Reputation is everything – Taylor Swift even made a whole album about it when hers was under threat. In business, you don’t necessarily need to make a song and dance out of what people think about you, but you do need to be proactively managing your reputation and being aware of how people really feel about you, your business and what you offer.
There’s three key ways to do this including testimonials, Google Reviews and knowing your Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Ask For Testimonials
Testimonials are separate to reviews on a product or service. These are statements of endorsement for what you do. They’re great to use in your marketing and communications. At Greenfish, we like to include them with our case studies so that our clients (current and potential) can see our capabilities but also hear first hand how that impacted the organisation we were working for.
The best time to collect testimonials is when the work is current and your results have had time to show. There isn’t a right or wrong time, it’s case by case. For example, on a project like the one we completed with our client Bubblegum Casting, we got the testimonial once their CRM solution was implemented and we were starting to work on the ongoing improvements. That way they were able to speak about the real benefits we provided while it was fresh in their mind, but also had something to work with. If we’d gotten the testimonial while we were setting up the system, no doubt they would have still been complimentary but it would have been more of a “it’s going ok so far” rather than a “this is what we did and why it worked”.
It can be helpful to have some set questions that you send your clients when you’re asking for their words, and to have set up that relationship and expectation during the project. You want them to speak honestly and in their own words but giving them questions can help give structure to what they say and make the process of using the testimonial more streamlined.
Get Google Reviews
Google Reviews will help your business – if you’re managing them well. You don’t want to let it be an optional free for all because we all know that happy people may go out of their way to let you or others know, unhappy people almost definitely will and many go straight for the bad review route over contacting the business to seek resolution or express their concerns.
Our client Accru Rawsons had a Google Business listing but weren’t proactively managing it because they had a good word of mouth referral system and loyal clients. Then they got a couple of lower star Google reviews that pulled their average rating down to an alarming 1.8/5. Accru didn’t just want to improve that score, they wanted to understand why they got it in the first place.
So many businesses in Accru Rawsons’ position would just jump straight into getting more 5 star reviews to balance the average out – and that’s part of reputation management.
We recommend proactively encouraging people to leave Google reviews in a way that nurtures your relationship with them, invites them to provide honest feedback to you and ultimately shows that you are a business who cares about your customer and client experience.
Know Your Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Your Net Promoter Score (NPS) provides correlation between your business growth and your client and customer behaviour/experience. It helps bridge those gaps between what you know and what you don’t know, and identifies opportunities to not only build stronger relationships with your customers but also increase your bottom line.
Not all clients and customers are created equal, and just as lead scoring helps you understand how the people you do business with are helping (or hindering) your growth and results.
It offers the opportunity to improve engagement in a measurable, tangible way.
Let’s Talk Reputation
If you aren’t talking about your business’ reputation, others might be – that’s how it works. If you’d like to proactively work on engagement strategies that will help you have a better, bigger business, get in touch for a free Strategy Call with the Greenfish Marketing Team. This isn’t just a sales session, you will walk away with tailored and actionable information whether you go on to do more work with us or not. Reserve your time here.
