{"id":699,"date":"2019-07-09T23:30:43","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T23:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/?p=699"},"modified":"2019-07-31T14:22:40","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T14:22:40","slug":"dont-heckle-nice-ladies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/dont-heckle-nice-ladies\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Heckle Nice Ladies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t Heckle Nice Ladies<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Many years ago, when I was new to public speaking and teaching, I was asked to give a marketing talk at a local ACCA chapter meeting.\u00a0 Back then, not everyone had come around to the idea that they needed a company website.\u00a0 I was still trying to convince dealers how important it was that they could be found online.\u00a0 Online reviews were a new thing too, and I explained that they needed to pay attention to their online reputation, since customers surely would.\u00a0 As I made my presentation, I was heckled several times by an older HVAC dealer in the back of the room.\u00a0 The room was dimly lit for the projector, but I could see that he was gruff and grizzled and he clearly wasn\u2019t impressed by anything I said.\u00a0 He scoffed at my marketing advice.\u00a0 He growled at my website suggestions.\u00a0 He, well, he pretty much pooh-poohed everything I presented.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t need marketing advice.\u00a0 He\u2019d been in business for 40 years.\u00a0 He knew what he was doing.\u00a0 He got by on word-of-mouth and that worked just fine for him.\u00a0 I was just a marketing chick trying to sell him something, he grumbled.<\/p>\n

Yowzah!\u00a0 This guy was a handful.<\/p>\n

After tolerating his rude mutterings, I finally called him out.\u00a0 \u201cSir,\u201d I pointed to him in the back of the room, \u201chave you Googled yourself?\u00a0 Do you know what your customers are saying about you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, he had not.\u00a0 His customers weren\u2019t online, he barked.\u00a0 His customers were loyal, and he didn\u2019t think anyone would waste their time writing a review about him.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s try this then.\u00a0 Give me the name of your company and we\u2019ll see if there are any reviews about your company out there on the internet.\u201d\u00a0 I closed out of my PowerPoint presentation and typed his company name into Google, which was projected on the large screen.\u00a0 What happened next falls under the heading of You-Can\u2019t-Make-This-Sh*t-Up.<\/p>\n

He had 12 Google reviews and a 1.5-star rating.\u00a0 Eleven reviews were truly awful: he was sloppy, he was rude and unkempt, he did shoddy work, he charged more than he estimated, etc., etc.\u00a0 It went on and on, but the last review was the killer.\u00a0 Here’s what it said:<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t use this man to fix your furnace.\u00a0 He\u2019s a child molester.\u201d<\/p>\n

I kid you not.<\/p>\n

The class went completely silent.\u00a0 I felt the color drain out of my face.\u00a0 My heckler made an inappropriate gesture in my general direction and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.<\/p>\n

Moral of this crazy story?\u00a0 Reviews matter.\u00a0 They mattered then and they matter exponentially<\/em> more now.\u00a0 Did you know that 90 percent of consumers read online reviews when searching online for local services? And most consumers won’t use a business with less than a three-star rating?\u00a0 And 85 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as recommendations from a friend or family member?<\/p>\n

Pay attention to what\u2019s being said about your company online.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t have a review service, consider getting one. Like, today. The monthly payment is negligible.\u00a0 The cost of a scathing review that isn\u2019t properly managed can be devastating!<\/p>\n

(And also, don\u2019t heckle nice ladies.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t Heckle Nice Ladies Many years ago, when I was new to public speaking and teaching, I was asked to give a marketing talk at a local ACCA chapter meeting.\u00a0 Back then, not everyone had come around to the idea that they needed a company website.\u00a0 I was still trying to convince dealers how important it was that they could be found online.\u00a0 Online reviews were a new thing too, and I explained that they needed to pay attention to their online reputation, since customers surely would.\u00a0 As I made my presentation, I was heckled several times by an older HVAC dealer in the back of the room.\u00a0 The room was dimly lit for the projector, but I could see that he was gruff and grizzled and he clearly wasn\u2019t impressed by anything I said.\u00a0 He scoffed at my marketing advice.\u00a0 He growled at my website suggestions.\u00a0 He, well, he pretty much pooh-poohed everything I presented. He didn\u2019t need marketing advice.\u00a0 He\u2019d been in business for 40 years.\u00a0 He knew what he was doing.\u00a0 He got by on word-of-mouth and that worked just fine for him.\u00a0 I was just a marketing chick trying to sell him something, he grumbled. Yowzah!\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,11,99],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":718,"href":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699\/revisions\/718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebandlmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}