'm glad you brought that up and this would be a

good time then to talk about bad reviews.

Let me ask you this,

and this is personal experience,

right? I just was mentioning that we have not paid attention

to reviews at all.

And so we looked at the reviews that we did have,

you know,

we had a couple of good ones and then we had

several bad ones.

And this is five years ago,

this was at a time in my business where someone got

caught trying to steal our software and the reviews are from

people that I don't know.

So I think they were planted reviews.

Like we know all our customers and we also know their

Facebook handles or like you know,

wherever these look like they were planted negative reviews.

So it's challenging cause you can't,

so when we consult people about negative reviews,

we have a lot of customers who are like,

look, can we get 5,000

reviews a month?

Not all of them are going to be perfect And they

shouldn't be because it doesn't Look honest then either.

I mean we have companies that do have all five stars

and I said it's okay to get four stars and that

you don't cause.

Some people are selective like I'm only going to send them

to customers are super happy,

like that's not good either and that's where a company like

ours or any other review and reputation management solution can help

curve some of the negative ones more towards a personal conversation

with them versus going public.

But I think the point with negative reviews is you have

to respond,

right? There are ways to have them removed.

It's very difficult to do in cases where it's slanderous.

If there's any use of somebody's name specifically calling out their

first and last name,

if there's any hate or other speech that doesn't follow the

terms and conditions of that review platform,

then you can flag it.

You can request that it be removed,

but you have to state the point that doesn't match the

terms of use of the site.

And there's a lot of them that they have to follow.

But for the most part,

99.9% of reviews,

you cannot get them removed.

What you can do is be connected to them,

respond to them.

And my number one piece of advice here is take it

offline. Do not try to have a public breakup,

a review site.

I think the most important,

especially with someone like this,

you said you don't know him.

Hey look,

I was unable to find you as one of our customers,

but we take this very seriously.

We'd love to communicate with you.

Please contact us immediately.

There's a great book about this from Jay bear.

Hug your haters and he talks specifically about how you respond

and Jeremy at what you're saying is exactly what he says

is you respond only once.

You show you're concerned and then you say,

I'm going to private message you.

I'd like to get you on the phone.

Like something like that.

And if someone keeps wanting to keep it online and keep

the ball rolling,

you don't respond again one time and one time only because

that shows your audience that you're listening and you care and

everyone gets the fact that some people are just going to

keep going with a topic for whatever reason.

You can't make everybody happy either.

I mean I know there's companies,

they provided their service,

they did everything they can and especially in the crafting world,

design is really relative to the end customer,

right? So I think it's challenging cause you can't make everybody

happy. Somebody going to write something negative.

The point is to be connected to it.

Be prompt and responding so that people know you're listening,

that you care and that you do want a resolution.

That's it.

But take it offline.

We have a lot of restaurant tiers who they take it

personal and they attack like my food is the best.

You came in and you created a scene and it's like

don't go there cause they're just going to,

your voice is now public.

Right. And you can't remove it.

So the goal is to try to take it offline and

then look,

if you can get ahold of the customer,

you can ask them to remove it.

It happens all the time.

Companies focus a lot of energy on outside mitigation at whatever

cost to have people remove that review.

Like listen,

we'll refund you whatever.

But please can you take the review down cause it really

impacts our business.

So someone who initiates A review can remove a review.

That's correct.

Perfect. Okay.

So how do you measure if this is working?

So I'm just starting like we said and I've started to

get reviews and my reputation has increased so I can see

that through the whole review platform and app and all of

that. But how do I know and how do I equate

it to increased sales?

Yeah. So I think from that perspective,

every business is like a snowflake.

We look at what's valuable to you and I think from

a reputation side,

like we can help you grow your reviews,

but is it going to impact you and in what ways

do you want to track it and how are you currently

tracking? If it's just sales focused,

it's hard to say this is a direct result of somebody

going online and seeing our reviews and then making a purchase

decision, right?

Unless you're asking your customers that feedback,

it's hard to correlate the two together.

So what we look at is how does it impact your

rank? Are you more visible?

What do people see when they find your business?

And that's really where the value piece starts.

I think the other piece is if you're marketing those reviews,

do you see engagement?

Right? So we have a business that was getting a ton

of reviews and they're like,

look, search rank is great,

but like clicks to our website are the same cause they

track and you can look at this.

Google has free analytical tools for you to track your business

and track how many times people get directions to your office.

And how many times they've clicked the call.

So there's a bunch of different ways and points that you

can track to see if those are increasing.

What we look at is generic.

Did you get more reviews,

does your business look better?

Because we believe that has an immediate impact on your bottom

line. And for most people their topline because they weren't visible

or they've been spending a ton of money on search engine

optimization, now they see a different rank.

But that's stuff that I think the business has to already

be tracking in order for us to say how did we

impact it?

Yeah. Cause you have to have a baseline to measure against.

Absolutely. So our baseline is always like I looked at yours

and said okay,

how many reviews have you had in the history?

And all of a sudden you've had more than 30% of

your reviews came over the last month and a half.

That's amazing.

So we see a longterm value to that.

And the short term value is that you're also engaging with

your customers.

So if you have another touch point for you to continue

to sell and build your business,

we believe that reviews is another piece for that,

right? It's a cyclical thing.

You get more reviews,

people see more reviews to get more business.

So we try to look at it and measure it from

that perspective.

Got it.

Okay. So give biz listeners.

The business that I have that we're using IRA view for

is the ribbon print company.

It's not gift biz unwrapped.

Just so you know,

we might be adding that in at a later date,

Jeremy, but right now it's the ribbon print company.

So if you wanted to see it in the works in

terms of reviews and all of that,

that's what you would Google to see what we're doing here.

So, and I'll be talking more about it for sure within

the Facebook group.

If you're not a member of the Facebook group already,

gift biz breeze is where you would go to join.

But I will be talking about the success that I'm having

with I review as we continue on.

So you'll learn more about my experience as we go.

Okay. I want to talk specifically about I review and what

you offer,

but I don't want to cut short.

Any other important point that you think we need to address

with reviews?

I think I can even just talk generically,

right? The reason I'm on this,

cause we got into this business because people needed help.

I think if I were to just say,

here's some generic things you can do,

make it easier for people to write reviews,

right? I review can help you do that.

We simplify the process.

We cut out all the steps of do this,

do that,

do this,

do that.

Give them multiple options.

Not everybody has an email account.

Not everybody has a Facebook account,

so having some options for people to leave reviews and different

sources spread it out.

You don't want to have all your eggs in one review

basket unless you make baskets.

So the point is that get more reviews.

Make it easier.

Listen, look at what people are saying.

We have some big customers that have hundreds of locations and

we take all that data and pair it down.

There's a lot of good insight about what's going on in

your business.

For people who are small entrepreneurs,

it's one thing,

but when you get have a multi location businesses and you

want to kind of get the pulse across the entire range

of your locations,

it's a good tool to go in and look at the

business from an analytical perspective,

respond, be connected.

You can use our platform to do it.

We simplify it.

We pull everything into one place,

but whether we're using us or not,

try to stay on top of what reviews are being written.

Try to respond in a reasonable amount of time,

like two business days,

three business days.

Let people know that you're listening.

I think people that know companies are connected,

they feel more comfortable about making buying decisions with that company

because they know if they have an issue,

they know they're connected everywhere.

That's also why people are very social with social media,

right? They love companies that are more social because they feel

like there's more voice and then when you're responding,

I think responding to good ones is okay,

but respond to the bad ones at a bare minimum,

please do that.

So being notified of what's bad,

where it's at,

what's going on,

that's what I review can help.

But if you don't do it with our review,

at least respond to the negative ones on Google and Facebook.

That's a key piece of this.

And then taking those reviews and market them right.

So using our review as a tool to do that,

sharing your reviews on social,

we develop a very simple widget that goes on your website

and automates that process.

It pulls in four and five star reviews and publishes them

on your site and real time.

So you get a Google review.

It automatically posts whether you use our system or you take

screenshots and upload them to your site.

I think market the reviews the best way you can because

I think that is the biggest value here.

Getting new reviews is great.

Having a ton is good,

but if nobody sees them,

it's not as valuable.

Right, exactly.

This is fabulous and the best thing you guys is,

there's no excuse.

All that Jeremy just talked about can be done for free.

Absolutely. And you can start this afternoon just putting all of

this in place.

If people want to know more about I reviewed Jeremy,

where would they go And go to?

Our website is www.irevu.com.

So a little tricky on the name,

But perfect.

Yeah. Perfect.

Perfect. And it will also be in the show notes as

you guys all know.

So this has been such fabulous information,

Jeremy. Now on behalf of myself and my listeners,

we would like to offer you a virtual gift.

It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future or

your future of I review whatever you care to share.

This is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable Heights

that you would wish to obtain.

Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.

What is inside your box?

Wow, that's a deep one.

This is the law of attraction in play here.

Yeah, so I think we would wish for success and wellbeing

and everything,

but I think we're there,

right? We're in a unique space where we've been successful over

the years.

I came from this great background,

so I think what would be in that box is us

seeing others around us grow,

being able to grow with them,

so us being able to empower our customers to be successful

is really why we got into this.

It's not a necessity for us.

Have millions of customers and make millions of dollars.

I think for us it's really just being able to have

a solid community,

a mastermind,

if you will,

of everybody being successful together,

so that's probably what would be in the box for me.

I love that,

Jeremy, because I think we all know if we're just chasing

the money,

it doesn't come as easily.

You have to have your heart and have a higher mission

than just money.

The money then just comes naturally from there.

Yeah. I mean,

like I said,

we've been successful already.

We've built,

I mean for me especially,

I've built and sold from the ground up entrepreneurship all the

way through acquisition.

This will be my fourth company doing that.

And I love it.

I'm the entrepreneur's entrepreneur.

And so for us to be able to help and empower

other people to be successful with something,

that's a tool that's makes everything easy.

Because I think what's happening now is everything is going towards

this AI,

artificial software will do everything.

But we have a saying more recently that we've put on

our website,

even it says where people powered,

right? So you can have the best tools in the world,

but without people behind it,

without having the consultative approach of how do I make this

work for me?

You have nothing.

I mean,

what my business is would have never been successful without people

doing podcasts like you and like listening to those who have

been successful at it.

So for us to be able to share that knowledge and

kind of pay it forward,

that's really strong for us.

That's really where we want to be.

Beautiful. Well.

Thank you so much for your time today and all of

your information.

I think we've opened the eyes definitely for myself and our

listeners with something that they can really solidly do today to

grow your business.

So for that I thank you,

really appreciate your being here today.

Great. Thanks for your time.

I appreciate it too.

Well there you have it.

You asked for it and you've got it.

Another very intentional and strategic way to attract more customers to

your business And the thing that's so great about it is

you can do this without spending a single penny.

It just takes a little bit of forethought,

your time and implementing the strategies that Jeremy shared with us

today up next week.

I'm very excited to have yet another on air coaching call.

I am so enjoying these calls.

I think I mentioned that earlier to you.

I hope you are liking them just as much as I

am and if you are,

feel free to shoot me a note and tell me so

or let me know.

Other things that you'd like to hear on the podcast.

I've had a couple of you already share with me some

ideas of something that you would like me to cover here

on the show.

That really helps me as I continue to look for guests

and bring people on and also the questions that I asked

so honestly and truly I'd love to hear from you and

to do that just jump over to Sue at gift biz,

unwrapped.com and let me know your thoughts and your questions equally

as good.

If you haven't done so before and are so inclined,

I would be so thankful if you went over to iTunes

and left a review there.

That's a nice reciprocal act because it helps the show get

more visibility so that's great for the podcast and I also

will select certain reviews and I read them out at the

beginning of the show.

I didn't do that for this show,

but I am sprinkling those in periodically as we go along.

Maybe your review will be one that's featured on air.

I think this is a good time to call it a

wrap and I look forward to being together again next week.

On the gift biz unwrapped podcast.