Idea Club Newsletter
A couple of months ago, we challenged our team to collect more online reviews. We already had a lot
of strong reviews on Google and Facebook, but we wanted to ensure we were keeping our reviews up to
date, and we wanted to get reviews for a wider range of services. So, what did we learn from this process? Asking for a review or testimonial can feel quite awkward. People may think they are imposing on
others or being egotistical. One of the first lessons we learned is that people need help knowing
who to contact, how to reach out, and how to tactfully ask for feedback. What worked for us? Providing a short template that our team could use for their outreach. Here's the
script one of our Project Managers wrote (and yes, we were really this direct about our reason for
asking!): Hi Client, I hope things are going well with your new website! We are having an internal contest here at Haley Marketing Group to gather testimonials. When you have a moment, would you please write a brief testimonial about your experience working with Haley Marketing Group? It would take you about 1 minute. Please just click hereâ¯https://haleymarketing.reviewability.com/f.FT Thank you so much! Asking for a review is hard. Asking a second time is even harder. But clients (and candidates) are
busy. They may absolutely love you, but still not respond. Some people may miss your initial
outreach. Others may struggle to find the right words. And some will put the request to the side to
"get to it later." To maximize your response, you need to follow up. Personally, I found that a quick "did you see my
email?" was very effective. So was asking people during phone calls. If you're concerned about
people being busy, offer to help. Ask your clients if it would be easier if you wrote an outline of
a message they could edit. In our office, some people collected lots of testimonials, reviews and even had our clients creating
testimonial videos. And others? Nothing. So, what was the difference? Truly, I am not 100% sure. We have new people on our team who generated a surprising amount of
responses. And others, despite their attempts, had little or no response. In some instances this was an issue of relationships - who has them and how strong those
relationships are. For others it was simply having the willingness to ask. And more often than I
would have expected, it was luck of the draw - some clients were just more responsive than others -
and you can never guess who will and who will not respond. No real surprise here. It's relatively easy for clients and candidates to get an email from you, hit
reply and share a few kind words. But leaving a review on Google or Facebook requires more work... and that's why people don't do it. To maximize online reviews: At Haley Marketing, our team made sure to track who was reaching out to each client in order to
minimize the risk of an overlap. Our Reputation Management software made this super easy by
preventing duplicate requests from being sent to the same client. Asking for reviews (and other feedback) is a critical part of the service delivery process. Ensure
your review process is flawless by using a central tool to track review requestsâand keep that
software up to date. While we certainly were not surprised that our clients had nice things to say (our reputation management software conducts a Net Promoter survey before we ask for a review), we were thrilled with the power of the reviews. In 60 days, we collected nearly 100 testimonials and online reviews, and we just want to say a big THANK YOU to all our clients. Your kind words exceeded our wildest expectations, and we truly appreciate the opportunity to work with all of you! The good news is there is nothing we have to do. We added a ton of new reviews on Google, which provided a huge boost to SEO and our online reputation. We also added a lot of reviews on Facebook, so wherever clients and prospects find Haley Marketing, they'll see the positive words from other staffing companies about many of our services and our Success Team. But why just wait for people to find the reviews? To start, we'll update our website with all the new reviews (using our testimonial manager plugin to categorize and organize them) and add them to our sales collateral. As our Social Pro clients know, reviews make great social content. So, in addition to using a few of the reviews in this blog post, we will also be converting the reviews to social graphics and videos and use them in our own social sharing on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Lessons From the Haley Marketing
Reviews Challenge
Asking for reviews does not come naturally to most people.
"Hey, could you write a note to tell me how awesome I am?"
Even people who love you may not respond.
"Um, did you get my message about leaving us a review???"
It's easier for some people to get reviews than others.
"So tell me, how many reviews have you collected so far?"
Getting feedback isn't hard.
But getting a review is.
"Hey, thank you. But could you finish what you started
... pretty please???"
Each client can have multiple relationships within your company.
"Um, I just left a review for Fred. Do you need one too?"
Clients are awesome!
"Wow! Thank you so much!!"
Now that we collected all these reviews,
what do we do with them?
2019 Reviews Challenge Examples
(thanks again to all our clients for responding!)
