The Trip Advisor Effect
Description:
Welcome to Episode 11 of the Future-Proof Your Business Podcast.
In this episode I'm going to talk to you about a subject that I’m really passionate about, and it's called 'The TripAdvisor Effect.'
People are four times more likely to buy from you when they've been referred to you by a friend. (Nielson)
The TripAdvisor Effect is about building know, like and trust with your existing customers so much that they become super fans, shout about you from the rooftops, and market your business for you.
In this week's episode I share:
- Why it’s important for your small business and how it can have a huge impact on your sales and the way you promote your business.
- The impact that the referrals and recommendations can have on your average client lifetime value.
- How to encourage your customers to write or leave a review, and to recommend and refer you to their friends, family, colleagues, and people they know.
- The best place for your business to capture the reviews and recommendations.
And finally, how it's also about getting constructive feedback that you can use to improve and tweak and grow your business.
Here are the highlights from this episode:
(00:00) Introduction - What is the Tripadvisor effect?
(02:58) Instead of looking for an advert, ask your friends and family if they can recommend you.
(06:04) How can you embrace this and what does it mean concretely?
(08:49) People are four times more likely to buy from you when they’ve been referred to you by a friend.
(13:38) The first place to focus on is your connections and the people you know.
(16:27) How can you encourage people to leave you a review?
(18:47) How often do you invite your customers to leave a review on your business?
(23:44) When is the optimum time to engage with your customer?
(26:05) Tapping into how you can connect with them.
(29:09) The top 10 customer review websites.
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I'm Lucy Rennie, and welcome to my Future Proof your Business Podcast.
The podcast that provides you with everything you need to know to build solid foundations and ultimately Future Proof your business.
I'm on a mission to share my love for small business with you and help you to enjoy the extraordinary ripple effect that comes through harnessing the power of people and relationships.
And I want to make sure that you can reap the benefits of being a business and a brand that people know, like and trust.
I'm a huge champion for small business and a massive believer in the fact that people do business with people.
This podcast is here to inspire you, encourage you and support you on this roller coaster ride that is building, growing and Future Proofing your business.
Hi and welcome to episode 11 of the Future-Proof your Business podcast, I'm Lucy Rennie and today I'm going to talk to you about a subject that I am really, really passionate about. And it's called the TripAdvisor effect.
I'm going to take you through today, what it is, why it's important for your business, and how it can really help you.
And then I'm going to take you through some exercises and some things to think about. So that you can implement it in your business and really harness the power of what I call the TripAdvisor effect.
So to set the scene and give you the context; the way that we interact with each other, and our favourite brands, has been transformed. We no longer interact with businesses in the same way that maybe we did in the 60s or in the 70s. And I always think if you remember, Don Draper in the brilliant TV series Mad Men, you know, it was all about advertising campaigns, wasn't it, and billboards and magazines and papers and how to influence the public, how to influence the consumer, how to influence your potential clients into wanting to buy from you?
And yes, of course, I'm not going to tell you today that advertising doesn't have its place and that we shouldn't be promoting our businesses and our brands through advertising. But actually, I want to talk to you about what's going on in the world now. And the new way of doing things. I think this is a huge opportunity for us as small business owners to be able to grow and develop and future-proof your brands and your business.
So first of all, think about when and how you interact with a brand. How do you go about finding maybe a new service, a new product, or maybe even just a new restaurant, or a new hairdresser, or a new shampoo, if we're on that theme, okay? Think about what you do. And what's the first kind of thing that you might do in looking for that new product or service.
I wonder whether it is actually instead of going and Googling, oh, instead of looking for an advert on the telly, what you actually do is you might ask your friends and family, if they could recommend one. Or you might ask on social media, could anybody point me in the direction? Or does anybody know somebody who could help you with that?
And this is what's happening today through the world of social media and through the world of the internet.
And, you know, the way that we work today, there are no barriers anymore. We don't have to travel, there are no barriers of travel or language or money, we can actually reach and communicate with pretty much who we like, how we like and where we like, and we can engage with our peers, with other people in an easy, simple way. And so what I want to talk to you today about is how this is really important for your brand. And the way that you can engage with your potential clients or your audience or your community, and allow them to get to know, like and trust you. We can actually do it through word of mouth, we can do it through connections, and we can do it through allowing people to share experiences and encouraging them to refer and recommend you in.
This is reinforced even more by the fact that people don't really take what brands tell them about their products and services now as truth. We're kind of getting a bit more switched on, aren't we? And we know what advertising is, we know that they're there to influence us and to help us to want to buy their products and services. And so actually people like you and I, we’re searching for that more genuine, that real experience, that real feedback and we want to know how other people like us rate the brand or rate the product or service and actually, more and more people are putting their trust in people like you and me to give an honest review, more than they actually trust the brands themselves to tell them whether their product is going to help them or not.
And this means that the way that we live and work, the way that the world functions, the way that business functions, is changing dramatically. And this is what I call the Trip Advisor effect.
And I genuinely can't tell you enough how amazing an opportunity I believe this is for your small business. Because it means that no matter how small you are, or how little budget you've got, you can still reach the same people, you can still have access to the same platforms, as the big boys as the big brands as the bigger corporations. And if you do it in the right way, you can make an absolutely huge difference to your brand, to your reputation, and ultimately to your business and your bottom line.
It's almost putting you on a level playing field. And it's a huge opportunity.
So how can we do this? And how can you embrace this? And what does it actually mean concretely?
So, first of all, I think it's really important to say, and if you know me, by now, you'll know, you know what I mean by this, but I believe that actually, if you can do what you're supposed to be doing, if you can show up and actually do what you do in the best way. So whatever your business is, if you're showing up and delivering and doing what you say you're going to do, you're managing expectations, and you're looking after your customers time, after time, you're providing them with that outstanding experience, you're delighting them, and you're creating a business that they don't want to leave. They're going to keep coming back time after time. It's that leaky bucket we've talked about, then, there's no reason why you can't embrace this. There's no excuses. Because actually, if you're doing a good job, then because you're delighting people, and because you're giving them exactly what they want, they're going to want to talk about you, and they're going to want to talk about you and your business. We all know what it's like, don't we, when you find a new restaurant, or you find a new product or service and you're excited about it, because it's just blown you away by the little touches, or the things that have happened or the, the way it's helped you, or made you feel. We naturally want to share things with our friends and family, our colleagues and things don't we? We want to support the business, we want to shout about it. And that's what I want to encourage you to embrace in your business.
Ultimately, when people are happy with your products and service, they want to recommend you, they want to refer you and they want to shout about you from the rooftops and tell everyone about you.
And I actually don't think a lot of small business owners take this seriously, I think that sometimes we get caught up in the, you need to be doing the traditional advertising, you need to be paying money on this promotion, you need to be thinking about this campaign. Whereas actually what this boils down to is doing a really good job delivering what you say you're going to do. And because you're doing that, naturally, that word of mouth marketing is going to happen.
In fact, I heard Gary Vaynerchuk, this morning, I was listening to something he was saying. And he said that sales happens because you've got rubbish marketing. And I genuinely believe what he's saying. What he's saying, ultimately, is you have to then go out and have a sales strategy. Because you've not been marketing or you've not been communicating about your business in the best way, you've not been doing a good job, so people aren't naturally sharing what you're doing and telling the world about you. So you have to go out and sell.
That's what I want to encourage you to think of with this.
A few facts and figures that are for you.
People are four times more likely to buy from you when they've been referred to you by a friend.
So think about what that means. And this actually blows my mind for a lot of reasons. But actually, if somebody refers you in, so refers their friend to you, that person is four times more likely to buy from you than somebody that you've got in front of on social media, or who's seen your advert in the local magazine or has engaged with you on a Facebook ad. So they're four times more likely to buy from you when they've come through a referral. The next stat that I'm going to tell you is
92% of people trust recommendations from people they know.
That's huge as well. That means that if somebody recommends your business to somebody else, then 92% of the time, that new person who's had the recommendation, will trust that recommendation enough to buy from you. Okay, because there's a transfer of social proof there's a transfer of credibility, there’s a transfer of trust. And so this makes me so excited and if you could see me, I've got this massive grin on my face.
But it means that if you can do a really good job of doing what you love and serving through your products and service, that you can do that in such a way that people are going to shout about you and share with you, then it takes away all the noise, because it's going to happen naturally.
And it's going to happen so much more powerfully than if you have to think about all the touch points and starting from a cold place where nobody knows you and you have to build that know like and trust and tell your story and do all the things that you know, we have to do as when we grow our business.
If we can really focus on doing a good job, and encourage people to refer us and recommend us and talk about us, then it's going to make our life so much easier. And it's going to really help with building that bank of know, like and trust and goodwill.
And this only gets better as we actually analyse the impact that the referrals and recommendations can have on your average client lifetime value.
Now, I was talking about this yesterday with some of my clients because they weren't sure what lifetime value was. And for me, it's one of the key KPIs, one of the key performance drivers that we should be thinking about, one of the key things, the measurements that we should be looking at when we're growing a business, because for me, it's a true indicator of whether we're doing a good job.
Okay, so it's linked to customer retention. So, yeah, so lifetime value means the total amount that somebody invests in your business from the start. So when they start with you, the first time that they buy from you, right the way through to the end. So if you're a service business like me, and you have clients that have worked with you, since I don't know, at least the last six years, then the lifetime value for me of that client is huge, because they're working with me month on month, and year on year. So each time it builds, it builds and builds and builds.
So it's a great way of tracking whether somebody is enjoying your product or service, whether you're doing a good job. And ultimately, as you know, when I talk about my leaky bucket theory, that it's much easier to grow and evolve and add more value to our existing clients because we've already got that relationship, and they already know like, and trust us, than it is to go and constantly be thinking about finding new clients and nurturing that pipeline of new clients coming in.
So I really want you to think about what that lifetime value is for you. And ultimately, how you can increase that. So how can you add value? How can you develop and strengthen that relationship even more? So that you can look after your clients and increase that value.
Now moving on to this stat of this, which again, blows my mind.
The lifetime value for a referral, for a new customer that you get through a referral is 16% higher than that of a new customer who just comes directly to you and hasn't come through a referral.
Which is huge. So that means that someone who comes to you through a recommendation, through a referral from one of your existing clients or friends, they're going to spend 16% more over their lifetime with you than somebody who hasn't had that referral. So basically, it means that people are more likely to buy from you when they've been referred to you, but they're also more likely to stay longer and buy more from you. And another thing that blows my mind. So if you're in the B2B world, because very often, we hear about how, you know, Google's the place to be, and we need to think about SEO. And we need to think about people being able to find us. And of course we do, I'm not dismissing that, however,
I genuinely believe that the first place we should be thinking about and the first place to really focus on is our connections and the people that we know, and building this bank of referrals and word of mouth.
The reason why is because 84% of all decision makers within the B2B world start their buying process through a referral.
So what that means is anybody within a business who's thinking, oh, I need to buy a new computer, I need to buy some training for this. I need to buy, I need to find somebody who can come and help me to solve this problem. Instead of what we might imagine that they do is go on to Google and Google their problem. The first thing they actually do is they ask for that recommendation or that referral. Okay, so it goes back to what I was saying in the beginning. They're going to say, does anybody know someone who can help you with this or who did you use for this or could you recommend somebody who can help me with this? And this is huge. This is the TripAdvisor effect.
This means that the more we can encourage people to share and refer and recommend and show the love for our business, the easier it's going to be, and the more powerful it's going to be to grow and to future-proof our business.
So I really want you to think about how you can build that bank of superfans, those people, those customers, those clients, those suppliers, who love what you do, who think that you're brilliant, and are going to keep coming back for more, those people who, they genuinely want to help you and they're happy to recommend and talk about you. And this, I believe, is even more relevant today in the context of the world that we're in, in this kind of strange, uncertain world where I don't even need to explain, especially in the UK, at the moment, it's changing every day. And it's almost embarrassing, but I think this is a time where people are starting to think you know what, we need to be supporting people who are coming from a place of real value people who actually stand for something, and people are wanting to support much more small businesses.
There's a real opportunity here, for you to embrace this even more, and to really tap into this new way of doing things, which is that people really want to work with businesses that are value-led and that have substance.
Okay, so how can we be intentional about this? And what can you do to really move forward on this and encourage people to do this? So how can we actually be proactive about it? One of the main things that I want you to think about is encouraging people to leave you a review, okay, or a testimonial. And I'm also very aware, and I know that we find it quite difficult to encourage people to do that for various reasons, whether it's that we feel a bit icky or queasy about asking someone to leave a review, because maybe we're a bit embarrassed, or maybe we don't feel confident, or maybe actually we're a bit scared of getting some some negative feedback or some constructive criticism.
So there's definitely that feeling. But also, I think, actually, people do struggle to get people to leave reviews, because we live in a noisy world, and we live in a busy world, and people are genuinely busy. However, I want to let you know and here is another stat for you.
83% of consumers are willing to refer after a positive experience, yet only 29% actually do.
So that kind of confirms, doesn't it, what we're saying that actually, it’s tricky to get people to actually follow through and actually leave us that positive review or to give us that feedback or two leave us that testimonial.
But what I want you to think about is that 83% of your customers are actually happy to do that. They want to help you, they want to write that recommendation, they want to leave you a review or make a referral.
But something's not happening or something's missing. There's a gap of almost 50%, of why that's not happening.
So what can we do? How can we explore that? What are the things that we can implement in our business to reduce that gap, and really help people to shout about you, to share the love for what you do. And to give you the tools, the toolkit, a bank of amazing reviews and testimonials that you can share, and that will help you to grow your business.
So the first thing is to think about, are you actually asking people at all to leave you a review?
Or maybe you're asking them once, but then there's no reminder or you're not giving them that gentle nudge or that encouragement? Okay.
So have a think about just your business. Now. Just ask yourself as you're listening to this,
How do all these stats apply to your business?
How often do you invite your customers to give you feedback? Or to leave a review on your business?
Do you do this every time after every sale? After every project? Every interaction? Or is it something that you know you should be doing more of, but actually, you might have a bit of a go at one time, you might think maybe I need to do this. So you put something out there, and then actually get busy, get caught up spinning all those plates again.
So just take a moment to sort of consider that and think about how often you do that.
The second question is, how often are you encouraging your existing customers to refer you or to talk about you or to make a recommendation? And, again, maybe that's every time, maybe you've got the process in place, or maybe actually, it's when you think about it, or when maybe you need that boost in your business. So just have a think about it. And notice where you're at in your business.
And then thirdly, I just want you to think about what are the systems that you've got in your business to help you to capture that feedback? Or those reviews? Or those referrals? Have you got something in place today? And that might be just a simple Excel spreadsheet, or it might be a super duper, you shiny CRM system?
What have you got in place to allow you to do that?
So as you've gathered, I genuinely believe that reviews are like gold dust. And I think for me, they should be the foundations of your marketing plan. Because if you're delivering outstanding service and being the best at what you do, then actually, people should want to leave you feedback and should be happy to leave you reviews.
And that feedback and review should be great and should be talking about what you're doing and the value that you're adding.
What can we do to enable people to leave you those reviews?
How can you encourage people to spend a few more minutes and actually leave the review that they're happy to leave, but maybe they've not done for many reasons.
So first of all, I want you to put yourself in your customers shoes.
And think about you when you're asked to leave a review or when you've been happy with the product or service, I want you to remember that actually, you were really happy to leave a review. And actually, you want to help that business. And there's no reason why you wouldn't want to do that. But actually, probably the main reason that you don't is that you forget about it, or you move on to something else, or it's not a simple thing.
I know sometimes when I get an email, and it's about leaving a review, and I click on a smiley face in an email, and then suddenly, it'll take me through to a website, I've got to log in, and I've got to do all these things. What happens is, then it becomes this complicated process that something that I thought was going to take me 30 seconds, actually probably takes me more like 1015 minutes that I haven't necessarily got in my day.
So I'll close it down and think right, I'll come back to it later. And I don't. So we've got to think about the fact that genuinely people do want to help us. But we've really got to make it easy for them. As easy as possible for them to help you and to leave that review or to refer you or to recommend you.
So what can we do to make it as easy and simple as possible? So the best way to do this, and this comes from my corporate background, where this was just part of the process, particularly when we were looking at the quality ISO framework, and we had to actually engage with our customers and our key stakeholders, and ask for that relevant feedback and get those reviews it was as part of that system, that quality management system, and we had to make sure that we were doing that to show that we were on this journey of continuous improvement. And we were always looking to improve and develop our products and services.
So first of all, think about coming from an angle of continuous improvement, coming from an angle of how you can improve, how you want to develop your business, your product and service. So that will help you to take away the ickiness of asking for the review, because actually you're making it about your customer. And you're allowing them to help you to tweak, to improve, to know what you're doing well, and be open to the fact that maybe there are some things that you could improve, if you know what they are.
So first of all, that's the main thing, it's not about you, it's about your customers, and it's about the end game of future-proofing your business and making sure that you're doing everything you can to improve.
Second thing is about embedding it in your day-to-day business process. So making it something that happens automatically and as part of the customer journey. So thinking about when is the optimum time for you, as a business owner or as a business to engage with your customer to find out and to ask for that feedback or to ask for that review or to ask for that referral. When is the optimum time.
And this is going to differ depending on the type of business that you have. Okay, so it won't be the same for everybody. It will be different if you've got a shop. So brick and mortar, it'd be different. If you've got a larger organisation, it'd be different if you've got an online business if it's a product or service. But what I want you to think about is, when is the ultimate time to engage with them and ask for that feedback?.
And ultimately, that moment is going to be when, when you've delivered, when they've got the results that they want, when they're feeling good. They've got that feel good factor about, yes, you know you've delivered, they're happy, they've been through the process or they've received their product, they've opened it up and they're happy and this is the ultimate time that you should be asking them for that review or for that feedback.
Now, there's lots of different ways you can do that. Again, I want to encourage you to think about making it as personal as you can. Okay, so yes, we can automate it. And yes, we can take out the hassle of having to come up with this every time, but that doesn't mean that we make it impersonal. We want to make sure that it resonates with that customer. And that we show ultimately that we care, and that we really do value their custom, their business and their feedback in their review.
Okay. So some ways that we can do that is face to face, when they're with you, you might want to ask them some questions, you might want to give them a card to fill in while they're still with you. You might want to send them an email with a link to a questionnaire or to a survey, it might be a handwritten postcard, it might be a chocolate with a QR code, or it could be any different way.
And the more out of the box, you can think of this, the more that you can actually always use this as a way of delighting your customers and kind of creating another one of those sort of moments is the best way of grabbing their attention and engaging with them and getting a positive result from this.
So really tapping into how you can connect with them. And, yeah, encourage them to want to do this for you, when you're connecting with them at the right time. And then secondly, I think this leads on to another really important point, which is, again, what I was talking about before, where people do want to support your business at the moment, they do want to support and share the love for what you're doing. So, you know, be real and be vulnerable, and be honest, and actually let them know just how important leaving a review can be for your business and the massive impact that it can have. Share with them the fact that by just taking a few minutes out of their day to help you to feedback and be honest is either going to help you improve and make the service even better for next time. But it's also going to really help you and your business to get in front of more people and to grow your business.
So I think for me, if you can be really authentic in that sense, it's going to help you to connect even more. And it's going to help you to get them to understand what's really important to you. And you know where you're coming from and which is a good place.
The next part of this is to think about where you want them to leave you that review. And again, this is going to differ depending on your business and the type of clients and customers that you have.
So there's not one size fits all, I want you to think about it. It's like where we're talking about who your ideal clients are. I want you to think about where they hang out, what's the most natural place for them, and the easiest place for them to go and leave that review.
But secondly, where's it going to have the biggest impact on your business, for helping you to grow and get in front of new customers, and build that social proof and trust? If it is a restaurant or a holiday venue, then yeah, of course you might want to think about TripAdvisor. If the majority of your customers hangout on LinkedIn, then maybe actually you want to think about getting reviews and recommendations integrated within the LinkedIn platform. It's going to depend on your business, and I'm happy to chat through this. If you want to message me, we can dig a little bit deeper and get under the skin of where your clients are hanging out. But you'll know really where that is.
And I think really focusing on one or two key places in the beginning. And really putting your energy into directing people and signposting them to that one space is much more beneficial than having an array of places where people can leave reviews, because actually people get a bit lost or people won't know where to go, or necessarily make that decision on which one they should go to. But also, it means that your collection of reviews in the beginning is going to be a bit sporadic and maybe it won't have the impact that it might have if you have a lot more reviews on one platform rather than having a few dotted about over different ones.
So really focus on choosing maybe one or two that are going to be more relevant to your business. I will leave in the show notes, there's a great article that I actually put in my book that takes you through the top 10 customer review websites. And so I'm just going to take you through a few of them now just to sort of help you to think about the power of this as well. So obviously Google My Business is a great place if you're a business that you know has a fixed home where you can connect and grow there, because obviously it links to Google's search engine, which I think it's like three and a half billion searches a day on there. So you obviously want to link in with that.
Facebook, which we all know has a massive amount of data behind it. But actually because people are on there already, then it's much easier for them to go in and leave that review and do it in a place
that's comfortable for them. And that's what I'm talking about whether it's LinkedIn or other places as well. So think Facebook, think Google My Business, think Amazon. We talked about TripAdvisor. But also for those of you who are of a certain age, you might remember those big, thick, yellow page booklets with all those 1000s of pages in that directory. And that's the same except that now it's online.
So think about things like Yelp, which, you know, we might not go looking on there for reviews, but actually, they'll pop up as people start to Google your business or look for reviews, and recommendations on your products and services. That will definitely help. So go and have a look at that
website and look at the different review websites that are on there. Because I think it's a really good way and some of them might not think about straightaway. But it can be useful in helping you to think about where you should be focusing your time and energy.
So to conclude on this episode, I want you to really embrace the power of the TripAdvisor effect, which means encouraging people to market your business for you.
It's about building know, like and trust with your existing customers so much that they become super fans and shout about you from the rooftops.
It's about encouraging them to write or leave a review.
It's about encouraging them to recommend and refer you with their friends, family, colleagues, people they know.
And finally, it's about giving you constructive feedback that you can use to improve and tweak and grow your business.
The last thing I want to encourage you to do and that's the tricky part, is getting people to leave those reviews. And we can do that through, you know, lots of different ways. But actually, it doesn't stop there.
Once you've got those reviews, this is where it's the beginning.
This is where it's up to you now to leverage them and maximise the power of those reviews. This is where you can incorporate this into your content, your communication plan. This is where you can share those testimonials and reviews across your different platforms. You can incorporate it into your marketing collateral onto your website, onto your sales pages. All these things are going to help you to grow and develop that social trust, that social proof that people are going to more easily engage and buy from you because they're going to trust the experience and the feedback from people like that. So I really encourage you today to think about your system. Think about how often you are actually asking people to leave you those reviews.
How are you maximising that and what can you do to automate it and embed it in your process so it becomes part of your everyday customer journey?
If you've got any questions, or you'd like to talk more about this, please get in touch. All the ways to do that are in the show notes. And I'll see you next week. Thank you. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the Future Proof Your Business podcast. I've been your host, Lucy Rennie, I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you have, then I'd love you to head over to Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast and hit the subscribe button. And I'd really appreciate it if you'd leave a review and a rating and help me to reach even more small business owners like you who want to build a business they love.
And don't forget, you can head over to iamlucyrennie.com and sign up to my email list as well as find more tips and tools to help you Future-proof your Business on my website and in the show notes.
Finally, I'd love to invite you to come and join me and lots of other small business owners like you. In my free Facebook group, Communicate with Purpose.
You can find all the links on my website and in the Show Notes.
Resource Links:
https://www.vendasta.com/blog/top-10-customer-review-websites/ - the Top 10 Customer review websites.
I would love to invite you to come and join me and lots of other small business owners like you in my FREE Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CommunicatewithPurpose