- Today we're talking about the two most important places
you should be putting reviews,
and the five ways to get it done.
How many reviews can I read about your business?
Let me tell you right now, my friend,
we are living in what we call the review economy.
Let's talk about some stats.
What do we know?
90% of consumers, 90% of consumers are gonna Google
and read reviews before they engage with the business.
Now you know that and I know that,
but the stat that I was most interested in,
that my team shared with me this morning is this,
that 77% of consumers believe that a review that's
90 days or older is no longer relevant.
So, if you're sitting here right now with 10, 20, 30
Zillow reviews,
or Yelp reviews,
or Google reviews,
the question is, ready?
Number one, how are we gonna add more reviews?
And number two, where are you gonna start to place them?
That's what we wanna cover today on this show.
So let's jump in right to the obvious, right?
Where should you be housing your reviews?
I'm gonna say to you, the two obvious ones,
because you're in real estate,
is Google and Zillow.
Let's talk about Zillow.
They were early in this.
They pioneered it.
I was a huge champion of it.
I knew seven years ago that consumers,
we used to read 'testimonials'.
Remember testimonial letters?
Or my dear friend, Ken Kerry, right?
Who's the king of infomercials would say to us,
you know, that 75% of a television infomercial
is that person saying 'I got thin thighs' in 30 days
or less without diet and exercise.
Those, you know, testimonials always move the needle.
So, obviously we know Zillow.
They've done a fantastic job,
and we have clients today that are adding in their
marketing over 100 five-star reviews,
because it moves the needle.
They get the traffic, you know that.
So Zillow, check check, it's a no-brainer.
Now the question is, what about Google?
What about Google?
So here's what I wrote down.
If you haven't created a Google plus page, right?
Some of you would call it a personal page
or a business page.
In your case, either one is fine.
You get a gmail account.
You create your Google plus page.
This, my friends, is the new opportunity for reviews
that I want you to take advantage of.
So I wrote down, there's three big benefits
to doing Google reviews.
Number one, the obvious,
is the additional social credibility that you gain
when a customer, when they Google you, right?
So you know they meet you at a cocktail party and
they're like, uh, Jillian, yeah.
Let me, okay, oh, oh, right?
And they can immediately read, you know,
20, 30, 40 reviews showing up on Google without,
my friends, having to click on any of those links.
They see it right there in the right side.
So that's the obvious one, right?
Instant social credibility.
Number two, Google loves fresh, relevant content.
Some people call it like geo-data.
Some people call it micro-data.
At the end of the day, the more often you're adding
reviews to your Google page,
let me tell you what happens, my friends.
It is the secret sauce of SEO.
I'll share with you a little stat, ready?
We started this in January of 2018.
We've added 874 reviews since we started that.
We've had a 47% increase in organic traffic to our site,
just by asking for reviews.
Just by getting those reviews, my friends.
Google loves fresh, relevant, micro, geo content.
So by adding reviews monthly,
you're hacking the Google algo rhythm,
aka generating more traffic.
Plus, again, what I want to stress to you is,
your site is going to be,
I wanna make sure I say this to you right.
Your site will be organically ranked higher,
which means again, more eyeballs,
more traffic.
And when people go to your website and they're looking
at listings,
they can watch a few videos,
they can read maybe some of these reviews,
'cause you're putting them there as well,
and at the end of the day, they convert, right?
Where they call you, they text you, they email you,
they click on your site.
You're going to get business and that's the goal.
Number three, if you're running ads,
which we certainly run ads and I strongly recommend
you're doing the same.
If you're doing paid search, Google will tell you
your cost per lead is going to go down and the real
kicker is, your quality score because you have all those
reviews on Google, your quality score goes up.
Your cost per lead goes down.
And at the end of the day, what's super cool,
is Google will automatically add your five-star review
rating to all your ads.
That, my friends, is a no-brainer.
So, let's stop for a second.
Let's go through 'em again.
Obviously, social credibility,
when they're searching for you,
when they're trying to figure out are you real.
Number two, Google loves the fresh, relevant content.
So we have to be asking ourself,
can I just do this once?
Or is this something I need to be doing every single month?
For us, it's every week.
Adding more reviews every week.
That fresh content, right?
Hacking the Google logo rhythm,
and then again, if you're running ads,
because you're quality score goes up,
your cost per lead goes down,
and they add that five-star ranking to your ads,
which is a huge bonus.
So, I think the benefits to both Zillow and Google
are really obvious.
So then the question is, how do we get more reviews?
So I've actually got five different things you can do.
Five different ways you can generate it.
Four are the obvious ones for rock stars like yourself,
and I've got one if you're a brand-new agent.
So number one, obviously, is every time you meet
with a client, you're going to incorporate some kind
of dialogue that says, you know,
Mr. and Mrs. Buyer, my goal is to provide five-star service,
such that when you buy this home,
and we close the transaction,
and I slay the dragons and navigate through
sometimes what can be a very challenging transaction.
In the end, when you guys are happy and satisfied,
I'm gonna ask you to write a review on your experience.
Are you okay with that?
And of course, what are they gonna say?
You got it, right?
That's a no-brainer.
Throughout the transaction, number two,
throughout the transaction,
they call it the hero moment or I like to say
as you slay the dragon, right?
The transaction's going sideways.
Something's going wrong.
The buyer, the seller is starting to panic.
Your customer is getting nervous.
When you solve that problem in that moment,
this is when you, when it's done,
problem solved, check check.
We're good to go.
This is when you're gonna call, text, email,
however you communicate best to them and say,
Do you remember I said to you my goal was to provide
a five-star service.
Solving this complex problem is exactly why you hired me.
I'm so happy we got through this,
and by the way, this would make for a great review.
You gotta ask.
Which, by the way, let me give you an easy one, right.
Especially for some of my veterans out there.
One of the easiest things we did, across the board,
with our coaches, our sales people,
our client services, is we added a little link
where they can review us on their email signature line.
If you haven't added a link, hey review my business here,
review my services here, and if you're smart,
you're gonna add that as a bitly link so you can track
whose email signature or email signatures in general
are producing this result.
That's a bonus little number three.
Number four, without a shadow of a doubt,
you've heard me talk about this before.
You gotta ask, right?
You can be asking old past clients today from
a year ago, two years ago, three years ago,
if you want.
We actually had Cody Longmire, big shout out to Cody,
who I just saw at the Dallas Blue Bread.
He shared this story where he sent an email out,
this was five or six years ago, so Cody,
I know you're watching this.
When you see this, you're gonna giggle,
and I'll probably screw up the story a little bit.
But essentially here's what happened.
His coach, Doug, said to him,
you just need to write an email to your customers
and he said let's do it right now, right.
Live coaching moment.
He's got his laptop up, and Doug is telling him,
you need to say, you know, this was my goal.
This is what we were able to accomplish.
It would mean the world to me if you would take a few
moments and click this link and just talk about your
experience in us helping you buy or sell real estate.
Very simple.
Not too complex.
And Cody, in like real time, is writing it,
and literally, get this.
Sends it to his entire data base.
And here's the best part.
All in the 'To' line.
Can you imagine this, Mark?
All in the, you know, 500 people on his data base.
They all get the email, and Doug says, did you send it?
He said, I just sent it.
And all of a sudden, as you can imagine,
somebody hits 'reply all'.
Oh my goodness, this could be the greatest moment
or a horrific moment.
It's Cody Longmire.
The guy said, Cody, not only am I gonna write an
amazing review on you, I want you to come list my house.
And he had 'reply all' to everybody on the email list.
Now, am I recommending this?
No, I'm recommending you send individual emails, right.
Dear Martha,
I just wanna say I was thinking about you the other day.
So much of my business is based upon what others have
said about it, reviews, referrals, et cetera.
Would you take a couple minutes and just click this link
and write just a little review about our experience.
Now you'll butter it up and soften it up.
Do you remember this?
And I was thinking about you and, you know,
the complexity of the transaction,
and how I was able to slay the dragon.
You're gonna tell a little bit of the story
to remind them,
because remember, the best review,
the best review is not just,
oh my goodness, Jillian, she's amazing.
No, it's Jillian came into our business.
We had a very specific problem.
And because of her level of sophistication,
her talent, she was able to do A, B, and C,
which produced this result, right?
The best review is that specific, you know,
Tom Ferry helped me solve this problem,
getting us into our house,
saving us time, stress, and money.
That's what we wanna ask for.
So again, whether it's an email,
or over the phone, or in texts,
you know your customers best.
And by the way, Cody Longmire,
that story is still legendary in the Tom Ferry ecosystem.
So many people have heard it.
I'm not recommending you do that,
but it sure worked out really well for Cody.
So remember, number four is call, email, ask.
And if you have to, even, you know once you've
closed the transaction, just remind the client.
Congratulations, here's your Tom Ferry, you know,
bobblehead closing gift, and hey, will you do me a favor?
Would you take a couple minutes and write a review
about your experience with us?
And prompt them on what you want them to write.
So those are the top four things you can do.
Number five is a bonus if you're new to the business.
I would over-index on Google.
And think about it like this.
I'd ask my co-workers and all my friends
to just write a professional review on me, right?
No different from what you would have on Linked In,
or on your resume.
Those same people can write about you in an authentic way.
Now remember, I'm really recommending right now
you over-index on Google.
Especially if you're already sitting, as some of our
clients are, you know, 70, 80, 100, 300, 500 reviews
on Zillow.
And if you're, for all my friends outside of the US,
Google, Google, Google, Google.
And if you're my friends inside the US and you're
sitting on all those,
Google, Google, Google.
Make sense?
So, that's all I got.
I just wrote down in closing,
a lot of work for you to do.
My request is you know you give me some comments here.
You probably shared this with some of your friends
inside the office.
You're absolutely gonna wanna use this, right?
You're probably gonna wanna watch this three or four times,
capture some of the script.
Mark, you'll have lots of the scripts on Tom Ferry
that we're talking about.
Maybe add a few bonus things.
Zillow published something really cool.
We should just link that up on the Tom Ferry blog as well.
That's a good idea.
Anything we have also from Google's standpoint,
let's link that up on Tom Ferry dot com as well.
Alright, so thank you so much for watching.
Remember always, your strategy matters,
and now more than ever, the number of reviews
I can read about you and your business
is what absolutely rules.
Hey, you're the kind of person like me who's always
looking for great stuff,
new ideas, innovation,
ways to improve my life and my business.
Check out the link below at Tom Ferry dot com,
forward slash agent dash tools,
'cause I've got lots of great stuff for you there.