How to ask a customer for a review or testimonial

Customer reviews are one of the mainstays of customer confirmation and is paramount to getting found online. But how do you ask a customer for a review or testimonial for your product or services? Here are a few tips to get you started in requesting customer reviews and testimonials to hasten your business status online:

1. Simply Ask.
Amazingly this step is often overlooked. Sales people, at the end of the transaction often don’t want to bother the customer or just want to finish the sales and move on. However, asking for customer quotes or testimonials can be a way to build stronger relationships with the customer. A customer, especially a happy one, will be flattered. They will want to talk about their experience and often do by telling others about your business. Why not lead them to ask for a referral or testimonial online?

2. The key is to lead them to where to leave a referral.

Make sure it is easy, simple and quick for customers to provide the review. Provide links to sites you prefer they leave testimonials on. A good place to find sites that you want to promote reviews on is to find where your customer leads are coming from. Website Analytics (Google Analytics, Urchin…) are a great resource for this information under “Referring Sites” or better yet, ask your customers where they found you.

Don’t be afraid to give your customer guidance on what you are looking for. Tell them what you are looking for. “John, I am so thankful you are happy with our service. Would you mind giving us a review online?” Then hand a card to them outlining where and how to post a review. Clearly you would like them to indicate their name and company to the review, but it is OK if they’d like to remain nameless. An unidentified review is better than no review at all.

If the customer has practical feedback, give them an alternating path to provide that information rather than letting it go into a public review. You want to be sure to capture and address specific comments or concerns, so as to direct them to the appropriate person, email or site. Management of bad “press or reviews” can help your business grow.

3. Get easy one’s first.

Ask your happy customers for testimonials and reviews. They will be happy to assist and you can then get the ball rolling to integrate a process of asking into your sales process. Requesting past customers for reviews will let you see the value as well by demonstrating the return through more leads. A recent case is one of our clients at LuCorp Marketing said a majority of their leads come from Kudzu.com because of the testimonials posted. Through 8 reviews his company is number one on the Kudzu website for services his company provides. He gets leads all the time off the positive reviews on the Kudzu site.

4. Combine requests with an existing marketing program.
If there is a newsletter going out to all your current customers, you may want to include a message about reviewing your product or service. On your billing invoices you may want to add a thank you and “if you liked our services please consider reviewing us on….” But make this personal to the customer if at all possible.

5. TRY NOT TO BE IMPERSONAL.

Really try to take a personal and targeted approach. Determine who your most satisfied customer is, who you feel will give a review for your service or product. Be careful here though! Do not pay for reviews. The Federal Trade Commission is coming down hard on companies that pay for reviews in the future. The reviews will need to be transparent and follow a business trail. Be above board on all of this and you won’t have issues in the future!

The point is to ask and you shall receive. Many customers are happy to give their input. That’s why Yelp and Kudzu are such strong websites! People want to hear other’s experiences in this high-tech world!

The Online Review Sites

There are many online review sites out there. In fact, it is hard to keep track of all of them. Here are a few of the top ones that you could use cultivate reviews on for your business:

• Google Local
• Yahoo Local
• Citysearch
• Yelp
• LinkedIn recommendation
• Kudzu
• Trip Advisor for Restaurants and Travel

§ AzCentral

§ Dr. Review sites: Healthcarereviews, doctortree.org, arizonadoctorsearch.com, bookofdoctors.com, drscore.com

§ Angieslist

§ BBB

§ Epinions

Google Posted These Statistics

Google Just Posted this http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ : Interesting stuff!

In honor of the first full week of the new year, it seems the perfect opportunity to take a look back at 2009. Just as with our year-end Zeitgeist in early December, it's always fascinating to glimpse the collective consciousness of Google users. Beyond search queries rising for Michael Jackson, swine flu, Twitter and Lady Gaga, what else did Google searches reveal last year?

Proportion of Google users in the United States making more than one query per day:

7 out of 10

Proportion of Google users in the United States making more than 10 queries per day:

1 out of 7

Fraction of Google queries, duplicates excluded, never seen before: More than 1/3

Fraction of Google queries, duplicates included, never seen before: More than 1/5

Country with the greatest increase in Google web search traffic in 2009 vs. 2008: Indonesia*

Approximate percentage of Internet users in Indonesia: 11.1%*

Average amount of time it takes a user to finish entering a query: 9 seconds

Average amount of time it takes Google to answer a query: Less than 1/4 second

Number of search quality improvements made by Google in 2009: 540, ~1.5 each day

Proportion of Google result pages that show a map in search results: 1 in 13

Average increase in driving distance on weekends vs. weekdays on Google Maps: 11km

Median distance from a user's location to ice skating rinks found on Google Maps: 30km

Median distance from a user's location to ski resorts found on Google Maps: 300km

*World Bank, World Development Indicators

Unless otherwise noted, most of these statistics are based on our U.S. weekday traffic. We hope you enjoyed this week — and year — in search, and we're looking forward to an exciting 2010!

Posted by the Google Search Team

Google Changes are Coming!

A few interesting things have occured at Google this last month and I thought you might want to know about them:

I just sat through about a 2 hour session from Google on their new apps.

Check out Google Goggles - download this to your mobile phone - very cool! You can take a picture of the outside of a landmark and Google will tell you all about the place. Google does this for artwork, books, landmarks, etc...see the YouTube video on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhgfz0zPmH4

Also, you can access 'Real Time' postings and blogs on Google by doing a search and just under the search bar is "show options" - hit that and now you can see blogs, news, updates! Social Media postings -Facebook, Twitter, MySpace have partnered with Google to allow "real time" postings to show up in the search queries. That means that if you post and use keywords on those postings they will show up in the search queries!

Google Caffeine (Google's new search engine) is coming out in January and will move our rankings around - I will be watching this carefully to see what happens! SEO is under some significant changes this next year and those of us that work in the Internet world need to be aware of those changes! It is going to be quiet the ride!

Anyone want to comment on these changes?

Q & A for a Good Social Media Strategy

Here's some great questions to ask yourself or company when setting up a Social Media strategy:

Who do you want to talk to?

How will you engage them?

How will you market your messages?

Where do you find people to listen?

Do you know what people are saying in the target market you are in?

What do you do to help customers become part of the process? Is there something you could do or say that would entice a customer to work with you in conveying the message?

What is your value-message? Is it worthy of engagement?

What are your goals for the Social Media plan?

Can you build a stronger relationship with your client through Social Media?

AND, probably some of the most important things to consider: Are you able and willing to maintain consistency, maintain postings regularly? If not, don't attempt a program unless you want it to be short lived. Also consider that Social Media should become a part of the overall marketing and communication programs for your company.

If you haven't consider these things, be sure you do! Hire someone to give you guidance if your not sure how to set things up and to develop a strategy a plan for your company. You could also hire a company to do your postings and manage the programs for you as well. Many companies decide to do this in an effort to become consistent.

LuCorp Marketing provides both marketing strategies and Social Media Management for small to mid-sized companies. Contact us today for a quotation on your Social Media needs.

Business Week Post "Beware Social Media Snake Oil"

This is a great post about the use of Social Media for companies. The articles gist is consultants, like ourselves, need to produce results for the companies we work for and not to make unattainable promises when working with Social Media.

I especially like the Chris Brogan quote: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_50/b4159048693735.htm

Brogan quote from the article about the use of Social Media for companies: "Is it an exacting marketing science? Not at all. Partly because it's so new that we're inventing the case studies while we're experimenting with what comes out of it. Are companies asking for more and more experiences with me to see if it'll work for them? Yes."

Interview with Social Media expert Gelie Akhenblit, Founder and CEO of NetworkingPhoenix.com

The importance of Social Media in today’s business world has never been more evident. With a properly developed strategy, social media provides endless opportunities to build relationships, reinforce branding and messaging, and maximize your company’s online presence, reaching an unlimited number of targeted new contacts.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Gelie Akhenblit, Founder and CEO of NetworkingPhoenix.com, one of the Valley’s most dynamic networking and social media sites. NetworkingPhoenix.com started out as a central clearinghouse for events held by existing networking groups in the Valley, and through the effectiveness of networking and the site’s social media capabilities, has grown into a hugely popular local online business resource that is changing the landscape of small business and entrepreneurship.

In addition to maintaining the NetworkingPhoenix.com site, Gelie shares her expertise through training professionals on “how to network strategically, create a personal following, and effectively and deliberately employ the latest social media tools.” Here’s what she shared with me:

Q: What got you started developing NetworkingPhoenix.com?

A: My second job out of college was in the corporate world and about 1.5 years into it I decided that this is not the path I want to pursue. I didn’t like the restraints and knew there was something else I could do. I enjoyed networking and finding out what was going on in the marketplace. While networking, I found out there was no set place to find information about all the networking groups in the Valley, so I started thinking about developing a calendar to bring everything together and to connect people. That’s how NetworkingPhoenix.com all started- that was back in January 2008. Originally it was launched as Gelie.net and in October of 2008, we rebranded and re-launched the website.

Q: Did you go full steam into this project?

A: Yes and no. I was definitely on my journey of becoming an entrepreneur, but right when I launched, I started contracting for several companies (that was the business model for gelie.net) and worked with them for months all the while the calendar just ‘lived’ on gelie.net. I

Q: How did you get the word out about NetworkingPhoenix.com when you did the re-launch?

A: I networked like crazy and began using social media and asking my contacts to spread the word about the calendar. I asked everyone that I had already built relationships with to promote the calendar and the website through email, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and anything else that made sense at the time!

The social media promotions really took off and people started spreading the word through the various tools as well as direct email campaigns. This multiplied the free profile sign-ups on NetworkingPhoenix.com by massive amounts. The site went from 400 members in Oct. ’08 to nearly 6,100 to date. As a local site, that’s not a publication, NetworkingPhoenix.com is the most visited site in Arizona. And nearly half of the visitors are returning.

Q: Did you do other things to get website and brand noticed?

A: Yes, I developed NetworkingPhoenix.com quarterly Signature Events. The first one was held in January of 2009. I reserved the space for 150 people and approximately 600 showed up. And this event was held on the same night as the Phoenix Open – so I thought no one would show up! In March we held our second event, where 750 networkers showed up, and in August we had over 1,000 in attendance!

Q: What goes on at the events?

A: The event itself is a big Mix & Mingle. It’s really all about networking, creating new connections and giving people a chance to get together in a friendly professional environment. The testimonials that come out from this event are pretty incredible. People are always telling me about the great business connections that they made and some of these are pretty high dollar deals!

Q: Who is the event for?

A: It’s for the entrepreneur, small business owner, sales professional, person in a career transition and anyone else in between that wants to network!

Q: Do you plan on having more events?

A: Our last one of the year is being held on Thursday, November 19th, 2009, 5:00pm - 9:00pm at the Scottsdale Hilton.

Q: Why do you think this event has become so successful?

A: Probably a few different reasons. I know people like free events and they like being around like-minded individuals. You put those two things together and the ‘buzz’ around the event will spread by word of mouth. It seems the word spreads fast and people seem to create the buzz themselves. They say things like “Are you going to the Networking Phoenix event?” “Have you heard about Networking Phoenix and their networking events?” It spreads like wildfire and I am thankful for the support and plugs.

Q: Have you had any stories that show the whole social media platform in action?

A: I did a “Vote for the new Gelie headshot” campaign using social media and there was a great response. Lucky for me, everyone chose the headshot I liked best. But what was really amazing was that people who didn’t even vote would come up and say “Hey Gelie, I like the new headshot you chose”! It blew me away.

The other story comes from just sitting having lunch at Paradise Bakery and overhearing someone talking about me. I didn’t know who they were! I asked, “Are you talking about Gelie and Networking Phoenix?” They said, “Yes” and I said “That’s me!” It was wild.

Q: There’s talk that there are different skills to using social media for business. Do you agree?

A: Oh definitely. You always need to be thinking about your brand and how it is portrayed. You also want people to engage in the conversation.

Q: So what are you working on now that is part of your social media campaigns?

A: In just a bit I will be launching “Networking Phoenix TV” where sponsoring businesses will be interviewed by me about their company. It’s a 3 minute ‘newslike’ segment that will be featured in our emails as well as live on our website and be promoted through our social media channels. The business owner gets to keep the video as well for their marketing campaigns.

Q: Anything else?

A: There is always something! We are also working on providing members with “Member Deals” to give members discounts and sources of great businesses in the Valley.

The Impact of Social Media on the World

The Impact of Social Media on the World is HUGE! Take a look at this video on Youtube: 155,000 visits and growing! Thanks ClowerPower for the information!