The Five Star Review System is just weeks away from its debut on January 3, 2112. Over 7 months of 24/7 teamwork has gone into the development of the system which is currently in the final stages of beta testing.
Video 1: Reviews and Feedback
Video 2: Rewards and Referrals
Video 3: Reputation and SEO
Video 4: Roadblocks and Ramifications
Video 5: Reports and Statistics
The Five Star Review System was created for local businesses who want to attract new customers by dominate the Internet with genuine five star customer reviews. Here is a quick recap of what they system will do for your business.
1. Get feedback from all of your customers
2. Have good reviews show up on the search engines
3. Have good reviews show up on the social networking sites
4. Keep bad reviews from showing up on the Internet
5. Have up-to-date customer testimonials on your website
6. Have a customers photo with their testimonial on your site
7. Have a webpage on the Internet with your 5 star reviews
8. Have a digital coupon for your customers to use and share
9. Generating referrals from your happy customers
10. Provide customers a compelling reason to buy again
11. Track customer service by employee
12. Track customer referred sales
13. Track sales by employee
14. Generate referrals for specific salespeople
15. Track where your new business is coming from
16. Understand how search engines rank your business listing
Click here if you want to sign up for a notice when the system is fully operable. It will be available to the first 100 customers for $99.97/month Starting on January 3, 2012.
Tags: Five Star Review System
You may have recently received an email from Google informing you that they are about to update your business listing. I think this is a genius idea on the part of Google and quite frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t think of this earlier. It encourages business owners who have not visited their Place Page in some time to re-visit it while directing others who have never visited their Place Page to claim it.
Where Does Google Get Your Business Information?
Many business owners, maybe even you, are not aware of how Google gathers the information they show on your Place Page. As they mention in their email, they use many sources to determine the accuracy of your listing. This is why optimizing and publishing your business listing on sites like Universal Business Listing is so important. The more sources Google finds with accurate information about your business, the better they feel about promoting your business listing to the front page of results.
If Google finds discrepancies with your business listing (business name, business address, business phone number) on multiple sites, they will be reluctant to show you in their results. You can do a quick search to see what Google and the other search engines see by doing a search for:
- Just your business name
- Just your business address
- Just your telephone number
You may be surprised to see what comes up. If you do see a discrepancy, fix it quickly.
What Google Really Wants From You However Is …
What Google is really hoping however is that while you’re making the changes to your listing or checking for its accuracy, they will be able to redirect your attention to their Google Adwords Express service. This is great for Google, but not so great for you.
There is no doubt that the Google Adwords Express service will generate new business for you, but getting your business listing to the front page of results and making it the most compelling listing on the page and generating all of your new leads for free is much better.
Before you invest a dime, (or a couple hundred dollars a month) in Google Adwords Express, do everything in your power to optimize and publicize your business listing. This site is filled with tips and ideas as to how you can do just that. Just keep in mind that the three most important factors necessary to get front page placement include:
- Distance
- Promenance
- Relevance
You can learn a lot more about all three components by reading my article entitled: Local Search Ranking by Google Maps
Kick It Up A Notch
If you really want to kick it up a notch, invest in our DIY Local Search Marketing System. The System will provide you with the step-by-step process necessary to take full advantage of Local Search on Google, Yahoo, Bing and dozens of other highly search sites.
If you don’t want to pay a local search marketing expert hundreds of dollars an hour to optimize, publicize and trouble shoot your local search marketing program, then this system is exactly what you’re looking for. It is comprised of a Fill-In-The-Form PDF Manual and our Local Search Marketing Training Website that will walk you through the entire process.
If you’re not afraid to do a little work on your own marketing, you can look forward to seeing some wonderful results, and by results I mean free leads from the Internet.
If you want to see a watch a local search marketing project unfold before your eyes, this is a great example to watch.
The business is Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental in Ft. Myers Florida. The business owner, Tom Kindelan, knows the value of local search first hand (read his testimonial) so he asked me to get started on his local search project post-haste. Here’s what we did.
June 1, 2011
Tom decided he wanted to start a motorcycle rental business and open it before the snowbirds came to visit Southwest Florida in the fall. He called me and asked what he needed to do over the summer to prepare for the work we would do in early fall when we started on his local search marketing project in earnest. This was my advice.
- You must have a website. It does not need to be fancy or expensive, but it must be fully optimized for the search engines. Get a domain name that describes exactly what you do and include your location. Try to get something like FtMyersMotorcycleRental.com
- Get a local telephone number exclusively for your business. You won’t need it until about 60 days before you open, but Google suggests/demands/requires that you have a unique telephone number for each business. 239-257-8085.
- Research your competitors on Google and determine your niche. What will make Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental different, better? Rent a pre-owned, professionally maintained Harley-Davidson motorcycles for a fraction of the cost you would pay to rent a new Harley.
October 8, 2011
Now it was my turn. I took the information Tom acquired and build a fully optimized website for his local business. I also optimized and claimed his business listing on Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Unfortunately, because Tom owns another business at the same location, neither Google nor Bing allowed me to claim his business via the telephone. We’ll have to wait to verify Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental through the mail.
My next step is to place his business listing on UBL and Localeze in order to promote his business on the net and acquire tons of citations, which I will do over the next few days. Then I’ll do a little link building to his new website via article marketing to give it some recognition on the Internet.
Then I’m going to run off a list of the most powerful citation sites for motorcycle rental companies in Southwest Florida using a very, very cool tool from Whitespark. I’m going to share this list with Tom for he and his staff to use to gather even more citations over the course of the next few months.
As of today, October 8, Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental is not showing up on any of the search engines for Tom’s primary keywords which are “Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental” and Ft. Myers Harley Rental.” He won’t be renting motorcycles until mid-November, so we will not be able to acquire reviews until that time, but rest assured we will be generating a 5-star review from virtually every happy customer.
- Cost of Project: About $2,500.
- Return on Investment: My guess is that once Tom Opens his doors, he will recoup his investment in less than 60 days … and that’s without any ongoing monthly fees. Sweet!
Stay tuned and let’s see how well this local search marketing project works for Tom, both in search engine placement on the Internet and more importantly, in real dollars for a start-up business.
Update November 1, 2011
Just received a call from Tom, the owner of Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental. His business listing is now in the second spot for the term Fort Myers Motorcycle Rental and he’s in the third spot for Fort Myers Harley Rental. Super Sweet!
Now his quest is to continue to gather business citations at the rate of one or two a day from the list provided by Whitespark.ca and generate 5-star customer reviews using the 5-Star Review, Reward and Referral System … which will come as soon as he is ready to start renting his bikes.
I also made a change to the description text on the Fort Myers Motorcycle Rental website. Currently the text under the search results reads as follows. “Rent Harley-Davidson Motorcycles from Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental in Ft. Myers, Florida.”
After talking to the owner, one of his biggest selling points is the cost of renting from him over renting from the Harely-Davidson dealer in Ft. Myers. Therefore …
I’ve change the description text to now read “Save 30 percent by renting your Harley-Davidson Motorcycles from Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental in Ft. Myers, Florida.” The goal is to attract Harley renters who want to save money on their rental. I’ll be keeping an eye on this to see how quickly Google picks it up and if it makes a difference in the number of rentals.
