[Webinar Transcript from May 2022]
Hi everybody, welcome to the webinar today. We're excited you're here. My name is McKay Allen. I'm on the marketing team at Kenect. Today, we are going to do an FAQ on Google reviews for event venues. We're going to do a quick Google reviews background, and then we'll answer some of the most commonly asked questions we receive about Google reviews from event venues. We think this will be interesting, hopefully, useful for you, and we'll try to make it quick. We'll try to be out of here in about 20 minutes.
So, first thing we want to do is just give you a little background on who Kenect is. So, we're a text messaging platform built for the event industry. More than 5,000 businesses use Kenect. And basically what we do is we turn your main number into a textable line. That allows you to get the benefits of texting without having to give out your personal cell number. This allows you to communicate more efficiently to generate new leads, to conduct video consultations, and to drive online reviews as well. It's a powerful, powerful way to stay in touch with your customers and your clients.
We were recently listed as one of the fastest growing companies in the world on the Inc 5000 list in the top 5% of that list, in fact, which is actually a big deal.
Okay so how do we do it? Two-way text messaging for your business without giving out your personal cell number. So, we make your main number textable. I think that's important to note, we make your main number textable. So, you get the benefits of texting without having to give out that personal cell you get web leads straight from your website. So you put a little “Text Us” button on your website, and you will receive more leads, video chat for virtual consultations, online review generation with texting, and then also payment collection via texting, which has become really popular and really powerful.
Your clients really do prefer text messaging. So, 89% of customers would prefer to engage with a client via text rather than a phone call. 98% of all text messages are opened. Compare that to 12% of emails, 1 to 2% of voicemails. It's pretty easy to see why texting is preferred. Your clients do not want to call you, and have you not be able to answer. You don't want to call them, and play phone tag for half a day when you're trying to get an answer on which dish to serve, or which flowers to decorate with. You don't want that level of communication to have to wait. Just text, they'll respond immediately.
Top eight ways event venues are using Kenect. I won't read through these, but scheduling consultations is a big deal, sending up updates, collecting fees, sending and receiving photos, videos, generating online reviews as well. Add the “Text Us” button to your website, so generating that Text Us button is easy. We help you set it up during the initial onboarding. And you will get more leads when you put that on your website. Also, getting the Facebook and Instagram messages in the same place as your texts. So, this is your texting inbox. This allows you to send and receive text messages just like you would emails. It looks and functions like an email inbox, but it's for texting. I think that's really important to note is it looks like your email inbox, but it's for texting.
Then, you also have the Kenect Mobile app that you can use that will allow you to send and receive text messages to and from your phone. So, you can send a text message, you can receive them, you can send somebody else in your organization leads. You can assign those leads to people, you can get alerts when those leads are or are not responded to. You can also request replies, request reviews, you can schedule replies, you can request payments. You can send photos, videos, PDFs, attachments. There's just tons of things you can do here. And it's extremely powerful to have this in everybody's pocket, to have them have the ability to do this.
I mentioned Kenect Video Chat. It's a great way, and a great methodology to engage with your customers, as well as with the Kenect Video Chat. So, you can send them a live video chat regardless of the device they're using, and show them the venue, show them food, whatever you want.
All right, let's talk about Google reviews. Google My Business is really important to understand before we dive into Google reviews. Google My Business allows you to put basic and verified information about your business on the internet. So, this is used as the baseline central location for verified information about your business. So, you would put your address here, your hours, your number of Google reviews. You could put pictures, Q&As, all sorts of things here. And this page generally receives five times more views, think about that, than your actual website. And yet, most businesses are not putting the time and effort into getting more reviews, or getting this page updated. They're spending a lot of time and money on their website, which is awesome. You should spend time and money on your website, and they're doing that. They're spending time and money on their website. But they simply are failing to spend time and money on their Google My Business page. In fact, 78% of businesses never even log into this page, even though it gets five times more views than your actual website. So, Google reviews really are the primary method for clients to share feedback about your business.
There is some risk though. Anyone using Google, anyone with a Gmail address can review your business and leave a star rating. Anybody. These reviews can be just star ratings. They can be long or short. And Google does not verify to ensure that they are your actual client. So, you might be asking yourself, "Well, if that's the case, why would I do this?" Number one is because they matter to customers. These reviews matter to customers a significant amount, a great deal. 93% of customers use reviews as the first step in choosing a venue. 91% say they trust online reviews as much as they would trust personal recommendations. In fact, these are really the new word of mouth. And that's really important to note, these matter to your customers. If we would've done this webinar, say five years ago, these numbers would've been in a 50 to 60% range.
Number two is because they matter to Google. 97% of people go to Google when they want to find a wedding venue. Google then, determines the order in which businesses are listed based on ratings and reviews. And if you are not in the top three, you will not get clicked. So, again, you've got to make sure that you are engaging with Google because Google has the power here. Google has the ability to determine where you rank. And where you rank determines, how much you'll be clicked. And that determines how much business you're going to get. So it's really, really, really important. I can't stress that enough. Now, one of the things you'll see is Google will display the results in different orders at different times. Sometimes you'll see the map first in organic listings. Other times you'll see the map then organic listings after them than not, for example.
Why does Google care about reviews? Now, this is vitally important to note. Think about this from the standpoint of what is Google trying to accomplish here? And what Google's trying to accomplish simply is this, Google is trying to produce the result that the searcher is trying to see. So, if the searcher's looking for a venue, it is Google's job to show them the best possible venue they can find. That's important to note is Google is trying to show them the best possible venues that they can locate. And the only way they can determine that is by looking at Google reviews, there is no other methodology Google can use to determine if a business is good than by looking at their reviews.
Now, how can you deal with negative reviews? First of all, how common are they? That's the most common question we get. It's about 1 in 50 reviews are negative. So, that's important to note. Tips for avoiding bad reviews? You can't really avoid them, but you can reduce them, you can mitigate them. What not to do when you get a bad review is probably the thing you want to do the most, which is put them in their place when you reply, don't do that. It's just going to start a public argument. And if there's one thing that the last couple years have taught us, it's that a public argument generally does very little good. It's just simply not going to work. It's not going to be effective, so don't do that. It's not going to change their mind. No one ever after getting a reply for an online review has thought, "You know, I changed my mind. This company was actually awesome." That's never happened. So, don't do that.
What should you do when you get a bad review is probably the thing that's the most challenging to do, which is reply with respect, but always reply. Silence is consent. So you should reply, but some say something like, "I can understand why you're frustrated. My name is McKay, I'm one of the owners. I'd love to speak with you about this. Just text our main business line. We'd love to speak with you directly." That's all you got to do. That's kind of it. And if you do that, if you follow that pattern, you're gonna have a lot fewer angry people when you reply to a review.
The key is really to bury bad reviews with good ones. I think that's vital and important to understand. The key is to bury bad reviews with good reviews. You will never be able to handle bad reviews as a standalone completely. Like if you just have a negative review strategy, you're going to be in a world of hurt because all you're gonna do is be dealing with negative reviews all day. And you're never gonna have any positive reviews to counteract those negative reviews. So, you have to make sure that your primary and principle strategy for gathering... Or for dealing with negative reviews is to gather more good reviews. I think that's really important to note.
How not to deal with bad reviews, what not to do when you get a bad review is ignore it. Always pay attention to it, get to the bottom of it, figure out what happened. Don't fail to reply. Always reply, as I said, silence is consent in this situation. And don't just plan on Google removing it. That's unlikely to happen. It's simply unlikely to happen is Google removing the review. Start an online argument, don't do that.
So, will Google take them down? This is a common question we get. And it's one I wanted to address on this webinar. Google will generally not take down negative reviews. It's very rare. We're talking like less than 5% of the instances when Google is asked to remove a review, will they actually remove a review, which just doesn't happen very often. And that's important to note and vital to understand is Google will generally not take these reviews down. Why? Because they can't verify who's telling the truth. It's that simple. So, if someone gets on and says, you guys were liars and you did a bad job with their event. Awesome. Probably untrue. Google just has no way of knowing that. They have no way of verifying it. And so, there's no scenario where they're just going to take that down.
Now, when will they take things down? They will take things down if they're way over the top. If they're way over the top, if they're offensive, if they're profane, if they are racist. If some situation like that arises, they'll take it down. But those are pretty rare. And I think it's important to note that.
What do they want to see? They want to see quantity and recency. I'll simply point out on this, you can't just go blitz and get a bunch of reviews next month, and never think about it again. You have consistently get reviews. How do you do that? Build a process. Here's what the process should look like, I would argue. First, you have to define who you ask. Do you ask everybody or just those that like you? Second is how do you ask? I would strongly suggest ask via texting. If you are asking via email, you're going to get responses between 1 and 2% of the time. If you ask via texting, you are going to get responses between 35 and 58% of the time. So, you will have more success if you are asking via text, it's that simple. When do you ask? This is your call. I don't know the right answer to that. It's gonna be up to every single business when you ask for a Google review.
Who's in charge of asking? The simple thing I would say here is just make sure you're defining who is actually in charge of doing the asking. So, it should be somebody who knows they're in charge of it. And then, give them a little bonus if they succeed. Determine an owner for the process, and make sure they know that they're the owner for the process. Where businesses fail generally with Google reviews is by not having any sort of methodology, or person in charge of asking. You've got to make sure someone is in charge of asking, that's really important.
And then ask in the right way. Make sure that you are asking in the right way, and that is via text. If you're simply sending an email to get reviews, you're just not gonna give very many reviews. It's that simple. It won't work very well. Send the text. It's got your logo on it. It's got a link to your Google My Business page directly. You can send this directly via Kenect. It's got a template. You can schedule these, you can automate these. The person then selects the review site and leaves the review. If you do that, you're going to get reviews 58% of the time, or more.
Steps of success here. Take control. Don't let angry clients determine your online reputation. If you remember nothing else from this webinar, remember that, do not let angry clients determine your reputation. Far too many businesses sit back and wait. They wait for good reviews, wait for bad reviews. The problem with that is you're gonna get some of both. And so, you're going to be in a situation where your Google rankings are hurt. Make sure you don't find yourself in that situation. Be proactive and be aggressive. I know you didn't get into this business to proactively go get Google reviews, that's not why you're doing what you do. But you have to otherwise, you're gonna fall down on Google rankings and you're gonna find fewer and fewer new customers.
Okay, I want to take a few questions here. Justine says, "The Knot will let you prove the review is wrong. Why not Google?" Great question. I don't know the answer to that because I don't work for Google. But generally speaking, I think it's just because of the mass number of businesses that are on Google. They've got 50 million businesses in North America. They've got hundreds of millions of businesses globally. There's no scenario where they're gonna be able to validate every single review from every single business. So, that's probably the reason. But Google will not let you verify that the review is incorrect. And I think part of Google's logic there is, and this is why Google reviews are trusted more than any other site's including The Knot is because businesses... or consumers know, as a consumer I know and you know that Google is not allowing themselves to be manipulated by the business. I know that if review is left on Google, the business has no control over that. Whereas, there's other review sites that the business can pay more money, and the review will be taken down. Yelp got in trouble for doing that, is people realize that if there was a bad review about a restaurant, the restaurant could call Yelp, and subscribe to an additional service, and they would take the negative review down. And so, consumers started to lose faith in those types of sites. So, Google just simply has no methodology to do that. It's almost impossible to actually reach Google to complain about a review, much less get them to take it down. So, I hope that answers your question the best that I can anyway.
Okay, additional questions. Let's see. "How long does it take Google to remove a review when they do decide to remove it?" It depends. Again, it's really rare, but it could be weeks.
"Why is Google putting more emphasis on reviews?" Yeah so, this is important to understand. Google is putting more priority on reviews than ever. They are basing their results on Google reviews more dramatically than ever before. I don't know why, but my suspicion why is because they are finding that encouraging consumers to click on businesses that have more reviews does two things. Number one, it gives the consumer more assurance that the business is good which, in turn, sends that consumer to Google more. And then the second thing it does is it makes the business more reliant on Google. There's no question here that there's an ulterior motive. Google wants you to be on Google My Business more, and depend on them more because that helps their business as well. So, it's probably both. Great questions.
Well, I hope this was useful, everybody. I told you, we'd be out of here in around 20 minutes. And that's where my watch is showing. So, thanks for taking the time out of your schedules. Hope this was valuable. Thanks again. If you're interested in learning more about Kenect, you can text us or call us at that number 888-972-7422. Thanks everybody. Bye-bye.