[Webinar Transcript, February 2022]

McKay Allen:

All right, everybody let's get started. Thanks for jumping on today. We're excited for this presentation. We'll try to keep it quick so you can get the rest of your day and keep you out of here in 30 minutes or less. We really do encourage you to ask questions today. You should see a little question drop down on your screen. Please type in questions there as they come in. We'd love to answer as many of those as we can.

By way of introduction, my name's McKay Allen I'm on the marketing team at Kenect. We're a text messaging platform built for event venues. We recently announced an integration with Triple Seat, and you'll see us at a lot of event meetings and events in the next few months. Thanks again for jumping on today.

Who is Kenect?

All right, so who is Kenect? We're based outside of Salt Lake City. We're a text messaging platform built for the event industry. More than 5,000 businesses use Kenect. Basically what we do is we turn your main business number into a textable line that allows you to communicate efficiently, generate new leads, conduct video consultations, and drive online reviews all with texting. We were recently listed as one of the fastest growing companies in the world on the Inc. 5,000 list. It's really an honor to make the list, to be in the top 5% of the list where we ended up was a huge deal for us and we're excited about that.

How do we it? A two-way text messaging for your business so you don't need to give out your personal cell number. Web leads straight from your website. We add a little “Text Us,” button on your website so you'll get more leads, video chat for virtual consultations, and then online review generation as well.

Your clients prefer texting. That's the bottom line. 89% of customers say they'd prefer to text a business rather than call a business. 98% of text messages are opened and 96% of customers see phone calls are disruptive. Bottom line is texting is the biggest change in communication between individuals and businesses since the invention of the telephone 110 years ago. If you're not texting, your competitors are and your customers don't want to call you, they don't want to wait on a phone tree, they don't want to wait on hold, they don't want to have you call them back when they're at work, they're at lunch, they're at dinner, they're with their family. They simply and exclusively want to text you so make sure you allow them to do that.

Top eight ways the wedding industry, as well as the event industry uses Kenect, schedule consultations, send reminders, streamline process and validate, send updates, collect fees via text, video chat with clients, send and receive photos, videos, PDFs, attachments, generate online reviews, capture more leads. As I said, we add the “Text Us” button to your website as well. You can capture leads directly into the Kenect texting inbox. Looks and functions a lot like an email inbox but it's for texting, which makes it really powerful as well. We also have a Kenect mobile app that you can download on your phone and again, this is texting from your main business phone number. You can request payments, you can schedule messages, you can invite to a video chat, which we'll do an instant video chat out on any device.

Improving Your Google My Business Page

With that, let's jump into Google Reviews and Google By Business pages specifically. About Google My Business. Google My Business pages allow you to put basic and verified information about your business on the internet. This is used by Google as the central location for verified information about your business.

Now, most businesses spent how hundreds or even thousands of dollars on their actual website and this is fine. You should have a nice website, but the biggest issue is that most companies who spend a lot of money on their website are generally not logging into their Google My Business page consistently. This is the location where reviews are left in house. This allows your business to show up in Google results and on Google Maps. According to Google, if you have a verified GMB listing, you're two times more likely to be seen as reputable. You can see on the right here, what is included in the Google My Business listing, right? You've got the star rating, the name of the business, the link to the website, the address, phone number, as well as Q and A and photos and things like that. This is the place where all reviews are left and housed.

I'm interested, as we talk through the webinar here, most business businesses don't log into their Google My Business page very much. That's a big deal. This is also the primary method for clients to share the feedback about your business. Anyone using Google can review your business and leave a star rating. Now these reviews can be just star ratings, they can be long or short, and Google does nothing to verify that they are your actual client.

Understanding Google Reviews

Why do they matter so much? If it's such a big deal that you log into your Google My Business page, but anybody could leave you a reviewer rating, Google does not verify that they're true, why do they matter so much? Number one is because they matter to customers. Your customers care a lot. They use reviews as the first step in choosing a venue, they trust online reviews as much as they would trust a personal recommendation, which is really crazy. The thing that's also interesting is if we would've done this webinar, say, three years ago these numbers would've been in the low 60% range. That's how different things are now and how much they've changed. People rely on Google reviews more now than they ever have before. Your customers really do care.

Now on your right-hand side, you're seeing the bottom half of that Google My Business page. If you remember, the top half had the information about the business, right? It had the hours, the phone number, et cetera, et cetera. This has where reviews are housed. You're going to see the overall review summary, including a few that are highlighted, and then it just goes chronologically. That's why it's important to have constant reviews. The second reason reviews matter is because they matter to Google. 97% of people go to Google when they want to find a wedding venue. Google 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. Now there's a lot of sites out there. We love Wedding Wire, we love The Knot, we love all those places, but people go to Google first. They go to Google first. Make sure or you remember that.

Now, one of the other things I wanted to point out here is why sometimes Google lists things in different orders. Sometimes you'll see the map first then you will see organic listings. Sometimes you'll see the map then organic listings then results like to The Knot or Wedding Wire, so just be aware that going to see different orders of things in different locations, that's important, I think, to note.

Why does Google care about review so much? Ultimately they have one job and that's to produce the result the searcher wants to see. If someone is searching for an event venue for a corporate event, for a wedding, whatever it is, Google wants to serve them up the businesses that are the best and the way they believe they can do that most reliably is by providing them businesses that have really good reviews.

Now we're getting questions in. You can go to that question area and ask them here. Juanita, I see your question. "Why are people not required to leave a comment with their rating? Isn't the purpose of the system to give businesses the opportunity to improve? How do I know what needs to be addressed if they don't tell me why they gave me a two star rating?" Great question. I don't know the answer to that, you have to ask Google that question, but here's what I would suggest. I don't believe the purpose of the system is to give you the chance to improve. That's not the purpose of the system. The purpose of the system is for Google to produce the result the searcher wants to see. Google believes for whatever reason that that can be done with stars and reviews, not just stars with reviews. Again, I would suggest that I think you're probably right. It sure would be helpful if they required it in terms of telling you what was wrong, but they don't. I think the reason is because the purpose of the system is not to give you the opportunity to improve. It is for Google to produce the result the searcher wants to see.

Let's see. Good question. "Google does not have a good way to communicate. I send emails and never get responses. How do I reach out to them?" That, Juanita, is the million dollar question. How do you reach out to them? You can report bad reviews pretty easily just by clicking on the review and reporting it, so you can do that but I definitely think you're right. It's very difficult to reach Google. You can report bad reviews that you'd like them to remove, but that's about it.

How to get more positive reviews. Look, quantity and recency are the two most important things. A minimum of about 50 reviews is necessary for Google to start to take you seriously. Now, some of you might be saying, "Gosh, we're a small business. How are we going to get that?" I get what you're saying. I get it, but you've just got to develop a process to do it and don't be afraid by the way, to text and reach out to people from the past who have used your property and worked with you, who had a good experience, text them now, even if it's two or three or three or four years later, they're going to remember that event and they're going to leave you a good review.

Also recency, 73% of clients disregard reviews older than about 90 days. You can't just say, "Oh, I'm going to go get a bunch of good new reviews in February, and then never think about it again." If you do that, you're going to be in a world of hurt because you're just going to have a bunch of old reviews. Make sure you're constantly getting new reviews. That's really, really important.

How to get more positive reviews. Build a process. You don't need some 12 page manual for this. You just need four things. You need to know who you ask. Do you ask everybody or just those that loved you? I would suggest just asking those who love you, because otherwise you're going to get some negative reviews that you weren't going to get otherwise, you'll be asking for negative reviews. Make sure that you're just asking those that like you. Second thing is how do you ask? I would suggest asking via text. If you ask via email, like most businesses do, by the way, if you ask via email, you are going to get about 1 to 2% response rate, which is really low. If you are texting, you're going to get a 35 to 45% response rate. That's just a big difference.

When do you ask? That's up to you. Whether you ask during the process, after the event is over, after the transactions been made, whatever you want, and then who's in charge of asking? Look, this bleeds into number two on the list, but make sure you have somebody who's in charge of asking. If you don't, you're not going to succeed. You could have the best process in the world, the best tools in the world, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. You have to determine an owner for the process, determine someone who's in charge of it.

Then finally ask in the right way. We mentioned this before, but don't email. You've got to text, you're going to get a 35 to 45% response rate. We have some businesses we work with who get a 58 to 68% response rate when they ask via texting and a 1 to 2% response rate when they ask via email, so make sure you're asking in the right way. Send a text, it's got your logo here. They click on their little thumb to leave a review, they select the review site, they post the review. It's that simple.

Now, if you remember nothing else from this webinar, remember this number one right here. Do not let angry clients determine your online reputation. You have to get your great clients to leave reviews. That's vitally, vitally important. Make sure you're doing that and make sure that's consistent. Otherwise, if you sit back and wait, you will get a few reviews, some positive, some negative. Go and get great reviews.

Now, how do you deal with bad reviews? I want to just hit this briefly. First of all, how common are they? Look, it's about one in 50 is what we see in the industry. Tips for avoiding them, you probably can't avoid bad reviews altogether, you're never perfect, your business is not perfect so you're going to get some bad reviews, but what you can do is mitigate them. If you communicate better, if you communicate effectively, and we believe the best way to communicate is via texting, you will get fewer bad reviews. What not to do when you get a bad review is probably the thing you want to do the most and that is reply to the review on Google and put them in their place and tell them why they're wrong and light the keyboard on fire with your rage. Don't do that. That won't work, it's not effective, it's a bad idea. What should you do when you get a bad review is reply, but reply with respect. Something like, "My name is McKay. Sorry that happened. I can understand why you're frustrated. I'm one of the owners of the business, please text me back and what we'll do is we'll make this right." Just something like that, that recognizes that they're frustrated. But the real key, and I mentioned this before, is to bury bad reviews with good ones. The only real way to deal with negative reviews is to bury it with good ones.

Learn More About Kenect

Okay, if you're interested in learning more about Kenect, you can text or call us at that number, (888) 972-7422, text or call us there. We'd love to work with you. Go to kenect.com if you want a demo as well.

Let me take a few more questions. I see Judy's question. Just go to the question area, type in any questions you have. Let's see. "Can you take reviews from an appointment platform and move them to Google?" No. The actual individual who left the review would have to do that, that's per Google's policy. For example, we have businesses sometimes say, "Hey, someone left us a review on Facebook. Can I copy and paste that review into Google?" You cannot. That would not be good for you. That would be bad for Google. Google would not like that. You have to have that person leave you to Google review.

Debbie says, "Do I have a sign in?" What do you mean, Debbie? To Kenect? To Kenect or to Google, Debbie, are you talking about? Do you have a sign in to what? To Google? Yes. If you don't have your Google My Business page yet or if it's not claimed... Let me go back to the Google My Business page. I would literally go to Google and the name of your business. What you're going to see is some information about your business pop up, and then you're going to see, and I'll actually draw here on the screen. See where it says right here, "Own this business"? That will pop up, click on that, and then follow the information that Google has outlined. Click on that Own Your Business right there. Right there. Click on that and that's your step. Again, make sure that you Google the actual name of your business and then click on Own This Business and follow the information. That's how you find your login to your Google My Business page into Google.

Todd says, "Do we have an affiliate program at Kenect?" Kind of. Email me after, Todd, and I'll answer whatever questions I have, if you are interested in becoming like a partner of ours.

Let's see. "How would you respond if they don't leave a reason for the review?" I would simply say something like, "Thank you for leaving a star rating. We're always striving to improve and you didn't leave us a review so we can learn how to improve." Something like that. I think that would be a good way to respond.

All right. If you're interested in learning more, as I said, go to kenect.com and request a demo, text us, email us, whatever you want to do there, and we'd love to work with you. We work with about 5,000 businesses, so go to kenect.com or text us or call us at that number. Thanks again, everybody. Have a great day and have a great rest of the week. Buh-bye.

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