Local Market Monopoly

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Clarence Fisher: Have you subscribed to the Local Market Monopoly newsletter yet? Each week you get one actionable digital marketing tip delivered straight to your inbox. Designed specifically for small businesses like you who want to increase their market share and grow their online presence. Each tip focuses on strategies for growing your online reputation, increasing your company's reach, and improving sales and referrals without wasting money on ineffective tactics. Sign up now at localmarketmonopoly.com and start receiving our best of the best strategies immediately. Whoa.

Intro: You're listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher, uncovering the tools tactics and strategies, the most successful small businesses used to die their local market and own the block.

Clarence Fisher: Hey, Hey, welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. It's Clarence Fisher, your host, and I want to thank you for rocking with me for 70, 70 podcast episodes rocking with me as if I'm on the radio again, so I had a little radio in my back in the day for a decade if you didn't know that. But anyway, welcome back. I'm so glad that you're back and what I'm going to share with you today, I've got a really, really cool tree for you. It is the review request email that we have used for no joke, almost a decade. Of course it has. We've tweaked it along the years, but we've given it to clients and time after time, after time, time it works. Now, here's the thing. When you send a request for review, you probably already have a process. I mean, it can be as easy as, Hey, can you give us a review?
I mean, that works. I'm sure you've sent that before, right? Here's the thing. What I want to impress upon you right now is to create a system That is the big thing that we have to do is create a system where someone on your team is responsible for requesting these reviews. Now, some people have their CRM hooked up to their point of sale to where when someone makes a purchase, then they automatically get the review email or they get the review text. Those things are great. Doctor's offices have them. If you do not have that, try to, actually, you can do this with just about any email marketing system that works on tags, and if they come in, then just pull up their record and tag them like just visited. Have that trigger out trigger to send out this review request, or you can create something even more generic than what I'm about to give you so that they can have that sent out every time they visit, or as many times as you don't mind sending out the request for review.
Net promoter score is always great too, but this is something a bit different. This is so that you can get a review and then actually you can turn that review into a testimonial, be it video or text if you want, if want to take it to the next level. It's kind of like the upsell on reviews video testimonials, by the way, are always best, and here's why, because people can see, people can feel the emotion that's happening, and also, once you have the video, you have the best of both worlds because you can get that video transcribed and now you have video and you have written, and another thing you want to do when you get these reviews is make sure you use them in all of your marketing material. Okay, so let's do this. We are going to give you this template and you can of course, just kind of follow the guidelines and make it your own. Matter of fact, I would suggest that you make it your own, but there's a couple of emails that are involved in this here. Email number one, oh, let's go real quick. I'm talking about the system, creating the system for someone to send that out. Not only do you want that to happen, but you also want your staff to be trained to know when to ask for a review, and there is a very, very, very, very, very simple way for this to happen.
It must be in their nervous system that when someone says, oh my goodness, this has been so great that the very next thing that comes out of your staff's mouth is that is so awesome. We are so happy for you. Hey, would you mind leaving us that in a review? Hey, would you mind leaving that for us in a testimonial? And if you really want to get, I say, you may say aggressive, but I don't think it's, it's too aggressive to say, just whip out cell phone and say, Hey, you know what? That is so awesome. Do you mind if we just kind of just record you saying that right now? I'm serious. Front desk. I mean, we just do this all the time in doctor's offices. Front desk would be like pi y in your face. Do your mind if I hit record and you say that and then they get video that way?
Just say exactly what you said, okay, but everybody has to be on guard that when someone is elated and they're happy, that is the best time for you to get a testimonial or a review.
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Alrighty. I'm using this kind of interchangeably as far as the review and the testimonial. I know this is a review request, but we kind of put it all together and here you go. On your subject line, I'm giving you three different kind of options here. You can create your own subject line is, thank you. A little known fact that the shorter your subject line, the higher the open, open rate. If you can have a subject line with one word that is going to have a higher open rate than two words. Two words than three words, three words than four words, it's the way it goes. So thank you. Or want to inspire others, question mark, or I could really use your help. That is another one that will get it open. I could really use your help.
Hey, first name, I hope you're knocking it out of the park with your whatever service that you're offering them. Could you do us a huge favor? We started to realize how important online reviews are for our company, and we're asking some of our valued clients, customers or patients to help us build our online reputation by writing an honest review of your service or your company name, writing a short whatever you're asking for, review testimonial. You could actually ask them to shoot a quick one minute video for you about whatever the service is would let other hopeful, your target audience know how it ga. Let's see how it gave you the confidence to get whatever you put in, whatever the benefit was. For instance, if they said that they are having great success with this, with whatever service, X service that they mentioned, you want to put that there and then say, we value and appreciate your feedback, and I all caps know others would appreciate it too.
If you can help, here is where you can post your story. Here's where you can post your review online and then give them the Google link. You can go to Google and actually your Google business profile and actually grab the link and you can put it right there. If you serve older, actually, I think everybody knows this now, that if you have a Gmail address, you can write Google reviews, but also I like to put in here is if you don't have a Gmail address or have no idea what I'm talking about as far as Google reviews, no worries. You can leave us review at one of your favorite social media sites below, and I put either Facebook there or LinkedIn, and then the PS is if you just want to pull out your cell phone, shoot a quick video, that's fine too. But we would love to have this review so we, we've given them options.
We're looking at Google number one, but if for whatever conspiracy theory reason, they don't use Google, you can have them jump on Facebook, but I, you know what, if you're not using Google, you're probably not using Facebook or anything, so you might want to move to LinkedIn. It doesn't matter. You can have, it's your preference. You can have any, and by the way, I have some theories myself. You can send them anywhere. Let's say you are service business and you really want to concentrate on Angie's List or Yelp or any other service. You want to put that in there. Now, here's the deal, have that send out automatically preferably, but you know what happens. Do you know what happens is people say, I don't know what to say. That's the number one. Well, the number one reason people don't give you reviews and give you testimonials is because you don't ask.
That is the absolute number one reason. The number two reason is they don't know what to say, so we're not going to leave 'em stranded in this PS hey, it can be difficult to know what to say, so here's some questions you can answer to make it easy. Ah, number one, what problem did you have that prompted you to contact us? How was this problem affecting your business? And you personally? I give you a five to six questions. You don't have to use 'em all. You can use one, two, or three. Of course, the fewer, the more chance that they won't get overwhelmed, but you can use any or all of these questions as the PS and say, Hey, don't worry about it. I've got you. And that is that first email. If you are driving right now, just remember, whenever you get to where you're going, you can go to localmarketmonopoly.com/reviewrequest forward slash review request.
I'm saying that for my team as well. And then also you can go to the show notes and it's going to be there as well. I think we're starting to get it to where even in Apple Podcasts or somewhere, wherever you're listening, that you can click the description and then click a link to go to the show notes, and then it'll be right there. Hopefully that's happening and I am not lying to you. All right, so after that, human nature is they are not going to, they're going to tell you, they're going to leave you a review, tell you, they will leave you a testimonial, and then crickets. Crickets. So here you go. On day five, if you haven't heard from them, just say, Hey, a few days ago really is day five, but who's counting? A few days ago, I send you a no asking if you would drop us a little success story on how your company has helped you, I would truly appreciate that even a short paragraph would help out.
And then we just kind of reiterate, and you can go here, you can make this your own. I really suggest that you do make this your own, and then again, we give them some questions that can prompt them so that they know, give them an idea of what to write. So you got a twofer here. You have the initial email to send out. Then you have the email to send the 70% of people who won't do it immediately, I'm telling you that, so that you can expect that. Then you have that to send it to 'em five days after that. Anything after that, you can just remind them how you would like to remind them at their next service date or something like that. I hope this helps you. The big thing here are the big takeaways. This is the action item for the week.
Find out who is responsible for asking for reviews. Make a list of everyone. You have people right now that you're, you're like, oh my goodness, I have been thinking about asking that person to board review. We did such a great job for them, and they told me that we did such a great job for them. I've been meaning to ask for a review, send them this, make that short lists, send them this, but then also find a way to get your team involved and get them trained to looking out for opportunities to ask for reviews. And then if you have a system that sends out automatically an email to ask for reviews, you can implement this there as well. I hope it helped you. If you have anyone on your team, by the way, that you want to have a coach on how to implement any of these strategies that we're talking about, we've got a new program, hope you've heard of it.
It's called mainstreetmarketingcoach.com, where yours truly will, at least right now, it's me. We'll help them and guide them along the way, putting in the processes for our reach, referrals, repeat sales and reputation, starting with reputation. So go to mainstreemarketingcoach.com, and right now we've got, since it's a new program, we've got an introductory offer for you there. Alrighty, so next week, hope, make it a profitable week, okay? That's what we're in business for actually. We're in business to help people, but we're also in business, make a profit, help people and make a profit. Next week we're going to talk about how to turn your LinkedIn connections into clients. You're turning your network into revenue without being sleeze ball, okay? You're not, you're, you're going to want to be here. You don't want to miss that. So I'll see you until next week, go on the block.

Closing: We appreciate you listening to Local Market Monopoly. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show and visit localmarketmonopoly.com for more resources that will help you dominate your local market and own the block.