Online reviews: Don’t miss the boat

Editor’s Note: If you’re one of the mass of consumers that researches purchases online, you know the power of online reviews. However, most marine businesses have yet to embrace this new reality. Whether your company launches its own campaign to encourage customers to post reviews on sites like BoaterRated.com, Google and Yahoo!, works with an online reputation management firm, or both, there is no time like the present to develop a strategy to take advantage of this trend. In this column, BoaterRated.com executive Carl Schellbach provides some compelling arguments why.   

News flash: While the economy may be bottoming out, it’s been sputtering worse than an outboard with bad spark plugs. The number of boaters with disposable income to put into their passion is smaller than it was, and those who are out there are ever more careful how and where they spend their money.

As boat dealers and other marine businesses hang on for dear life, it is more a buyer’s market than we’ve seen in a long while. Boaters with ready cash have more marine businesses to choose from than there are empty dock spaces at the local waterfront café on a Monday morning. How do they know which marine providers to choose? And why will they choose you?

Trust. They will look for service providers that are worthy of their business, and they will use sources they have faith in to find them. Does that include hearing from your customers?

We all know that the best new business comes from our existing business via word-of-mouth. Customer referrals have always been a huge component of business success. The Internet and the advent of online consumer review sites have changed the face of customer referrals dramatically. We like to call it word-of-keyboard marketing.

Let’s review why customer referrals are so important. In his book “Don’t Keep Me a Secret,” author Bill Cates, president of Referral Coach International, cites research that pinpoints three of the key reasons why referred customers are so valuable:

• Your sales cycle is shorter with referred customers
• Your cost per lead approaches zero
• The average size of a sale is larger

This is to say that when a boater — who has been told how great you are by someone they trust — walks into your shop, you don’t have to spend time convincing them to do business with you. They’ve already heard how fair and professional you were when someone bought a boat from you, or when you repaired their engine, or when you made a new sail for them. Referred customers are predisposed to trust and like you without you having any interaction with them as yet.

Since they trust you, they’re less likely to hold back any of their business, so you don’t have to spend time or money convincing them to spend all of their budget for a particular item or service with you. Now all you have to do is deliver that exceptional service that got you the referral in the first place!

Imagine this: what if you could get a hundred or so of your best customers to stand in front of your place of business holding signs proclaiming how great you’ve treated them? What if you could get them to cheer and wave all passers-by to you? And what if you could get your customers to do this 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and for free? Well, you can, by building an effective referral program.

Obviously, it would be extremely difficult to get 100 of your best customers parading in front of your business 24/7.  So how does one go about building a successful customer referral program? In his book “The Referral Engine,” John Jantsch points out that the first step in getting customers to sing your praises is to give them something to sing about. Flawless customer service is no longer a distinguishing factor; it is now a requirement for any business to survive. Everybody in your shop needs to be aware of who ultimately pays the bills – the customer. When everybody is on board with the concept that customer satisfaction is your ultimate product, you can develop a systematic approach to having those satisfied customers join the parade!

Cates notes that there are three types of customers: those who will refer you without being asked, those who won’t refer you regardless of what you do, and those who will refer you if you make a point of asking them to do so. Amazingly, his research shows that perhaps 60 percent of customers fall into that last category. That means that nearly 60 percent of your customers can probably be convinced to take the time to refer your boating business if you just ask them.

Regardless of what kind of boating business you have and no matter how large or small your business is, you need to understand and take advantage of this to keep from getting left behind on the dockside as the ship sails. Your ability to get existing customers to send new customers through your door could mean the difference between surviving or being forced out of business by the competition.

In the past few years, there has been a major shift in the way that word-of-mouth marketing is turning into word-of-keyboard marketing. Studies show approximately 70 percent of people who buy things will research their purchase online prior to spending money, and this percentage likely goes higher as the amount of the transaction increases. Nearly that many – 69 percent – trust online reviews as much as they do a personal recommendation.

So how do you use the Internet to your advantage? You need to be proactive about building your marine business’s online reputation. Even today, your online reputation may be the number one factor determining which and how many boaters decide to purchase from you. A helpful method to improve and protect your online reputation is to understand and use an online review site. Objective online reviews are still relatively new in the marine industry, so there’s a great opportunity for you to put your business ahead of the competition.

When it comes to getting reviews of your business online, don’t miss the boat. You can’t afford to ignore the online discussions about your business. They’re going on now and they’re there forever. The Internet ensures that no comment made by a customer goes unnoticed – it’s like an elephant: it never forgets. And without your effort to present a positive image on the Net, all kinds of bad things can happen. You may have heard the story of the musician who uploaded a video to YouTube chronicling how airline baggage handlers damaged his favorite guitar. Within days the video went viral, with more than 11.5 million views as of this writing. The airline found themselves scrambling to control a different kind of damage: the kind that can destroy a brand. (If you have not heard the tale, just search “airline damaged guitar.” It’s actually a pretty catchy tune!)

Gary Vaynerchuk observes in his book “The Thank You Economy” that professional marketers consider online reviews among the most coveted form of consumer expression. He also notes that about 40 percent of consumers have used different providers because of their better reputation for customer service. Online reviews also plainly show how you respond to customer criticism – a major component of your overall customer service.

Many of us may feel awkward about asking somebody to speak highly of us. The easiest way to break that ice is to be genuinely open to their feedback. If they tell you the job you did for them could have been somewhat better, ask how and make sure you do it that way going forward. If they say that you went that extra mile, find out what that extra mile was and provide it in the future. Make sure all your customers know that you’re never too busy to help out other boaters.

You can also make the request more passively. Print a request to please review us at the Web address of your review site on your invoices and other printed materials. Have a link to that site on your Web page. As Cates put so eloquently, ask your satisfied customers to “please don’t keep me a secret.”

Many marine businesses post kudos and positive quotes from their customers on their own sites – they know the value of referrals. This strategy carries a missed opportunity, however. Testimonials that are quoted on your website do not show up in search engines as reviews. When someone types in “reviews of Joe’s Marine Service” or “complaints against Fred’s Marine Service,” the search engines will not take quoted testimonials into account. The boater who is researching you and trying to confirm whether he or she does business with you will not see these testimonials until they make it all the way to your site.
Objectivity is an issue as well. The boater who finds your website and reads the testimonials will very likely read the testimonials with a grain of salt. Of course the comments on your site are positive! That’s why they are called testimonials. But what a boater in search of a reliable marine mechanic really wants to read are objective reviews by fellow boaters.

If you don’t have a program for asking your customers for reviews and to track the reviews your business gets, you need to build one now. A review site that understands your market, that uses keywords and targeted content to improve your rankings in search engines, and that allows you to claim and manage your business listing can be of great service in the ongoing growth of your company.

Carl Schellbach, a principal of BoaterRated.com, has been boating since his earliest days, sailing Seaford Skiffs on Great South Bay and Blue Jays in Western Long Island Sound as a youth. He and his family have since owned, sailed, and cruised a wide variety of vessels, and he has always relied on referred service providers for the fleet. His professional background is in commercial real estate investment banking and brokerage. More recently, he has been adding value to communication channels for both users and providers of boating services and products.