Recently, a friend of mine reminded me of the most powerful way to build your business.

Telling a story about her dad’s auto mechanic, she mentioned that the mechanic had been repairing her entire family’s cars for over 30 years.

They are completely loyal to him too. More than 20 years ago her sister moved further away yet she still drives 45 minutes to have him repair her car.

Not only have they stuck with him, but, over the years, they have referred many people to him.

How would you like to have a heap of customers or clients like that? Loyal, repeat customers who send new business your way?

I think you’ll agree that those types of customers are always welcome. So how do you find these valuable customers?

Well, if you speak to some of the most successful small business owners in business today, they’ll tell you many of their best customers and clients come from referrals.

Why? Because people referred by satisfied customers come with a certain level of pre-established trust. They are predisposed to buy from you. And they are less resistant to price than new customers attracted by advertising. Plus a customer obtained by a referral is generally much more likely to refer a new prospect to you than an advertising-generated customer.

Research has also shown that a referred customer is more loyal and will stay with you longer than a customer generated by advertising alone.

If you’ll recall I gave you some tips for how to increase your referrals by linking your Google + customer reviews to your AdWords.

Here are 4 additional ways to increase referrals.
1) Nurture your existing customers. Customers who feel neglected are not likely to refer you. So your system should include mechanisms such as follow up campaigns with your existing customers, clients or patients to help nurture and build your relationships with them.

For example, we send emails and record videos every month which are pure content to help our customers market their business better. This added benefit demonstrates that we care and want them to get the best results possible. Not only are customers hearing from us every month, but they hear from us multiple times a month. Plus, and this is important, every time they hear from us we are not asking them to purchase something from us.

2) Ask. If you ask your customers for help, they will often enthusiastically help promote your products or services. Because while people don’t often volunteer, when given the chance, they enjoy telling others about things and experiences they like, use or try.

3) Show appreciation. People like to be appreciated. When you show appreciation properly, people will be pleased and will be more willing to refer you the next time you ask. Remember to thank your customers for their referrals. Let them know when one of their referrals works out and give them an update on what happened.
For example, one way we show appreciation is to offer a month of free service for each customer they refer that stays with our service for at least 3 months.

4) Make people comfortable giving you referrals. People don’t like to feel like they are “selling” their friends to you. While it is okay to offer something as appreciation, offering an inducement in exchange for names makes people uncomfortable.
For example, a friend’s cousin is in college and started selling knives to earn some extra money. A big part of the sales pitch he was trained to give is his story – that he is a struggling student who gets paid by the appointment not by the sale. Because people want to help him out, they feel obligated to give up their family and friends phone numbers. But this makes them feel very uncomfortable.

Instead give your customers easy ways to refer you without making them feel obligated to do so and you will receive more and better referrals.
Developing a well-designed referral system that includes following up and building a relationship with your customers, asking, making them feel comfortable, and showing appreciation is one of the highest converting lead and profit sources around. And when you use a well-designed referral strategy, you’ll replace tired, worn-out salesman techniques and cold-call tactics with a reliable strategy that consistently produces the best customers—ones who stick around for years to come, never hassle you about price, and serve as a rich resource of referrals.

Saturday, November 30th   is Small Business Saturday. In its fourth year, the event encourages consumers to shop local and purchase from small businesses instead of the big box stores. While this is a great opportunity to get people to use your brand and visit your stores, getting a customer to “stick” takes more than just offering a good product or service. Because after they search for and find what they need, they have to decide whether or not to choose you…or the competitor who is advertising next to you. 

One of the strongest factors that will make you stand out above your competitors is your reputation.  A major influence on this is what people say about you in your customer reviews. Sure price, your offer, and your ad play a definite role, but it’s what customers say that seems to have the biggest effect at this juncture. And now, Google has added a new feature which makes your customer reviews even more powerful. More on this in a minute, but first let’s look at why customer reviews can make such a big impact.

According to Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research company, almost everybody reads the reviews that appear online. In fact, 72 percent of customers say they trust online opinions as much as they trust their family and friends. 

Nielsen, an American global information and measurement company, says that 92 percent of consumers around the world say they trust word-of-mouth recommendations, whether from strangers or friends and family, above all other forms of advertising.

Now the good news about Google’s new feature. Your “job” of getting “word-of-mouth” advertising online just got easier because you can now show your Google+ customer reviews within your AdWords. 

You can place things such as third-party reviews, rankings and awards for specific sources right into your AdWords…which means your customers can now appear alongside your ads as images and names, giving you a tremendous advantage over your competition. 

But, in order to get more of your customers, clients or patients showing up alongside your ads, you have to encourage your customers to “plus one” you on your Google+ Local page and then give you a positive review. If you’ll recall, two years ago when Google launched Google+ Business Pages, I recommended you set up your Google+ Business Page so you could link your Adwords to your page in order to leverage all the connections your brand received. 

If you haven’t set up your Google+ Business Page yet, then I highly recommend you do so now. 

Also, if you haven’t sent me your Google + Business Page URL yet, be sure to send that to me ASAP so I can link your AdWords to your account. Next make a plan to encourage your customers to “+1” your Google+ Local Page and give you a positive review. But before you make a plan, there are some rules you need to follow to do this. 

Rule 1) Do not incentivize your customers to give you a positive review. Offering discounts or entry into a contest or free product or any other reward in exchange for a review will land you in hot water and is considered a conflict of interest. 

Rule 2) Reviews must be done at sites other than your workplace. You can’t set up a laptop or iPad for customers to leave reviews because Google doesn’t allow this. IP addresses of reviewers are tracked and reviews will be filtered out if too many come from the same place. 

So what can you do to encourage customer reviews? 

Just Ask. While you can’t force customers to give you a review, one of the most effective ways is to simply ask. By saying something like, “If you were happy with your service today, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a review for me. If you weren’t happy, I’d like to hear about that now, so I can correct any problems you had.” Once you know they are happy, hand them a card printed with how and where to leave a review on your Google+ page. 

Be Consistent. Not everyone you ask is going to give you a review. In fact, many won’t. Don’t let that discourage you, just keep asking and you’ll continue to get reviews.  You’ll be amazed how fast they build up if you make it a focus and do it consistently. So whatever you do, don’t stop asking. 

Time it right. Don’t wait to ask customers for a review. If you ask months after you’ve done business with them, you aren’t likely to have much success. 

Brian Sharwood of HomeStars says that “introducing the review concept during or prior to” purchase really helps in getting the review at the end. The suggested way to do this is to say something like, “If I do a great job, can I count on you for a review?” 

You can also ask when they’ve just bought from you or just used your service and you know they are happy. Another good time to ask is when a customer pays you a compliment or says something about the wonderful results they’ve received as a result of your product or service. Simply saying something like, “You know, I would love to have that as a customer review. Would you mind leaving a customer review?” 

Thank reviewers publically. People love to be acknowledged. For some, it strokes their egos and shows them that you value them. Thank them online, in your email newsletter, in a video on your website, or on your social media platforms and it can’t help but to boost the number of reviews you receive. 

Create a feedback page on your website with instructions.  Creating a straightforward feedback page on your website with instructions on how to “+1” your business and how to leave feedback can make this easier. That way you can link to this page in email newsletters, on business cards, direct mail pieces, ad campaigns and so on. 

A simple headline such as, “We appreciate your feedback. Your feedback is important to us. If you’d like to share your experience, we hope you’ll review us online. Here’s a fast way to do that.” On your page, I’d also create a form that can be directly emailed to you that says something like, “If you had a bad experience, we want to make it right. Please let us know about your experience by telling us about it here.” 

Also let them know what they will need to do in order to leave a review. You can say something like: “To write a Google review you will need to have a Gmail account and a Google+ account set up. You will be prompted to set one up or log into your account before you leave a review.” 

Provide cards or post a sign in your place of business.  Printed note cards or putting up a sign near where customers check out or on your door as they leave asking for feedback with the link (and/or QR code) to your feedback page on your website. 

Display past reviews. Print out reviews and post them in prominent places around your business. I’ve read that bathroom stalls is a great place to post them as well as on corkboards, by your checkout, on a placemat, etc. 

Add a callout to your receipts and invoices. Add a message to your receipts and invoices asking them to “+1” you and leave a review. Use a shortened URL if space is limited. 

Gaining more reviews will definitely help attract more people to your business, but remember to be most effective, you want to encourage them to “+1” your Google+ Local Page and give you a review there.

Getting reviews isn’t always easy, but using these tips and tactics should make it a lot easier. And now that you can have a customer’s image, name and review appearing within your AdWords, it’s definitely worth the effort. 

To your online success, 

John Pfeiffer

This month, I announced a really awesome tool for my customers… A PPC dashboard that puts everything in one place to make it easy to see exactly what is happening with your PPC.  Basically it consolidates actual data and enhanced reporting, making your PPC results 100 percent transparent. Which brings me to today’s topic… why transparency is so important in business today and what you can do to improve it in your business.

Transparency means that you are giving people more and better information about your product, service or company. This gives people assurance. It is typically associated with high quality. And most importantly, it’s what people want. Consider two companies that are equal on many levels. Same products and services. Same size company. Same prices. Chances are people will value, prefer and trust the company that is more transparent because it indicates the company has nothing to hide.

In addition to customer loyalty, a more transparent company can lead to greater motivation amongst your employees which more often than not generates major growth in your bottom line. So what can you do to make your business more transparent?

Share the “numbers.”  In my business, I believe in sharing the numbers i.e. the results with my  team.  The more team members know about sales and revenue, the more they are motivated to help drive results up. It makes them go the extra mile because they know positive results are key to both the business’s livelihood and their own personal livelihood.

This also works with customers. Making sure my customers clearly understand their results means they can make better business decisions and will more readily trust my recommendations because they know I’m not trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

In your own business, what numbers or results can you share that will help people better understand what’s happening? For example, a financial company might share more information with their customers about investments. Or you might be more transparent with your employees about sales, financials, etc. so they can help be a part of the plan to drive numbers in the right direction. You could create a scoreboard and display it where people could see it, whether this was for employees’ or customers’ benefit or both. Some examples include scoreboards about safety, “highest” or longest running result, financials, etc.

Be very clear. Clarity in your communication with customers, clients, patients and employees usually leads to greater profitability. Both time and money are wasted when people don’t clearly understand your message or goals. In my business, I do this in a number of ways. Our new dashboard was designed to make your PPC results much clearer and easier to understand.  My team and I also hire copywriters to ensure our message is clearly communicated.

In your own business, what can you do to improve clarity? Here are a few ideas… you could develop a series of messages that are delivered to customers once they purchase your product. These messages would help walk people through the steps of consuming and using your product. With employees, you might create a central place such as an internal social network where your employees can ask questions and get answers, more easily communicate across departments and with upper management.

Make it easy. One of the driving forces behind our new dashboard was to simplify things for customers. Having to log in different places and then attempt to compile different data was time-consuming and at times confusing. Putting everything together in one place makes it easy for you to see what’s happening at all times.  It’s a big time-saver too.

What can you do to make things easier for your customers, clients or patients? Are there things you can simplify or automate? Restaurants make it easier for customers to order by creating “meal deals.” Similarly, you could create bundled options for your prospects and customers. Another way to make things easier is to reduce the number of steps customers need to take to do something such as ordering or returning a product.

Seek transparency through disclosure, clarity and simplicity and you’ll make customers, clients, patients and employees feel more confident about your company.  This leads to people valuing and trusting you more which is always good for your bottom line.

John

P.S. As mentioned, I recently announced our latest improvement – a single consolidated online PPC dashboard with actual data and enhanced reporting.  Now, all your PPC results from Google AdWords and Bing Ads (along with our special call tracking data) are available to see with 100% transparency.  Plus, with our simplified dashboard, you’ll be able to easily understand exactly what’s going on with your PPC advertising with just a one login. Best of all . . . it’s FREE.

It’s the number one question we get every month…“Why aren’t my ads showing?”

If you go to activate your account and nothing happens…no clicks, no impressions, no nothing, then chances are good that one of the suggestions below will fix your issue with your Google ads. Work your way through the list and by the end you should start to see activity on your AdWords account.

1)      Check your ad status. This may seem obvious, but a fundamental element of every campaign is whether the ad is active, paused, deleted or ineligible. Check the status column of your account, campaign and ad group settings to make sure they are set to the active setting.

2)      Confirm correct billing. If there are any issues with your billing, Google will not run your ads. Review your account billing information and confirm that your credit card number, expiration date, address, etc. is correct.

3)      Make sure your daily budget is sufficient and not maxed out for the day. For each campaign, you must specify an amount of how much you’d like to spend each day. Then the system will aim to show your ads as much as possible until your daily budget is met. If you haven’t set a dedicated daily budget for each campaign, your ad will not run. Check to make sure you’ve set your campaign daily budgets above $0 and/or you’ve not spent your entire daily budget (remember: there is a 3-hour lag in Google’s reporting data).

4)      Review your keyword bids. When your budget is used up per day, your ad stops showing up for the day. Check to see if your keyword bids are too high for your daily budget. For example, if you set your keyword max cost-per-click at $5 and your campaign daily budget is only $10, then there isn’t much to work with. If this is the case, you either need to lower your keyword bids and/or raise your daily budget.

5)      Look at your search volume. If a keyword has little to no search history on Google, the keyword will be tagged as inactive until its search traffic increases. The status “low search volume” will appear on these keywords until the keyword can start triggering enough volume for your ads to appear.

It might be that your keyword is too specific or obscure, or it was misspelled significantly. When you have a keyword that is noted as “low search volume” you have a couple of options:

• Do nothing and keep checking to see if more people start searching on your keyword.
• Delete the keyword and use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to find related keywords with higher search volume.

6)      Find out if your ads have been disapproved. If your ad doesn’t comply with Google’s policies, you’ll be alerted through email that your ad is disapproved. In the email, you’ll receive a problem report that will show you the reason your ad was disapproved along with a link to the policy that was violated. There are a variety of reasons your ad might be disapproved. For example, you might have entered an inaccurate URL or you might have a trademark related issue. Most are fairly simple to correct.  For instance, if you entered an inaccurate display URL, all you’ll need to do is correct the URL in your ad, and then resubmit your ad for approval.

7)      Make sure your Keywords aren’t prohibited. Google AdWords reviews your campaign keywords and approves them before your ad can run. Google does not permit advertising products, websites and keywords related to and including firearms, drugs, cigarettes, pornography, hard alcohol, fireworks, etc.

If any of your ads get disapproved, you’ll get an alert in your account saying “Ads disapproved.” When this happens, Google does not run your ad. To get it up and running, find out which ad is disapproved and then edit your keyword(s).

8)      Review your negative keyword list. When you add terms as negative keywords or as keyword exclusions, your ad won’t show to people searching for those terms or visiting sites that contain those terms. Using negative keywords is a good idea as they can help you reach the most interested customers, reduce your costs, and increase your return on investment (ROI).

However, you have to carefully review your negative keyword list, especially when using a broad match. Because if you’ve added negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level that nullify your keywords within any given ad group, your ad won’t show up.

9)      Your physical location is wrong.  Sometimes an ad won’t show up because the physical location is incorrect. There are two reasons why this could be occurring. One reason could be because you’re searching from a geographical area outside where your ads are targeting.

The second reason is a bit more complicated. A common problem is trying to determine physical location from internet based information, such as Wi-Fi access points and IP addressing. These are notoriously inaccurate due to the fact that Google doesn’t really have a fast way to update locations of routers that have been moved.  So if a router was mapped in one city and the owner moves the router to another city, there can be a long delay until the mapping is updated

Be sure you are searching from a geographical location area inside where your ads are targeting. If this isn’t the case, then it could be that a router has been moved.

10)   You haven’t waited long enough.  If you’ve worked through this entire list and still aren’t seeing your ads, sometimes a bit of patience is needed. Ad text and keywords can take up to five days to approve. So sit tight and keep checking your account.

Hopefully by the time you’ve tried everything on this list, you will be off and running. However, if you have tried everything on this list and it has been more than five days, contact a Google representative at 866-2-GOOGLE to see if your ads and keywords have been approved. If they have, then you’ll need your Google Rep’s help in discovering what the problem is.

Here’s to your online success!

John