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WeddingWire & TheKnot Wedding Marketing Secrets To Online Reviews


Ah…wedding season! Are you ready for a season of happy couples and fairytale weddings? Bring it on! Rock those weddings! Now let’s skip forward and say you’ve completed your work for the big day and the couple is thrilled! Now what? How do you get the most wedding marketing leverage out of your raving fan clients? Well I owned a successful wedding DJ company for over 20 years and I’m going to share my marketing secrets with you. This is one of my favorite wedding marketing strategies; how to get the most out of online reviews!

Weddingwire wedding marketingOnline Reviews

Love them or hate them, online reviews on websites like The Knot, Wedding Wire, Google Plus, and Yelp are here to stay! Like me, I’m sure you have been frustrated at times with these online review sites.  Maybe you’ve had fake negative reviews like I’ve had. Or maybe you gave a complete refund to a complaining client and they still left you a bad review online (Yep…had that one too!). I’m not going to debate whether these websites are fair or not. Because, like it or not, online reviews are not going to go away and will become even more important to your wedding business in the future.

TheKnot wedding marketingWedding Marketing Through Reputation Management

So do you have a system for making the most out of your happy customers’ reviews? Or on the flip side, do you have a system for minimizing the impact of complaints from your customers? Maybe you are doing well with getting lots of great reviews on Wedding Wire and The Knot, but you haven’t done anything else with them. Don’t miss out on some easy strategies to market your business for free with online reviews!

Yelp online reviewsLeverage Your Online Reviews For Wedding Marketing

Leverage is the key to making online reviews work for your business! When I owned my DJ business, one of our top free lead sources were prospects from online review websites. It was the most mentioned reason that clients gave us for choosing our company over the competition. I spent years developing a system to get the most out of each and every happy client testimonial. I carefully crafted our client communications, letters, emails, online review profiles, etc. to bring in loads of positive reviews. We worked this program consistently for about 5 years. Besides gathering over 100 awesome online reviews, we also won 11 state wedding awards. TheKnot.com Hall of Fame HonoreeBut it even got better! We were inducted as a National Wedding Industry Hall of Fame Honoree by The Knot.com! We were one of just 331 of all wedding related companies in the entire country to receive this award that year and we were interviewed by 2 local TV stations. Needless to say, it was great publicity and all because of legitimate leveraging of online reviews.

Don’t Ignore The Process

Even if you don’t advertise on WeddingWire or TheKnot, your clients reviews will still show up in Google search. Even if you don’t encourage your clients to review you on the TheKnot or WeddingWire, many of them are already members of those sites because they are in the planning stage of their weddings. These websites may remind the couple to review their vendors online after their wedding. You might as well take as much control of this process as you can.Google weddingwire online reviews A stellar review from a client on a review website will:

  • Give you a higher listing on the review website
  • Increase your average star rating on the site and in search engines that share review ratings
  • Increase organic national searches on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
  • Increase your local search engine optimization (SEO)
  • But most importantly, it will increase your social proof, your legitimacy in your market. Wedding clients buy from vendors that they trust.  Legitimate online reviews will do that for you.

Are You A DJ, Caterer, Hotel or Florist?

If you are in a real competitive part of the wedding industry like disc jockeys, caterers, florists, etc., great online reviews are not just nice to have…they are a requirement! You will need to have a bunch of them just to be even with your competition. Hopefully you are in a market where just a little bit of work will help you to dominate your wedding niche!

How To Leverage Your Online Reviews On TheKnot Or WeddingWire:

  1. Find out who your raving fans are by requesting feedback from all of your customers (hint: You can go back years if you haven’t done this before)
  2. Ask happy couples to post a review to one or more review websites like TheKnot or WeddingWire
  3. Use those reviews in other promotional materials and on your business website
  4. Ask those same happy brides and grooms to post to additional online review websites like Google Plus or Yelp
  5. Repeat this process on a regular basis, once a week is best!

A little bit of work goes a long ways in building your online reputation. If you think you are too busy to do this, you can have an employee do it or outsource it all together to a freelancer or virtual assistant (VA).

Google Plus Facebook Yelp online review secretsFor a free quick start guide to leveraging the power of legitimate online reviews and 12 free email, letter and web page templates, download it here.

If you want more help with this, want the client contact templates laid out for you, etc. I have an online course that I created to help! I know you are busy so I packed all of the strategies you need into just a 1.5 hour course! And this course can be taken on your computer, smartphone or tablet when you are on the go! And instead of $147, I have a special wedding industry offer of just $29 by clicking here! Follow that link to find out all the extra bonuses included in the course!

Now if you are still not sure or your budget is basically tapped right now. WAIT! I want you to have this course because I know it will help your business! For a limited time, you can sign up here for just $9! Plus it comes with a 30 day money back guarantee and so much more! Sign up now…I really want to help you improve your online reviews!

Join over 2500 successful students…Here are what just a few have had to say:

“This course has given me a way to get though the “review bottleneck”. I work hard to produce high quality results for my clients and many of them are tremendously happy with the work I produce. My problems has always been that even when I ask (verbally) for them to review my work it generally doesn’t happen, and I didn’t understand why! Tom’s course has given me not only the tools, but also the understanding of the process I need to properly encourage them to create and post positive reviews. On top of all that he also gives you a way to use reviews as a feedback mechanism to help improve your product or service delivery without damaging your public reputation. I can’t tell you how many times I would like people to tell me what they are REALLY thinking when they don’t want to. Tom’s system helps with that as well.” Scott, Udemy Student

“I plan on using some of the tips I received from this course in my business. There were a lot of things about reviews that I learned that I was unaware of. The instructor has a pleasant voice and the course was interesting.” Lora, Wedding Officiant & Author

For more information about online reviews and other ways to market your wedding business, check out the rest of my website. Now let’s bring on those wedding couples and have the best wedding season ever!

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Yelp Small Business Secrets – Not Recommended Reviews

What! Your great customer review on Yelp disappeared! So how do you get those “filtered” or “not recommended” reviews to show up from your happy customers?

According to a recent survey, Yelp is the most popular of online review websites and is probably the most challenging of review websites to master for a business. Yelp has this super secret formula for what reviews they will make public or not. For example, in my DJ company, we had 3 public reviews being shown and about 10 hidden ones. All of them were legitimate reviews of course, but the Yelp filter kept them hidden. Now I wish I had known about these strategies back when I still owned the company so I could have fixed that.

So how do we get those filtered or hidden reviews to show up? The best way to get “not recommended” reviews to show up publicly is to get your customer more involved in other Yelp reviews. As soon as you get a review on Yelp, respond to it by: friending the customer on Yelp, like the review and send them a message through Yelp asking them to review other businesses. The problem is Yelp is suspicious of reviewers that sign up, leave one review and never return to the site. Those reviews will likely be hidden. Hidden reviews can come back to life though, show up publicly and then disappear again! Yelp even has a policy against asking for reviews! They are the only review site that I know of that has that policy! Now that’s a “policy” that I say you need to bend.

Here is some sample text that you could use to message a customer on Yelp that has had their positive review hidden from public view:

“Thank you so much for your review of my business on Yelp. I’m so glad we exceeded your expectations. Just an FYI. Your review did get hidden from public view (which does happen on occasion). Could you help me to make sure your review gets listed publicly on Yelp by reviewing some additional businesses? The more active on Yelp that you are, the more your reviews will show up to help other customers to find us and the other businesses that you like. Thanks again for your support. I really appreciate it.”

Above all – Keep working at it. Yelp shows up very high in Google so you want as many Yelp reviews that you can get. For example, in our local DJ market, our Yelp listing made it to the bottom of page 1 in Google. Before we started with Yelp, the review website didn’t even show up in our category. In one study of Yelp by the Harvard Business School an increase of just one star for a restaurant lead to a 5 to 9% increase in revenue. Now you can’t argue with the importance of great reviews on Yelp after hearing that!

For a free quick start guide to leveraging the power of legitimate online reviews and 12 free email, letter and web page templates, download it here.

Want to learn more about leveraging your online reviews on Yelp, Google Plus, Facebook and more, check out my online course!

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What Review Websites Should I Target For My Small Business?

Google Yelp TripadvisorThere are 100’s of review websites for businesses.  Review websites could be a search engine, a social media site, a free or paid directory, or a combination of all of these.  Nowadays it’s hard to tell the difference!  Many review websites now act like social media sites with friending, liking, commenting and such.

Some social media websites like Facebook have a review component to their pages.  Still other review websites are listings of businesses by industry and may be paid or free.  Even though some are paid sites.  For the most part, I won’t differentiate between them.  Most paid review sites still publish your profile and put up your reviews for free.  Just because a review website offers paid advertising doesn’t mean you have to buy it.

What review sites should you target?  Well that depends on your industry.  The top ones I recommend for most businesses are:  Google Plus Page, Facebook Page, Twitter Profile, Yelp, and a LinkedIn Business Page.  But don’t stop there!  Here are some additional top review websites with links to claim or set up a profile:

Major Online Review Websites and Social Media:

Additional Online Review and Listing Websites to Consider:

Industry Specific Websites:

Restaurants and Food Establishments:

Travel – Airlines, Hotels, Resorts, Cruises, etc.

Healthcare – Doctors, Hospitals, Clinics, etc.

Wedding:

Home Improvement:

Education:

Employers:

Which websites am I missing?  Be sure to add those to the comments below.

For a free quick start guide to leveraging the power of legitimate online reviews and 12 free email, letter and web page templates, download it here.

Find out more about why online reviews are important for your business in these other articles:  Why Online Reviews Are Important For Your Business & Top Tips For Leveraging Your Positive Online Reviews

Want to get serious about leveraging your positive online reviews?  Sign up for my online class at a special discount:  Fans on Fire!  Build Your Business With Online Reviews!

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What other review websites would you recommend?

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Why Online Reviews Are Important For Your Business

YelpLogo1There is a large segment of small businesses today that completely ignore their online reviews.  In a recent survey performed by Yodle, about 50% of small business owners believe positive online reviews are not important.  I recently compiled a list of the benefits a business can receive by encouraging their customers to give them positive online reviews.

A stellar review from a client on a review site like Yelp, Google Plus, etc. will do some, if not all of these:

  • Give you a higher listing on the review site
  • Increase your star rating on the site and in search engines that share the star rating
  • Increase organic national searches on search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc.
  • Increase your local search engine optimization

But most importantly, a positive online review will increase your social proof, your legitimacy in your market.  Clients and customers buy from those that they trust.  Legitimate positive online reviews will do that for you.  Check out some of my best resources for managing your businesses online reviews.  Check out my new online course:  Fans on Fire!  Build Your Business With Online Reviews!

For a free quick start guide to leveraging the power of legitimate online reviews and 12 free email, letter and web page templates, download it here.

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Top Tips For Leveraging Your Positive Online Reviews

REviewHere is an exclusive excerpt from my online course:  Fans on Fire!  Build Your Business With Online Reviews.  Rather than keep it secret and open to my course attendees only, I thought I would share it with you!  So here are some of my top tips and links for leveraging your businesses online reviews:

Google Plus:  If you haven’t already, this is the first review site/social media profile you should set up or claim for your business.  So much could be said about the command presence that Google has on the internet, but that would take up way too much space.  Suffice to say, get this set up now.  Here is a short article on updates to Google Plus Pages:  http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2241393/Google-Warns-SEO-Businesses-to-Avoid-Fake-Reviews  Here is a free handout generator to get Google page reviews:  https://www.whitespark.ca/review-handout-generator

Facebook:  Make sure your business page is listed as a local business or use an app that allows reviews.  Admins currently have the ability to respond to reviews.  You also have the ability to remove the review or rating system as well. – Adding ratings and reviews to your business page https://www.facebook.com/help/589747184405742

Twitter:  Start a hashtag like #yourbusinessnamereviews so you can collect as many positive reviews that are easily searchable.  Favorite those tweets as well.  Research shows that positive tweets from customers lead to more business.

Yelp – Yelp may be the most challenging of review sites to master.  They have this super secret formula for what reviews they will make public or not.  For example, in my DJ company, we had 3 public reviews being shown and 10 hidden ones.  All of them were legitimate reviews of course, but the Yelp filter took them out.  But keep working at it.  Yelp shows up very high in Google so you want as many Yelp reviews that you can get.  For example, in the DJ market, our Yelp listing made it to the bottom of page 1 in Google.  Before we started with Yelp, the Yelp listing in Google didn’t even show up in that local DJ search.

How do you get those filtered or hidden reviews to show up?  The number 1 way is to get your customer more involved in other Yelp reviews.  Respond to the review, friend the customer on Yelp, like the review and send them a message through Yelp asking them to review other businesses.  Yelp is suspicious of reviewers that sign up, leave one review and never return to the site.  Those reviews will likely be hidden.  Hidden reviews can come back to life, show up publicly and then disappear again!  Yelp even has a policy against asking the customer directly for reviews!….the only review site that I know of that has that policy!  That’s a “policy” that I say you need to bend…keep asking your happy customers to review you on Yelp!  Here is an article with more tips on filtered reviews in Google and on Yelp:  http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/06/27/the-afterlives-of-filtered-google-plus-and-yelp-reviews/  In one study of Yelp by the Harvard Business School an increase of just one star for a restaurant lead to a 5 to 9% increase in revenue.  http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6833.html

Hubspot is a great resource for all kinds of online marketing knowledge.  Here is a great article from them on getting more reviews:  http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31852/A-Marketer-s-Guide-to-Accumulating-Awesome-Online-Reviews.aspx and the 20 places Hubspot recommends being listed on:  http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33741/12-Places-Businesses-Should-Be-Collecting-Online-Reviews.aspx

Here is a great chart showing top review sites and their importance for ranking  http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/local-review-site-comparison1.pdf and actually here is the link to the entire article, which is awesome!  http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/10/24/comparison-of-local-review-sites-where-should-you-focus-now/

Great article on what not to do and examples of review landing pages:  http://www.iacquire.com/blog/get-more-reviews-without-becoming-an-outlaw

Surveys can be a great way to get feedback and reviews for your company.  Here are a couple of links to some free options:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/ & http://www.freeonlinesurveys.com/

For a free quick start guide to leveraging the power of legitimate online reviews and 12 free email, letter and web page templates, download it here.

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