102: How to Build A Testimonial Strategy for your Design Business
Michele 00:00
Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit Is a Choice. Joining me on the podcast today is Maddie Poteat, the founding partner, and lead marketing strategist at MP Consulting based in Nashville, Tennessee. Maddie and I are going to jump into the conversation about testimonials. We're going to talk a little bit about the difference between just asking for feedback from your client and really having those social proof testimonials. We're going to look at how to do the questions, how to collect that information, where to put it online, and why we need to do it. We're going to talk about the benefits and then even what not to do or what's not really the best way to go about that. Testimonials, as many offers to us, is a free way to have a large marketing impact, so we don't want to overlook how to get, use, and manage it properly in our business. So I hope you'll walk away with a couple of ideas of, maybe the testimonials you need to get, how to add that into your process, and where you want it to show up.
Michele 01:06
Every day empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health, and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design, industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit Is A Choice. Hi, Maddie, welcome to the podcast.
Madeleine Poteat 01:37
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat about testimonials today.
Michele 01:41
I'm excited to have you here. Maddie, before we start and jump into the testimonial conversation that we're going to have, share a little bit about your company and how you get started.
Madeleine Poteat 01:53
My company is called MP consulting, and we started about two years ago this summer. I kind of found myself working for small local businesses, after my husband and I moved from Omaha, Nebraska to Nashville, Tennessee, as a consultant just doing some marketing for them. As I continue to build my clientele, I realized that maybe I had a business opportunity here. So, we do digital marketing for small local businesses. We really try and create a partnership with the people we're working with, and act as their internal marketing team. A lot of these businesses can't afford or don't want to bring in their own marketing professional full time, so we began to step into those shoes. And, so you know, we work with all different types of industries right now. It's been fun just learning more about those industries and figuring out how to make each different business work and grow but at the same time, within businesses we found that a lot of the stuff that works for one type of industry or business is going to work for other ones. We've been growing the last two years and love to share our knowledge of the things that we've learned throughout the process.
Michele 02:58
That's awesome. So, I know you worked for other companies prior to starting your own, and this isn't like a I'm just out of college and 22 years old starting my business, this is a little bit past that, right? Tell me this though, when you started this one and I asked this from a lot from people that come on, did you start with a full long written out business plan or more with a business idea that you tweak as you went or by the seat of your pants or somewhere in the middle?
Madeleine Poteat 03:23
Oh, gosh, definitely towards the latter. It was more like just build as we go. As I started to work for my first client, seeing what I was able to do for them, helping them grow, implementing their social media strategy, and a full-on marketing plan for them, working through their digital advertising campaigns, it became apparent that other businesses could utilize the same skill set that I bring to the table or that our company does. And so, I thought, "okay, I have one, they're going to introduce me to a second one perfect. Let's bring them in." Then as we started to grow the business, we thought, "okay, maybe we do need to have a more longer-term business plan or a longer-term plan in general, but it definitely didn't start that way.
Michele 04:05
My first business didn't start that way at all, either. It kind of grew around me, and I was trying to build around it. My coaching business absolutely started 2013, I was 13 years into it, and at that point, I knew enough to know exactly what to layout, how to do it, and how to do all the things, but I certainly didn't know the first time. My first business was interiors and custom window treatments. It did like years ago that kind of served one client, then the next client came, and it just became almost super organic. But then I started realizing, oh my gosh, I better put some kind of rules around.
Madeleine Poteat 04:42
Yes, exactly!
Michele 04:44
Because it's going to get away from me and that's when I started doing that. It's always fun to hear that.
Madeleine Poteat 04:49
And we found that good people know good people. So as soon as we found a really great client that we have a great relationship and partnership with, they're going to start talking about our services to their people. Then they will bring those other people in, and we do our best to share and talk about our clients as much as they're talking about us. Sharing wealth and that organic growth has been super helpful.
Michele 05:11
Yes, I found the same thing. I used to always just pray that God would keep the bad clients away from me. When you have that ideal client, you choose good people to work with, and you're good to them, the relationship stays healthy and whole. They're willing to give your name out, and chances are they only want to be associated with people who have similar characteristics to them. That's why you don't want to work with somebody who's nasty and negative because all their friends are probably too and if not, it will be around them. I always said good brings good too. Alright, today we're going to jump in and talk a little bit about testimonials. You and I had a private conversation a couple of weeks ago, and we were just talking about the need for testimonials, and I'd really like to bring you on to talk about this. Before we even jump in, what is a testimonial, how would you define it?
Madeleine Poteat 06:02
I would just say it's your consumer or your clients' thoughts, opinions, and their experience with your business, brand, or product, whatever you're putting out to the world.
Michele 06:13
Okay. What are some of the benefits of having a testimonial? So, I'll say the straight definition of a testimonial, they can be good, they can be bad, and they can be neutral. They can be anywhere on there. So there is not this inherent idea that a testimonial is good. It can be bad.
Madeleine Poteat 06:29
Yes, for sure.
Michele 06:31
Our goal is to get good testimonials. And what are some of the benefits of getting these good testimonials? Like why do we even care?
Madeleine Poteat 06:40
I would say the goal overall would be to get opinions from your customers and whether that's positive and negative or neutral, definitely a hundred percent we want more positive reviews and testimonials than the negative. But in general, we want to know what are people think about what we're doing. The benefits of asking for those in favor and receiving them is going to be helping your business build trust and credibility. That's going to show other people what your clients are saying about you. It's been shown that a very high percentage of consumers, about 70%, actually look at those reviews before making a purchase. But even crazier statistic is that 79%-ish of consumers trust other people's thoughts or those testimonials more than they would like their family or friends. Having that kind of mark of approval can really help you sell whatever you're trying to sell.
Michele 07:33
It goes back to your comment about good people bring good people. It's that same kind of word of mouth, and we hear about that all the time. I'll say in the vein of receiving testimonials in some type of a hopefully a written format. That we can either use internally to improve our processes, procedures, and systems or communication, that we can use for social media proof. And that means there's still this idea of word of mouth, which is to tell somebody. Even in my own business, if one of my clients tells a colleague about what I do for them and how I do it for them, it's a transfer of trust. Like you said, you're transferring the trust that they have on me to their friend. Then when they call me, it's like a super warm call, because they've already they believe the opinions of their friends and trust that the same thing can happen for them.
Madeleine Poteat 08:24
Yep, for sure. If I'm talking to a potential client, and I'm telling about all the amazing things that we can do for them, they see that as me selling, but if a different client comes to them and tells them about the amazing things we can do for them, they're going to see that as a trustworthy mark of approval. Our customer testimonial review, and they're going to believe that way more than whatever I have to say about my business. Definitely that these things build trust and credibility, but they also can help you increase sales, and have a positive effect on your site, specifically your SEO. I know that kind of gets a bit technical, but just by having these paragraphs, sentences, or positive words on your website can help your rankings on Google. When someone searches on their map and looking for a business like yours, a business is going to pop up ahead of others when it has more positive reviews underneath it. There are lots of benefits for reviews. I'd say probably the last one is it can help you improve your business. So, if you want to look at it from that perspective, loads of good information can come from reviews, even the negatives. We can learn so much from the negative reviews just like we can learn from the positive ones.
Michele 09:33
That's another reason that I am a huge supporter of whenever we are wrapping up a project with one of our clients that we asked them to share. Their experiences, what worked well, what didn't work, what would you like to change. When thinking about it at the basic level, that is their testimony of how they perceived the transaction. Not just the testimonial for showing up on Google, but it is the internal acceptance of information that allows us to look at it, hopefully, remove ourselves a little bit from the emotion of it, and go, "all right, am I starting to see things creep up more than once? Can I answer why the communication broke down? Can I acknowledge where the process needs to be adjusted here? Or oh my gosh, we really got that right. Let's do that again." Or, "we did something really special for this client, and they loved it and recognize this is a huge value-added. Now let's add it into the next and make it part of our ongoing process." And Maddie, you tell me and I know that it's true, but sometimes there is that fear of asking for information. Because we always say, "I don't like it," because I think we tend to go towards some of the negative sometimes in our thought process instead of towards the positive. But it's nice to internally ask for information, and I found that if let's say that something's not going 100% and you're asking for feedback so that you can correct it, most people are not going to be as harsh if they later give you an online review, because you tried to address it early on and try to change it. But those that you didn't ask could easily think, "I'm going to go online and ruin you."
Madeleine Poteat 11:18
Yes, for sure. Like you mentioned, there's definitely a fear for asking for information especially in the industry, in interior design, they're offering very personal service, they're giving their recommendations on what they feel is going to be best for their clients. That's a very personal interaction, so for them to ask for feedback, whatever they say, it's going to hit them more personally than if your client was just selling products online. That fear is legitimate, I definitely felt it for sure, but I think in that situation, it's important to take off that personal hat and put on the business hat, "I run a business, this is my business, and for the business, I really need to know what I'm doing right and doing wrong". Like you also mentioned, when you do something wrong, people want their opinions to be heard. They just want to know that you care about them and said, "Yeah, maybe I didn't like what you did, but now that you know it, you're taking action. And that's all I want. I just want to be heard." So when you give them a chance to voice their opinions ahead of time, it very much diminishes their need to go online and write bad things about your business. So, I think that in and of itself is a reason why people should be proactive and asking for reviews.
Michele 12:33
Right. And again, every review that we're asking for doesn't have to be online. They can be quietly held reviews. It's just asking, "share with me your opinions of our process and working together." And this is interesting that I've seen some people, some of my clients who I really encourage to do this, at first, they're a little bit skittish, but 9 out of 10, the information they get back is so good. I have them start by asking the clients that you love that you know love you. Then we can work your way down to maybe some of the other clients. But start with those that you love because you don't want your very first review to be a smack upside the head that's not going to make you feel good. So, you got to have some good ones. Then what I have them do is go back and look at those reviews side by side, and you can start to see the nuggets of your brilliance show up as they might have say your secret sauce or superpower or whatever it is that makes you special, your unique selling proposition. The elements that show up in those reviews if you're doing it well. They will say back to you what they recognized as great from working with your firm and your company. That is huge, that is gold, and that becomes your marketing message back out again. That information and yes, you can use their quote, or you can use the essence of what they're saying. Because part of the whole marketing is people picking up what you're putting down. So, when they are verbalizing and articulating back what they picked up from working with you, that is exactly what you want to do now. You use their words and give it back to them. That's what pulls in more like people.
Madeleine Poteat 14:13
Yep. Utilizing their words about you in every sense of your business. Throwing it on the wall, putting it in your social media, your posts, writing blog posts, putting it on your website. Making sure they share it on all of the platforms or all the listings that are important to your business. You want to utilize those positive words as much as possible.
Michele 14:33
So, let's talk for just a minute on what is the best way to go about asking for reviews?
Madeleine Poteat 14:39
I would say we have to be careful when and how we ask for reviews when we're talking about reviews that are going to live online.
Michele 14:45
Let's start with that, then. How do we start gathering some of that initial feedback? We're going to put it under the big umbrella of testimonial, but let's talk about internal feedback. How do we get that from a client? And when's the best time to ask for that during the project?
Madeleine Poteat 14:59
I would say you have to look at your entire sales process. My recommendation to all my clients is building it into the process where it makes sense. Whether that is in advance, letting them know that at the end of the project, we're going to ask, and we're going to really want their feedback. That sometimes works best. Or it's in the middle during a project, when you have a feeling that it's going really well or maybe when it's not going well. Maybe that's when you jump in and ask for feedback. But it really depends on the sales process itself.
Michele 15:27
You can do it at the end of a phase. At the end of each phase. we're going to stop to make sure we get clarity, back on the same page, and get some feedback. Then we'll move on again.
Madeleine Poteat 15:38
Yes, and I would say asking more than once is going to be important because essentially, you're asking someone to take time out of their busy day and write something about you. That's not always easy, especially when the project's super large, or maybe when the project is really small. But just writing nice things about people sometimes doesn't come easily for others. I would say it's a big ask, so we don't want to take it lightly. But definitely asking them more than once because if someone you know just randomly asked you to leave a review, you're probably not going to do it. But if you ask them multiple times, it's going to stick in your brain be like, "oh, yeah, I really did love her service. I want to help her business grow." And making it a personal as always helps as well. Instead of writing an email that you blast out at certain times in your sales process, that might work for you, so it's fine. But if you can make it more personable, that's going to help you get more responses. Then I think by showing or telling them how important it is, really proving why their feedback helps your business also gives them an extra reason to actually do it.
Michele 16:45
What's been interesting for me when I've had people give me feedback, which I encourage, and it's hard, I don't think no person that I don't even know a person who thinks, "please tell me everything I'm doing wrong." But at the same time, we want to know what we're doing wrong. It's like this catch 22. I've also found what builds huge trust is if somebody tells you, "Hey, I'm not really happy with this part of the process, or I felt left out here or didn't feel this," going back, acknowledging, and saying, "I heard you, and this is where I've changed my process or changed my wording, or this is where I have implemented some type of a fix to try to keep that from happening again," that just zooms that trust level straight up.
Madeleine Poteat 17:27
When we talk about feedback and reviews or testimonials, that point is extremely important. So, let's say you do ask people to leave you an online review, and they include something negative, or they include something that's not super positive. In general, it's best practice to respond to every review, no matter what, and where it falls in the positivity rankings. But especially if it's negative or neutral, you want to jump in there as soon as possible and, like you said, recognize their feelings. Apologize for making them feel that way and then providing some type of resolution. So maybe that's just telling them you are reaching out personally and will fix it. Maybe it's including the way you're going to do that within the response. But definitely listening, responding, and fixing is going to be the best response to any type of negative feedback or review online.
Michele 18:16
I've don't even know who to give credit to for the quote, I'll have to look it up, but it says, "seek first to understand then to be understood." And I think that's a good thing to keep in mind here. Even though we may not agree with whatever they have to say, even when people give us information back feedback reviews, we all are looking at what is happening to us through the lens of our own experience, biases, and everything else. While I may not see the situation the same way they see the situation, trying to understand how they see it or if they interpret it one way, how we could lead them to where they are. The crumb trail to how they got to where they are. It doesn't mean that that one is right and one is wrong, they're different. So, trying to at least like you said, understand and respond with a effort of trying to understand. There may not always be resolution, let's be honest, the resolution maybe we have to agree to disagree. But we have to do something. I'll tell you even when I go out to get a book on Amazon, I'm looking at the reviews, regardless if they send me a free book or not. "Before I'm even going to take the time to download your free book on my Kindle app and spend any time looking at it, I'm going see what other people have said about your book." When they say, "it has certain themes in it that I don't want to know about." I'm getting "I don't care that the book is free. I'm not taking it." If it says that it has certain language that I don't want to be pouring into my brain, I'm not going to do it. If it says that the book is giving away in the first chapter. It's not just because it's free, so take it. When I go out to buy clothes from somebody that I don't know, a new maker, I'm looking at the reviews. Does it fit small? Does it run large? Does it run wide? Size up size down? Or this came, and it was beautifully done? We are reading these reviews all day long for just commodities. Why wouldn't we then do it for more boutique specialized items? We're going to look at them, listen to them, and pay attention.
Madeleine Poteat 20:23
Especially when that service you're providing has a higher price tag like interior designers when they come into your home. It's very personal. I want to know before I hire you that what you're going to do for me is going to make me happy with it.
Michele 20:35
Because a lot of it is, "I am trusting the creativity coming out of your brain," and so it's rarely coming in with the commodity. It's not coming with, "here's a table that I'm going to sell you." It's coming in, but I am going to dream it up, think of a scheme, and you are going to trust me to dream on your behalf. Think about that.
Madeleine Poteat 20:58
Yes. Before you before you sign anything or hire anyone, you are reading those reviews to make sure that the person you're hiring is going to be right for that job. And not only are you reading the reviews, but you're reading the responses from that business as well. So that's why it's important to respond to all of them. And let's say, someone does leave you something negative, your response to that person's thoughts and comments also reflects on the business and the type of person you are. It's really important to make sure you're keeping that in mind when you're responding because it is again very personal, especially if you're the business owner, and if you're the one who's responding to those reviews. Maybe we've been worked closely with that client and now saying something negative online, it's very easy to jump in and be like, "that's not true." Or like, "that didn't happen this way." You got to make sure that whatever you write is going to change the mind of the person who's reading it,
Michele 21:49
Sometimes what I found is like, if I have to respond to something that I just saw and my teeth are set because I'm angry. I'd said, "you have lost your mind." There is a part of me and my humanists that wants to write back, "You're a big idiot, you've lost your mind," but we all know that does not go well on the other side.
Madeleine Poteat 22:05
Right. They'll think, "I want to hire you but oh, crap, if I don't like it, I don't want to berated by ya'll, and get called an idiot."
Michele 22:12
And, honestly, we all may still think that, but we're just not going to tell you. That's the difference. But I'm being facetious here, but I think I did a podcast with Claire. In it, we were talking about communication, and I said to her, "one of the things that I always try to think about and not, I'm not 100% perfect on this at all, but what I do is I try to think, "what do I want the final outcome to be? What can I say to get us there?" And so in the review, if they say something that I don't like, or that I think is a misrepresentation of fact, instead of going back and nitpicking on every one of their comments, in my opinion, you have to address it enough to make them feel heard, but not open it up for further arguments. That's a delicate balance. As much as I would say, we need to respond quickly, we better respond thoughtfully and quickly. And that's difficult in the moment. So sometimes I do this little thing with myself where I think, "this is not about me, I'm trying to answer this for my client." Then I can take the emotion out, but if I'm trying to answer it from my own business, the emotion is like, towards the forefront. I even stop and look at my why and my business values and think how can I answer and keep those at the forefront? By answering with my values. This is not easy Maddie, because you need to answer in a way that's not dismissive, not argumentative, not passive aggressive or sarcastic. But that also doesn't make you the mat to keep being walked and kicked on and step in. So, it's a delicate balance. It could even behoove some of us to craft some of these statements in advance if somebody says that my service sucks, I'm going to say this. If they say that we didn't follow up on our promise, I'm going to potentially try to say this. And it doesn't mean that's what you have to say, but it gives you that nugget to start thinking off of when it happens. So starting from a blank slate where your emotion says, "okay, I got this, I'm going to go to my Word document, or my Google document that has all of these responses that align with my why and my values and how can I pull and craft it together to answer them?"
Madeleine Poteat 24:23
For sure. I think just thinking through some of the situations that my clients have been in the past, when we've seen things like that happen. One of the responses that we've seen work really well has been to reach out personally to that person. As we talked about earlier, they're just trying to be heard, they're just trying to tell their story or whatever happened to them out there, and essentially, they want a response. They want you to take action. We found that if possible, reaching out to them, getting them on the phone, listening to the issue, understanding what happened to them, and then providing your side or just maybe letting them know you're so sorry and trying to make it right, that takes care of the issue. And we found that those people are way more likely to go back and change their review. We've seen a lot of times that someone will go in and say, "yes, this is what happened. I received a personal call from the owner, we talked to the issue. And now I would definitely recommend this business." Kind of took it from a very negative situation to showcasing your customer service and your ability to resolve conflict. You've probably gained a very loyal client out of it.
Michele 25:29
Less is more in that to your point. Again, I know I said to have a document of things that you could say, and I do think that's necessary. But we do want to say the minimum amount that we can say to solve the problem, even if it is, "I'm so sorry to hear this. I'll contact you personally to see if we can get to resolution". That would be enough. But let me say this, what about bots because sometimes there's just nefarious mean people out there that have never done business with other people. Businesses that are going out and leave nasty reviews just because they're bored and have no life. And so how do you respond to those like, we've never worked together?
Madeleine Poteat 26:09
I think if your business is small enough, where you are 100% sure that you've never worked together, then try and remove that from whatever listing you're working on, because there are ways to flag reviews as inappropriate, misleading, or incorrect. Take that action, but also in the review's reply to mention, "we're very sorry that you felt this way, but we're checking our records, and we just don't have any record of you doing business with us. Again, we're very sorry," taking that approach, but I would say definitely try and get it removed if possible.
Michele 26:42
So, let's go back and talk for a minute. Is there anything else that we can do with negative reviews?
Madeleine Poteat 26:49
I would say just making sure to respond to all of them, that's going to be the biggest one. You can look at it from a different perspective to if you're going out and trying to find a business to work with, and all you're seeing is glowing ratings, and five-star reviews, something in your brain is going to switch and says, "hmm, do I really trust this business? Like really nothing wrong, nothing has ever gone wrong for this business. Or maybe all of these reviews are their friends," So having zero negative feedback, or zero neutral feedback can sometimes be a red flag as well. Knowing that your business has a few kind of helps, build credibility and trust for your clients as well.
Michele 27:31
I don't know, I think everybody can look at that differently based on or according to what the business is.
Madeleine Poteat 27:35
For sure.
Michele 27:35
If it's an accountant and, "I got horrible books," when compared to "I get great books," that would give me pause.
Madeleine Poteat 27:46
Let's say a business has 500 reviews, and they're all five-star reviews, that's going to lead me to believe something's maybe a little fishy. If I have 465 star reviews out of 500. You're a smaller business, and you have five reviews and three of them are negative. That's going to be a red.
Michele 28:05
That's going to be a problem. So, it is a numbers game to some degree as well. When I'm looking at reviews, like I ordered some frames, while we've been out with business disruption, COVID, and all that, I ordered some frames for some pictures, and it came up to a 4-star rating or 4.5. I looked at it, read through all of it, and though I'm willing to try that. It doesn't have to be perfect for me to engage. Yeah, there are other things that I need to have closer to five rating to engage. So, I think that to your point, it didn't stop me and made me realize that we all have different opinions and how we say things, and that's okay. It didn't have any ones and twos that would have absolutely given me pause. It was mostly fours and fives which just comes down to value, quality, and that kind of thing for the item that I was looking to get. Okay, let's move down and talk about not just feedback, but let's talk about kind of testimonials for social proof. Tell me what is the best way to collect those. You've said make it personal but how? I don't have a huge amount of reviews out there because I'm not as great at asking. I've got a huge amount of emails in my inbox telling me how great it is to work with me. And then I just kept going, I don't always think about, oh, "I need to go get it." And we'll talk about in a few minutes where we should have all these. I was just taking the information that's coming up because I'm too busy working to stop and solicit or ask somebody. And like you said, it's a big ask to say, "would you mind sharing what you think?" I've certainly done that. But I found if I ask them and then give them the link or tell them how to do it, because it's different on every different platform, some you got to be signed in or you got to be registered or you just have to fill it out. I've had I asked for podcast reviews, I'll ask right now anybody listening, please jump out and review the podcast. We need that but what is there a good way to ask? Is there a templated system and I don't mean templated from dropping it in your CRM and having it send it out? I mean, it's there a good methodology for doing this.
Madeleine Poteat 30:21
I would say the more personal you can make it the better and include the links. It's as simple as that, if that would work for your business. If you're working with thousands of clients, then writing 1000 personal emails a day, that's not gonna be possible. But make it work for your business and including those links and figuring out where you want the reviews to show up. But really nailing down maybe three, you don't want to overwhelm them. You don't certainly don't need to ask them to leave a review on all the channels but giving them options so that they pick the one that's most convenient for them. Because like me, I'm not a huge Yelp user, so for someone to ask me to leave a Yelp review, that's going to be more time than if someone asked me to leave a Google review, because I'm already logged in on all my devices. Clicking that button, it's just going to pop up the review box, and I can type something away within seconds. So, giving them those options to choose what's most convenient is going to increase the response rate.
Michele 31:16
So now, here's something I've never done. I've always asked people to give me a review in one platform. So, I've never said to them, Hey, I'm looking to see if you'd be willing to share your feedback or your you know, a testimony, whatever. Here are three different links, you know, choose the one that works for you. Or you could type it in one and copy and paste it to the other two. I mean, I've never, I've never asked for I'll say, could you please give me a Google review? Here's blink. Could you please leave me a review of it? But here's like, could you please give me your LinkedIn? Here's the link, I've always done and just asked for one place, is it better than to ask for one or give them two or three and say choose the one that's best for you.
Madeleine Poteat 31:52
I would say the last. I'd make the ask very personal and tell them you know why this is going to be helpful for your business. Then give them the option of three different ones. If they're a very loyal client and they love what you do, the chances of them leaving a review on all three are going to be much higher than if it's a brand-new client. But giving them that option is going to increase your the chances of them responding.
Michele 32:14
Is it bad for us to say, if you type it in one, you can cut and paste it into the other? To know and then share that with the client because if somebody told me I'd be like, "well, that makes sense. I can go into three places and cut and paste."
Madeleine Poteat 32:28
I have not seen that that's been detrimental to anyone's listings, having the same review on all places. I think it's easier for the client, and it gets the good word out on multiple platforms.
Michele 32:38
I've asked before, and some didn't do it. And then I even later get that, "you know what I was supposed to do that for you? I forgot. I'll try to get it done." I think when you and I were talking, I made mentioned that I had gone out to look at my LinkedIn profile, and realized I'd been out there for years, I had zero referrals, zero testimonials. I just never asked anybody for one, I'd never paid that much attention to it. I had some reviews on Facebook. I had reviews on Google. I had reviews in other places ahead and on my podcast, but I had zero there. And so, I reached out to a few of my clients. I said, "would you please because I knew they are on LinkedIn, and when you go out to LinkedIn, here's the link, would you please leave a review?" And they certainly were like, "Oh, absolutely," and certainly started leaving those reviews. But where else can we use them? So once somebody writes review for us, let's jump ahead going to talk about where to put the reviews, and then let's talk about how we can use them. Where are some places that we should consider? Because we can't do all of them. If we don't have, we don't have any, and we're starting from scratch, but give me a list of some places that we could do it and then let's talk about how we might choose where to start.
Madeleine Poteat 33:46
Okay, a basic list would be Google, Facebook, Yelp, for interior designers, I know Houzz, but with the two Z's that's a big one, LinkedIn, Angie's List, Bing, I mean, there are lists a mile long of where you can ask people to leave reviews, but going into your next point, how do you nail it down? How do you determine where you really want them to show up? I would say you need to do some research on your business and figure out where people are finding you and where people are researching your services, because it's going to be very different. For example, if you're in the restaurant industry, you better be on Yelp and because that's right now where people are going to find restaurants reviews while trying to figure out where they want to eat. It's really dependent on where your clients are researching your services.
Michele 34:30
That's a good point, because we've always talked about from a social media perspective, you don't have to be everywhere, you need to show up where your clients are. This is a little bit more of a twist. We're not just showing where our clients are, we're showing up in the platform that they might use to search for us before they actually find us. So, for example, I never used Bing, but it doesn't mean that my client, or my potential clients don't use Bing. I'm a Google searcher but others may have been as their main search provider, I just don't, I would have never thought to go to Bing.
Madeleine Poteat 35:04
A lot can be gleaned from your website. So, if you have analytics installed in your website, you can figure out where people are coming from. That'll give you a really good indication of where you should be providing those reviews for those people, but also talking to those clients. Building that ask into the sales cycle at the beginning, when you're talking to a potential client, how did you learn about us? Where did you find us? What sites were you using, jotting down that information, and making a list that'll tell you to where you need to be putting those reviews,
Michele 35:34
And I know exactly where the traffic is coming to my site from. And that's why I've started going in and making sure that those are the first channels that I had reviews on, but that's a good point. So, anybody listening, if you have Google Analytics or some type of an analytics on your website, go see where traffic's coming from. Start there with trying to get your reviews built up before you start branching out to other places.
Madeleine Poteat 35:59
I would say that Google is going to be important. So whatever list you build, Google should probably be on that. A very high percentage of the searches on the internet are through Google. You can probably bet that that's where the majority of your traffic is coming from and where the majority of the research is being done to learn about your product or service.
Michele 36:18
Okay, so for those like us, anybody in the realm of interior design, so stagers, drapery, rework, rooms, all of us under that umbrella. How many testimonials if we're starting off with none? You can't go build up 50 testimonials under each one quickly. Let's say we tried to start sprinkling and getting some on our maybe three main platforms, Google, Facebook, and maybe LinkedIn. We're going to start on those three, that the ones we're going to hit heavy, how many do we need in each of those locations? Number one, as we're getting started and number two, what is the ideal amount of referrals under there? And again, in general, none of us are working with hundreds of clients, for some of us we may be working with 5 or 10 clients for the entire year. Others may be working with more if it's more of a decorating and you're quick, you're in and you're out. You certainly can get maybe more than that. But by and large, the majority of us are not working with hundreds or thousands of people in a year. So, it's not going to be a commodity based where we can have 500 reviews. What's a good number to say start and then what's an ideal?
Madeleine Poteat 37:31
Well, I hate to do this, but I don't have a good number to start. You have to look at your book of business and determine from there. So, let's say you do have five clients, maybe putting a goal of getting three out of your five clients to leave a review and maybe that would suffice. I think taking a look at your competition might give you a good idea as well because if you're working in an area that has maybe five or six of the same business types, and they all have 10 plus reviews. Then you'd probably need to work to get to that amount or more to start making a difference. But again, if you're only working with five clients a year and your competitors have hundred plus reviews, then comparing yourself and trying to get to that number is it's not intelligent.
Michele 38:13
I've been in business for 20 years to get that while you've been in business for two. So, see the point here is to keep asking, to look at what's happening in your area for alike businesses, and to do your best to start to build it up. But the truth of the matter is, we just need to have at least some in all of the areas that really matter to us.
Madeleine Poteat 38:33
You need to make it a priority within your business to be asking for reviews, to be sharing them, and to be utilizing them in your marketing.
Michele 38:41
Now let's go back to the communication a minute because I've seen this and I would love to get your opinion on it. I've seen some who when they give the ask, they give with the specific, like, "we would love to hear about your experience with our company on this part, or we would like for you to talk about, how this resonated with you." So, they're really guiding them in the testimonial, not just a broad, "hey, would you please go out and write a testimonial," leaving it so open ended. They're kind of narrowing it down and asking for specifics, almost like they're reading their testimonials and, "ooh, nobody's talking about how great we are here. I'm going to ask somebody to talk about how great we are here." Is that appropriate, inappropriate, orr is there a good way to do that?
Madeleine Poteat 39:23
No, I think it's great if a business took that information, saw the reviews that they're not mentioning these amazing things, and are able to make that request in a professional manner. I don't see anything wrong with that. I think it's a great idea to highlight the areas of your business that you think should be highlighted. As you continue to ask for reviews, as you get more comfortable with it, and you're putting together your script or how you go about it, and kind of looking at what's working. So, if you're always asking for generic review, "Hey, leave me your feedback," and no one's responding, then maybe tweaking the ask and saying something a little bit more specific, might actually turn into a review. So, kind of looking at your process and maybe tweaking it in that way might help, but I don't see anything wrong with it.
Michele 40:09
I'm all about building our businesses with intentionality, so strategy and intention. I think it would be an awesome exercise for us to stop and think this is my unique selling proposition, this is our core competency, these are our values, this is what we want to be known for, and then looking through, if you already have reviews, are they hitting those things and then identifying what you're missing. But I want to know, are they picking up what I'm putting down? And so, asking for some general reviews, if they've hit everything, you don't have to worry about it, but if not, it's definitely something to consider. It's not that I want to script words for anybody, but we all kind of know what we hope that those we work with are saying about us.
Madeleine Poteat 40:55
Yeah, I think you definitely don't want to push them in any direction. You want your reviews to be very natural, and very honest, so that people trust what they're saying. Because if they get an inkling that you've kind of swayed them in one direction, then it defeats the purpose of even having them online. Giving them a specific ask or being specific about what you're looking for and then giving you their organic honest feedback about that specific thing is great idea.
Michele 41:22
Now is it best for them to go in and physically put the testimonial, what if they just email it to you? What do we do with those?
Madeleine Poteat 41:30
Well, okay, so going back to those two different things, you have feedback and then you have testimonials and online review. If someone's just emailing you their feedback, like we talked about, that's still going to be full of great information, you can pull that and put it on your website. You can use it in your marketing material and on your social media channels but you're not going to be able to take that and put it onto those listings that we mentioned earlier. Still utilize that feedback.
Michele 41:58
But can we email them back and say, "Hey, Maddy, thank you so much for sending this this is so beautifully written. Would you mind adding it to this link or this link so that it could go out as you review that would be much appreciated?" And adds, "you can cut and paste this just so you don't have to rewrite it. I'm just not allowed to put a review out for you. And if you would be so kind as to blah, blah, blah."
Madeleine Poteat 42:25
We definitely want these amazing feedbacks online. So however you can get that person to leave it there.
Michele 42:31
But if they don't, we can still use that information. I can easily even write back and say, "Hey, is it okay? If I use what you said in my marketing or whatever," I don't just use it without asking them. I usually go back and go, is it okay? If I use what you've said and attributed to you, because they want it to be very private, and they don't either want people to know they're working with you or they don't want people to know that they struggle, based on what it is they're saying. So, I always ask before I just start using it, even if it was emailed to me.
Madeleine Poteat 43:05
Yep, that's smart. I think that covers your bases if you do that.
Michele 43:08
Okay. So how do we make the most of our testimony? We've talked about why we need them. We've talked about what they are, we've talked about how to do the ask in multiple formats. We've even talked about how to determine maybe what we want to highlight product service, or value or you know, any of that. We've talked about how to collect them. We've talked about where to put them; how else can we make the most of them?
Madeleine Poteat 43:32
I love to repurpose them and use them as social media posts. So, if it's a great long review, then maybe you put it on a channel that's more in line with longer form content. But utilizing that on your social media channels is a great way to share it. I think you could always definitely include that information in your emails. Put it at the bottom and make sure it's on the website in maybe a different page on the website that just focuses on your reviews and testimonials that you've received. You could create a blog post around someone's thoughts and feelings. You could reach out to that person and say, "Hey, I love what you wrote, could we do a face to face and maybe get you on cameras speaking about my business?" There are so many ways you can utilize that content to market your own business. I think it's just up to the person and how creative they want to get with it.
Michele 44:24
Sometimes it feels really weird, though, to take all the great things somebody said about you and go, "oh, why don't I go tell the rest of the world how great Maddie thinks I am." That kind of feels weird about that. How do we how do we get past that? So that we can put it out and not feel braggy but we're sharing? because I've read some, but I'm responded with, I wish you'd quit bragging. It feels gross. I'm just serious. And there's some I looked at and I think wow, that was so nicely done. And I don't even know how to differentiate the two with words. But I know when I read one that feels like they are constantly patting themselves on the back. And I'm not saying that you're mustering up extra emotion. You know how you made the comment earlier. Some things feel salesy when I tell you about it, but when somebody else tells you about it, it feels overdone. How could we not do that?
Madeleine Poteat 45:25
I think it's just being very professional about it.
Michele 45:28
So, define being professional about it.
Madeleine Poteat 45:33
For when I'm working with my clients and I'm sharing their testimonials, I'm sprinkling it. I'm not going overboard. I want to share this information. But I don't want to be bragging about this information. So, for me, it's twice a month in our Instagram posts or stories. If we're going to put it on the website, then I actually love throwing all of those on the website.
Michele 45:54
That feels totally natural to me, because If I'm looking at your website, then I am going there to get the information. I'm talking about more in social media.
Madeleine Poteat 46:04
I keep it to two to three a month. I don't want to overdo it. That's my personal feelings. When we communicate our marketing, our social media plans with our clients, we talk about that. And that's what we've kind of settled on.
Michele 46:16
And I've actually heard from others maximum is once a week, so four a month, one a week is max after that, it just becomes like, "okay, a little too much."
Madeleine Poteat 46:29
And how you talking about it has a big impact. If you're trying to be braggy about it, people are gonna pick up on that. Like you as a consumer, turned off by that. Really knowing your customers. If you're running your social media channels yourself, you're going to know what people are looking for, what they love about your page, how they're engaging with your page. And you're going to know early on what you should be saying how you can of, share that information in a way that's not going to turn off these rights customers.
Michele 47:00
Because 9 times out of 10 when people are sharing that on social media, you're cheering for them. Most of us are cheering and saying, "good for you. I'm so glad you got that. Wow, nicely done." But then there's always that one that comes across where you're like, "oh, I can't even.."
Madeleine Poteat 47:17
Exactly. So, there's a fine line there. Two to three a month, that's what we do. The last thing you want your reviews to do is turn people off.
Michele 47:25
Even if they are good reviews. That just brings up a good point of what to think about. I think we put that into the what not to do is make it so constant, salesy, and braggy. I think we each have to figure out what's that line is for us and then work through that. Is there anything else as we're wrapping up that we should not do? And then we'll recap at the end maybe what we should do anything else we need to be wary of or cautious of?
Madeleine Poteat 47:54
The only other thing I can think of is incentivizing your review process. It's seen as a no no, to give something for reviews. There's lots of ways that people still do it. Leave us a review and we will enter you into a contest or into a giveaway. Leave us a review and we'll give you 50 bucks. Typically, that's considered as something you should not be doing. When you're looking at the specific listings that you're pushing these people to leave reviews on, they all have their different set of rules and regulations when it comes to testimonials. They can remove them and turn off your listing. You can have repercussions for doing these types of things. I would say Yelp is probably the most stringent. They tell you not to ask for reviews at all. So, if they are they see tons of people coming in, maybe on one day or throughout one week and leaving review, there's a high likelihood that those reviews could be deleted or never show up. Because the algorithm has determined that maybe you asked for this review there. Every listing has its own kind of set of rules, but one that's in common is not incentivize that process.
Michele 48:59
Okay. Anything else we need to think about? I think you said don't ignore a review despite it's less than stellar, respond to all of them.
Madeleine Poteat 49:08
I would say don't ignore any review, no matter how good or no matter how bad. At the end of the day, you have to realize that this person took their time, wrote you something, and they did it for a reason. Maybe they did it to help you grow your business. Maybe they did it so you could see how amazing you were doing or maybe they did it to get your attention because something was wrong. You need to take the time out of your day to reply.
Michele 49:30
As we kind of wrap up and start saying here are some things we should do. Here are the big nuggets I picked up from what you share. If we're thinking about starting, the first thing I would do is probably look to see where do I already have reviews. Then if we're talking about just the mechanics of it, look at your analytics of your website, see where traffic's coming from. Figure out about how many reviews you need in those places. Maybe identify some areas that you want to have reviewed, then reach out to some of your clients and ask them for reviews in those areas that you've identified where you need them. Make it an individual, ask you said. Put the links so that it makes it easier, maybe give them choices. And then make sure that you get back and we didn't say this, but I know that the heart of your business, go back and thank them for a review. If somebody's taking the time to do it, make sure to go back and thank them for taking the time to do that. Is there anything else that you think we need to think about or do as we consider testimonials for our business?
Madeleine Poteat 50:31
I would say, that first process that you just described is perfect. So then jumping off from there and making it a norm for your business is going to be the most important. You've done the research, you've analyzed everything that's currently out there, and you've made the initial requests, now build it into your business so that it's automatic. It's always being done and you don't really have to worry about it moving forward.
Michele 50:55
So that's a good point, then we need to figure out where does it fit best into our processes. You've explained at the beginning, maybe what are the milestones? Or what are the things that are happening that would trigger it so that we can keep it fresh. Keep it going, that every review is not 10 years old, and we're not doing fresh new updates all the time?
Madeleine Poteat 51:13
Yep. For the clients that we work with, we are providing monthly reporting that encompasses everything that they're doing online. One of those facets is the reviews so we're monitoring on a monthly basis, how many reviews are coming in and where they're coming from. Then we can report on that and we can say like, "ph, great. Last month, we had five new reviews come through on Google. Awesome. Now we have 90 reviews on Google two on Facebook and one on LinkedIn. So, we could really see where we need to be focusing our efforts moving forward. I know that it's extra time and extra effort on a monthly basis, but maybe doing some type of review, or some type of report like that would help you focus the efforts moving forward.
Michele 51:56
That's awesome. Maddie, thank you so much for all that you shared. It was a fun conversation and I'm glad we had it. I've actually already started going to find some places to go look at my own business and I always love that when we have these conversations, I'm learning and gathering at the same time. It's kind of doing the podcast for my own benefit to hear. So, tell us where we can find you? Where are you hanging out online?
Madeleine Poteat 52:18
For sure. So, my website is mpconsulting.com. So that's where we put up our own reviews, reusing testimonials, and then we have Facebook, and Instagram and LinkedIn. So, all the typical channels.
Michele 52:30
Perfect. We'll make sure we have links to all of that in the show notes. And again, just thank you for sharing your expertise, coming on, and talking to us all about testimonials and how to do them. What not to do, when to do it. I really love the part about building it into our process and being very intentional about it, because sometimes I think myself included, kind of assumed that if people loved what we did, they would go write it. But if they're not asked, they're busy, and it's not that they don't want to do it, they just haven't been prompted to do it.
Madeleine Poteat 52:57
And it's hard to prioritize that and thank you so much, I love talking about this because as a business who works with small and local businesses, sometimes those marketing budgets aren't as big as they want to be. So, we have to get creative on how to market the business for zero dollars. This is one way to do that. It's free. It doesn't cost any money. Have someone write a review and it doesn't cost any money to change that review into a social media post or put it on to the website. So, I think utilizing this free source of marketing is in everybody's best interest. Absolutely no doubt about it.
Michele 53:30
Again, thank you for all the detail and I look forward to having everybody listen and you're going be watching reviews pop up all over the place online.
Madeleine Poteat 53:38
I hope so. Thank you so much.
Michele 53:40
So thankful to Maddie for joining us on the podcast today to talk all about testimonials. I know I walked away even thinking here a couple places I went to go check or some things I went to look at. I hope you did too. Each of us is trying to build a business with intention and with strategy and that's what we focus on here at Scarlet Thread Consulting, hop over to ScarletThreadConsulting.com and fill out the form to jump on a phone with us for a discovery call. We would love to see how we can help you build a full strategy to take your business where you want it to go this year and beyond. With all things, it all happens with intention and with the plan and our profit is no different, it doesn't happen by accident.