436 – Bad Reviews are Good For You: Tom talks Bad Reviews

Episode 436 – Bad Reviews
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody it's Tom here with episode four hundred and thirty six of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about bad reviews are good for you. How can that be? Now, this is not a reputation management episode when I'm going to tell you why bad reviews are good and how to get more reviews overall to stack the deck in your favor when it comes to reviews. I'm not talking about fraudulent reviews by competitors trying to screw you. Yeah, you should try to get them removed. I'm talking about various negative reviews by real customers that could be used to make you appear more credible. All right. Hope you enjoyed this episode 435. That was Ian and Amy Anderson. I'll tell you what, these are digital nomads, they're perfect for this show. They travel the world. They live three months in different countries and do their business online and just have a blast. Ian said he's never been here. They must really love each other. I'll tell you that because he says he can't remember in the past 10 years, other than one time he was in the hospital being more than 200 feet away from his wife. Okay. I don't know. Some people I don't know that could be a homicide in some cases, but they they make it work.

[00:01:54] You don't want to miss that episode 435. And of course, if you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com/435. All right, as we like to hear your own voice here on screw the commute? Well, if the show's helped you out at all in your business or giving you ideas to help you start a business. We want to hear about it, visit screwthecommute.com, look for a little blue sidebar that says send voicemail, click on it, talk in your phone or computer and tell me how the shows helped you and make sure you put your website in there so you get a big shout out on a future episode of Screw the Commute. Also pick up a copy of our freebie. It's an automation ebook that saved me millions of keystrokes and allows me to get my work done. Lightning fast so that you can pick that up at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. We sell it for 27 bucks, but it's free for listening to the show and pick up a copy of our podcast app while you're at it at screwthecommute.com/app. So you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road.

[00:03:01] Now I want you to check out IMTCVA.org that will be in the show notes. That's our school. It's the only licensed dedicated Internet marketing school in the country, probably the world. It can change the course of your life and change the course of young people in your life, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, so that they're not in deep debt and have no marketable skills because everybody's been brainwashed for four year colleges. Well, that's that worked when I was younger, but that's not working. Now, if you can't see that, you're just devastating these people to student loans forever and difficulty getting a job because they're not teaching marketable skills. Well, my school does. And every business on Earth needs Internet marketing stuff and online stuff and digital stuff. So check it out at IMTCVA.org. And a little later, I'll tell you, I can get a full scholarship that you can either use yourself or give to somebody else. You can gift it to them if you're in my high level mentor program.

[00:04:10] All right, let's get to the main event. Bad reviews. Well, nobody likes to get bad reviews, but maybe I can reframe your thinking a little. I mean, and you just might see how they can be used to your advantage. You really can't stop bad reviews. I mean, you can certainly decrease them to almost zero like I have by being fanatical about customer service.

[00:04:39] No, and in fact, research that's come to light is showing that being pretty much perfect can have negative effects. Now, how the heck can that be? Oh, boy. Well, according to a three year study by power reviews in conjunction with Northwestern University, the sweet spot for believability is a rating is a star rating between four point two and four point five on a five star scale. Now, this means if you have virtually all five star reviews, you start to look fake. This is driving me crazy in my school, which I think I think at the time of this recording has one hundred and eighteen five star reviews and one four star. Yeah, they say no good deed goes unpunished, right? So so me going crazy, taking care of students and people is hurting my credibility among other potential students. This really sucks. I got to tell you. And it goes against everything. I believe it. And what am I supposed to do? Go buy fake bad reviews? Trust me, I've. I've considered it. Well, I'm going to put a link to the power review study in the show notes it's about a 31 page PDF and really, really worth reading the whole thing. But I'm going to give you an overview of it here. So their conclusion on the top five factors affecting purchase decisions were one is price number two overall is ratings and reviews.

[00:06:26] That's how important this is. Three is recommendations from family and friends. Four is the brand and five is free shipping. I'm going to tell you about some more of the other findings to. Seventy percent of consumers simply won't buy products online without reading reviews, first, 70 percent. And today, 97 percent of consumers consult product reviews when making purchase decisions. That's up from 95 percent in 2014. And of those shoppers, more than 20, let's see, it says 26 percent consult reviews for every purchase they make online, every single purchase. And in the 18 to 44 age bracket, that jumps to 30 percent, they absolutely consult reviews. Now. Authentic reviews. Outpace everything else except price authentic, so that means my all my five star reviews make me look less than authentic. I can't tell you how this drives me crazy. I mean, because I know scammers out there that's got crap reviews and that are deserve it can still look more authentic because of just because of the reviews, even though they're scumbags. Right. That really drives me crazy. Now, if now this most of the people here, this won't apply to, but if you have a brick and mortar store, 39 percent of people won't buy the product in your store without having looked at reviews about it before they came in. OK, and some of them right there on their cell phone while they're thinking about buying it.

[00:08:22] Now, 59 percent of consumers read between one and 10 reviews. Now, what you got to keep in mind is people will read more or less reviews based on the importance of the product to them. Let me tell you about when I bought my Chevy Suburban. Well, I wanted something really big. So I had several choices there of big SUVs, I was going to put a you know, the reason I got it, you know, I used to just lease, you know, high end Mercedes forever. But when I got the two German shepherds for the protection dog company and had them with me all the time, you know, first of all, you're really not supposed to have dogs in a lease car that was like in the in the deal. And I wanted to be able to deploy them automatically out of, like, electric hatchback to keep me safe in the cabin more safe and let the dogs go out and kill people or do what they're supposed to do and then come back in. And I don't have to get out of the the actual vehicle. So I'm looking at all the hatchbacks and how it works. And and also, I wanted to be able to keep the car running with air conditioning in the summer when the dogs are with me. I mean, just all these little details I'm thinking about. And and so I read, you know, probably 50 reviews rather than one to 10.

[00:09:51] But that was extremely important and a very large ticket sale. I think I have 75000 bucks in this vehicle with the customization and everything on. So people will vary depending on the importance of your product. So just keep that in mind. Now, listen to this. If you don't have any reviews on your products, just adding according to this study, and this is a three year study with a couple thousand consumers, I think. Adding just one review to a page with your product increases the conversion rate for that product by 65 percent. Oh, my goodness. I mean, I'm going to make changes based on my research for this episode. Yeah, I've got reviews and stuff on all over the place, but I'm going to really ramp it up because of these this study. And again, a perfect five star rating, again, to keep repeating this, because it's just over a perfect five star rating is perceived by consumers as too good to be true. I am so against that concept. Oh, man. Now, I really have to agree with this next point that they made. Consumers seek out negative reviews. And that's the first the reason I relate to that, it's the first thing I look at when I go looking at reviews, which I do all the time, because I buy all kinds of stuff. Their research showed that 85 percent of consumers overall seek out negative reviews and listen to this, that jump to 91 percent in the 18 to 29.

[00:11:46] The younger people always want transparency and everything, right? So 91 percent in the 18 to 29 age group. Are looking for negative reviews. You got to resist the urge of trying to delete negative reviews. Now, again, I'm not talking about the fraudulent ones that are clearly just lying and trying to hurt you because. I frequently see and this or this survey agreed that some negative reviews won't matter to some people. For instance, let's say I'm buying a tool and a negative review says that the tool, while it looks like it's really great, but it's for people with bigger hands. Well, to me, that bad review is who cares? I mean, it's totally irrelevant since I have big hands, but having it there, contributing to that lower that sweet spot. Star rating four point two to four point five is what they're claiming helps out that tool. OK, so there you go. And also many negative reviews aren't even in the control of the product vendor who's selling it. In other words, your control. An example would be. Here's a here's an exhibit, a fake one I just made up. We ordered this blender as a Christmas gift and Amazon delivered it the day before New Year's. So that had nothing to do with the quality of the blender and was out of the blender manufacturer's control.

[00:13:23] Amazon did it. So that's another like who cares review about the blender. So the next thing they said was the average of 50 percent of consumers across all age groups will write reviews. And some consumers need an incentive to leave reviews, but you got to be careful with this because places like Amazon will ban you for giving any incentives, but none of that applies for stuff on your website. All right, so what do you do about getting reviews? Well, first you have to have a place to collect them. Now I'm including a link in the show notes to a site that reviews 10 different WordPress review plugins. And it goes on, you know, some won't apply to you, some will, some have different features. So you got to see what you want. Like I particularly am looking for one to put on each of my product pages so somebody can leave a review about that specific product. So I haven't done this review yet. I just gave the assignment to Larry today, who also runs the back end of this podcast to review them and pick out the ones and then will test them and try them again on a future episode. I'll tell you which ones we picked, but you should do your own choices because you might have different goals than me and you might want it to look prettier.

[00:14:51] So you pick the one that has the most templates. I don't know. But but all of them are get are get good reviews, but they may be different than your goals. So check it out. The link is in the show notes. All right. Next thing you have to do is ask for them. Well, you can set your thank you Autoresponder, which is very easy. If you have my shopping cart system KickStartCart to ask for customers. And this would be in your autoresponder when they purchase something for their honest feedback. That's the term I see. You don't want your customers to think you you've built all your great reviews in a fake fashion. Saying the term honest feedback sends the message that you really care about their opinion. And you wanted to be an honest opinion, which you're telling them right up front. Now, you can go on to say their feedback helps you to constantly improve your products and services, which again makes you look better. And then give them an easy to use link directly to your review area for that product or service. Now, this normally would be done right after they got your product so that they're the most excited about it, but if you've never asked before, sometimes you got to play catch up and go back to people that bought a specific product and ask them to review it.

[00:16:23] And hey, we do the same thing for this podcast. I mean, please go over to Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. And unfortunately, they don't make it easy as as some of the plugins that are listed in the show notes for WordPress, but I'd really appreciate it if you would take a moment to do it. I think Larry's got on the homepage of screwthecommute.com, a place that links to, you know, gives you the best chance to get in there easier, you know. So, anyway, I'd appreciate if you do that. Also, remember, you can get a shout out on future episodes of this podcast. See, that's another kind of way that I've been doing it for a long time to get reviews. And it's kind of a review and that, hey, if you take the time to leave me a voicemail of how this show has helped you. Well, that's kind of a rating and review and social proof. And that's what all this stuff is, is social proof to people. That's credible because, you know, people are hearing it in your own voice and they hear your website. You know, that's what we you know, at the beginning of this episode, that's what I said. Leave it in your own voice and get a future shout out in front of skew the commute audience and put your website in there so you get it.

[00:17:43] That's kind of an incentive for you to do it because you get some promotion in front of a lot of people say so. So anyway, get those reviews. And hey, if you need help with any of this stuff, make sure you check out my mentor program. It's the longest running, most successful, most unique ever in the field of Internet and digital marketing. I got a massive track record, 23 years teaching this stuff. We have the great Internet marketing retreat center where you spend an immersion weekend. We shoot marketing videos in our TV studio for you to edit them and give you the the put the graphics on all that. We have an entry fee instead of a massive upfront payment. And I tied my success to your success. I mean, just all these things that nobody else will do for you and you can't get anywhere else. So check it out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. And remember, you get a scholarship to the school that you can gift to somebody or use yourself for extra training. And it would be the best legacy gift you could ever give to a young person. And they won't come home and be living in your basement when they get that letter. All right, that's it. Go and get those reviews. I'll get you on the next episode. See you later.

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