E20: How to Use Google Reviews to Stand Out as a Local Business
Getting more Google reviews isn’t just about asking—it's about having a system that works.
Most small businesses struggle to collect reviews consistently, but in this episode, I’m giving you the exact blueprint to change that.
If you're ready to stand out as the top business in your industry, grab our free Google review script template at https://www.seangarner.co/reviewscripts and start automating your reviews for fast results.
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Sean Garner is a marketing consultant and Certified StoryBrand guide dedicated to helping small business owners grow and dominate their industries. He created the Marketing Domination podcast to teach people how to combine storytelling with strategic marketing to help businesses connect with customers and stand out online.
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EPISODE 20 TRANSCRIPTION
The Power of Google Reviews for Small Businesses
[00:00:00] Sean Garner: Getting more Google reviews than your competition is one of the biggest things you can do to stand out online on Google search for a local business. But too many companies struggle with doing this consistently and getting those good quality five-star reviews. In this episode, I want to show you the exact scripting frameworks and automations we use for our clients to get them hundreds of reviews, standing out as the number one reviewed business in their industry, and how you can implement this strategy in your business today.
[00:00:32] Sean Garner: If you ask a small business if they are collecting Google reviews, they'll typically say, "Well, yeah, but we don't have a process around it," or "Yeah, sometimes if they feel like leaving it," or "Yeah, we tell our staff members to ask for reviews, but they really don't," or "We have this QR code." There are lots of things businesses will have, but the problem is most of them don't have a true system. A system to me means it's repeatable, consistent, and it's actually happening. They're asking for the review once and not doing any type of follow-up. Because they don't have a system, they're not getting reviews.
[00:01:07] Sean Garner: I'll tell you after working with dozens of small business owners that are serving local markets, Google reviews are the most important thing you can do if you truly want your business to stand out, climb the ranking factors in the Google map packs, and stand out as the industry leader. I can't tell you how many clients I have now that tell me, "Oh, I got the sale or the client just because they went online and saw we had way more reviews than our competition, so they didn't even call anybody else." I've also had people say, "I saw you had 10 times more reviews than the second-place person, so I obviously wanted to work with the best." That is the power of reviews.
[00:01:52] Sean Garner: Think about how you do your shopping. This is what I do when I'm buying something on Amazon. I type in what I'm looking for and then immediately filter by reviews. Which one has the most reviews? Which one has the most five-star reviews? I start looking at things by reviews to help me filter down my search. That's exactly what your customers or potential customers are doing, especially if you're serving a local market. Another reason why it's so important for small business owners serving a local market: when a potential customer goes to Google and types in your service and their area, one of the first things that comes up is that Google map pack, which shows the number of reviews a business has. If your business has more reviews than your competition, one, you're going to rank higher, and two, you'll instantly stand out as the authority.
[00:02:34] Sean Garner: But most businesses, like I said, are not doing this consistently. I'm going to give you the exact blueprint framework and scripts we use for our clients to get them hundreds of reviews.
Framework for Collecting Reviews Effectively
[00:02:52] Sean Garner: It doesn't matter if you have a service that handles lots of clients, like an aesthetics business where you might be seeing five, six, 12 customers a day, or a business with slower sales cycles, like a real estate agent doing five to 20 transactions a month. Whatever the industry, if you serve a local market, this strategy will work for you.
[00:03:09] Sean Garner: If you were a brand new client coming on board, I would break this into three different buckets. Now, when we're doing this, we're automating the whole process for clients, but you don't have to automate it. Everything I'm going to give you today requires no special tools. All you need is your phone and a Gmail account to send emails. We obviously want to automate this over time, but it can be done manually right now. And spoiler alert, if you want these scripts, you can get them for free. Go to SeanGarner.co/reviewscripts, or just visit our website SeanGarner.co, scroll to the bottom, and you'll find "Google Review Scripts." Click on that, enter your name and email, and I'll send you all of these scripts word for word. You can copy and paste them into any automation software you're using, or just use them in a regular email or text.
[00:03:49] Sean Garner: So when we get started, we segment this into three different use cases. Most likely, you've been in business long enough to have a customer list—that's one bucket. We're going to send review scripts to this group, and we have different formulas for it. Another review bucket includes people who haven't done business with you, but are friends, family, or colleagues. I call these character witnesses. They may not have used your service, but they want to support you and your local business, so we’ll send them specific messaging. The third bucket is ongoing—this is for all new customers, and it's typically the one we automate. So anytime a trigger is hit, like an invoice is closed or payment is received, it automatically plugs them into this sequence.
[00:04:18] Sean Garner: These are the three different groups we focus on. You can start using these scripts today and start getting more reviews than your competition. It works so well, it's like easy money. Honestly, it's printing money for our clients because we're able to implement this strategy and get them close to a hundred-plus reviews in just a couple of months, depending on how big their customer list is or how many transactions they handle.
[00:05:41] Sean Garner: The reason it works so well is that most people just don’t ask for reviews. So by asking, you’re instantly going to start winning. Plus, we have a really cool follow-up system that I'll show you. The very first message we send is for that bucket of previous clients, family, and friends.
How to Personalize Your Review Requests
[00:05:59] Sean Garner: These are people that almost just want to help you as a character witness. I only send this as a text message. Now, a few things to know about all of this: you want to personalize it. Even when you automate this process, you still want it personalized because this isn't just asking someone to watch a video or subscribe to your YouTube, or like a comment. It's a bit more involved than that, so we want it to feel more like a personal ask.
[00:06:22] Sean Garner: For someone to leave a Google review, they need to have a Google or Gmail account. Most people do, but even if they have one, when you send them the link—and there’s a specific link I want you to send—they’ll still need to log into their Google account. Sometimes people don’t remember their passwords, so they’ll have to go through that. After they log in, they can leave the review. But keep in mind, not every review left will stick. There's more involved, so we definitely want to personalize this.
Automating Google Reviews for Ongoing Success
[00:06:58] Sean Garner: The other thing that we want to do with this is track it. This is where I like the automated system. We build it out in different sales pipelines, so it’s a lot easier just to visually track who’s left a review, who’s clicked on review links, and everything like that. What you're going to want to do with this and why you're going to want to track it is after they leave the review, you’re going to want to track it and stop bothering them. Stop asking them because that takes away the personalization aspect of it.
[00:07:15] Sean Garner: Another thing that’s interesting with Google reviews, especially if you have a new Google Business account or the person leaving the review has never left very many reviews before, is that Google is very protective about this. Google might not let the review stick. I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve had where I’ve had to ask for the review three, four, or five times before Google actually let that review stick. If you wouldn’t have been tracking it, you would have just thought, “Oh, they left a review,” or “They said they left a review,” and you wouldn’t have followed up with them. You wouldn’t have had the review actually hit your account.
[00:07:56] Sean Garner: You have to make sure that it’s actually verified and has landed on your account, and you’ve been notified that the review is on your account by Google. I’ve even had people where a customer will be leaving a review for me, and they send me a screenshot showing on their end that they left the review, but on the admin account level, it doesn’t actually hit. So, that’s where you have to ask them several times to leave that review before it sticks on both sides. It’s just a weird Google thing, and I think honestly, they just do that and make it pretty difficult to leave reviews because they only want legitimate reviews, and they don’t want people to spam or game the system.
[00:08:29] Sean Garner: So those are a few things to know: you want to make it personalized, and you also want to track this whole thing. Another thing you want to track is not just sending them the review request, but over time, especially if you’ve automated this, you’re going to want to tweak the messaging and see if we can improve ask rates. Maybe we’re changing the timing of when these messages go out. That way, we want to track those so we actually know what is working.
[00:08:46] Sean Garner: So that’s all the different things to think about. The very first message that I’m sending out, these are going to be what I’d call the character witnesses. It’s going to be a very simple text message only.
[00:08:59] Sean Garner: I'm going to say, “Hey, whatever their first name is, I hope you're doing great. I wanted to see if you could please help me out with something. One thing I'm working really hard at is getting, whatever my business name is, to number one on Google, and I need your help. If you could take 10 seconds and click on this link, I'm going to show you the link to use, and leave a Google review, it would mean the world to me.”
[00:09:17] Sean Garner: “Even if you've never been a client or customer, just leaving a five-star review helps new clients know that they can trust us and give us a chance. Thanks so much for your help and support of our small business.” Then you enter the Google review link.
[00:09:35] Sean Garner: So, two things that I have noticed—we've split tested this with dozens of clients, and this message has literally been sent out thousands, if not tens of thousands of times by this point, and we've tweaked it down to this messaging. One of the two things we added in is: we let them know that the link is this specific link right here. We make it very simple for them. We say this line: “Even if you've never been a client or customer, just leaving a five-star review helps new clients know they can trust us and give us a chance.”
[00:09:54] Sean Garner: Adding that line, and then the second thing we saw that added a huge boost in conversions was this: “Thank you for your help and support of our small business.” This is the key part. People love supporting small local businesses, especially if they know you. It’s not some big corporation. I think that's something people definitely want to get behind.
[00:10:14] Sean Garner: So, that's one thing we've noticed with testing—like I said, with thousands of these—that those two key elements were instrumental in getting even more success with this messaging. So, that's the first message and the first group of people we're going to send this out to. Most of these people you send it to will likely respond. You can take this message, go to the website [SeanGarner.co/reviewscripts], or like I said, SeanGarner.co, scroll to the bottom, get the Google review scripts, and you can just copy and paste this. Start tweaking it, changing the first name for everybody in your contact list—friends, family, people on Facebook—and I guarantee you're going to start getting a ton of reviews that day.
[00:10:58] Sean Garner: Now, I did say there's a specific link I want you to use. I want you to make this very simple for your customers or potential customers or friends.
[00:11:15] Sean Garner: If you go to your Google business profile, whenever you're logged into your Google account, just hit the three little dots at the top or the three-by-three grid at the top. Then you're going to click on business, or I think it's just business.google.com. Go to your Google business profile, and there’s going to be a section where you’ll see your admin settings and stuff. It’ll say something like "see reviews." You're going to click on that, and there will be a button that says "get more reviews." That will give you the specific link you want to use with all these messages.
[00:11:45] Sean Garner: Why do you want that specific link? Because when you use that link, it automatically opens up your Google business profile to the review page. So they don't have to search for where to leave the review. It automatically opens up if they're logged into Google. If they’re not logged into Google, it'll ask them to log in, and then it will bring up the review page, asking them to leave that five-star review right there. It makes it super user-friendly for the client. That’s the first message I’m going to send out.
[00:12:20] Sean Garner: The other two are going to be for friends, family, colleagues—those types of people. The last two messages, I’m going to plug into a whole system because these will go to people who have either been previous clients or customers, or this is something I’m building out as an automated process moving forward. The process will be the same for these, and the messaging will be pretty similar.
[00:12:40] Sean Garner: The only time I might tweak this is when I always want it to be personalized and contextualized. So, for example, if one of our clients is a real estate agent and has been for over 25 years, some of the people on her lead list that she gave us when we started implementing this, she had, it had been, you know, 10, 15 plus years since they had purchased a house. So, you know, it sounds kind of weird to all of a sudden be like, "Hey, I know I sold you a house 10, 15 years ago, can you leave us a Google review?" So we tweak the messaging a little bit to make it more like, "Hey, I know it's been a while since we worked together, but..." and then we move into the rest of the script.
[00:13:16] Sean Garner: So understand the messages are the same, but you want to tweak them for context as you're sending out these things. I’m not going to go through and give you all these scripts—those are on the Google review script download if you go to the website—but I want to explain the process for this part.
[00:13:35] Sean Garner: This is the part we typically automate. What we do is pair each one of these messages with a text and an email. We've tested this with over 10,000 review requests at this point, and this formula works really well. We do three asks, three days apart, and we send both a text and an email each time.
Tracking Review Progress and Making Adjustments
[00:14:05] Sean Garner: So the very first one we're going to fire off with is typically at the point of sale. For example, if you have a local shop like an aesthetics business, whenever the treatment is finished, we do this at our IV therapy business. Once the payment is completed, it instantly fires off the review request while they're still in the shop. This also serves as a reminder for the staff, because when they're checking them out, they can say, "Oh yeah, right now you're probably receiving a text message from us. That's so you can leave us a Google review. It really helps support our local small business."
[00:14:32] Sean Garner: Most of the time, we've trained our staff this way, so they can get the review right at the counter. But even if they don't leave the review right away, they're getting that sent as a text and an email as soon as the payment or trigger happens. Different businesses have different triggers. Like I said, for a real estate agent, the trigger is the close of a sale, not an immediate purchase. So for them, when the close is completed, they go into the back end of the CRM, flag it as closed, and that plugs them into the sequence.
[00:15:05] Sean Garner: So the very first step is point of sale—send a text, send an email. They're similar variations of the same thing, using that specific link, and it gets them plugged in that way.
[00:15:28] Sean Garner: Then what we're going to do is wait three days, and three days later, we're going to hit them with another text and another email. The messages are always individualized and contextualized, so it's like, "Hey, I know we already sent you this message, just wanted to follow up. It really helps." We're always tweaking the message so it's a little bit different. All of this is on the website, and you can literally copy and paste these scripts now and start using them.
[00:15:45] Sean Garner: So we're going to do that, and then the same thing—three days later, they get another text message. The final ask is like, "Hey, I'm not going to bother you anymore, but it really does help us if you can do this." Again, it’s another text and another email. We're sending these three days apart, so they're getting asked three times within that one-week window—doing it, waiting three days, doing it, waiting three days, and doing it again.
[00:16:22] Sean Garner: So they're getting asked six different times (three texts, three emails), plus hopefully at the facility, which makes it seven times within a seven-day window. We have found this works extremely well by following this pattern. There are some things we track when we automate this for our clients. We build this out in a pipeline stage so that when we send a review, we have three different buckets that we put people in. It’s kind of like this Kanban-style board where one bucket is for people we've sent a review link to or who have gone through the automation.
[00:16:59] Sean Garner: The second bucket of people we add are the ones that have clicked the link, and we put them in there. Then the third bucket is for people who have actually completed the review. Now, this is one thing about how Google is set up—like I mentioned earlier, not all reviews stick. So this part does have to be done manually.
[00:17:17] Sean Garner: That's why we built out this Kanban-style board. We can drag and drop people, and that’s one of the secrets to our tracking system that works so well with our clients. What happens is, depending on the business, some are sending out hundreds of these review requests a month, based on how many transactions they’re doing. We’re finding that a lot of people are clicking on the links, but maybe they weren’t logged in, got confused, or something happened, and they didn’t actually finish the review. So after the review hits their Google account, we drag them over to the "review confirmed" column. This removes them from the automation.
[00:17:55] Sean Garner: If it’s a business with repeat customers, we tag them on the backend as "review confirmed" so they don’t go through this cycle again. That way, even though the process is automated, it still feels personalized. We don’t want someone who’s already left a review being asked for another one—that would make it feel too automated. So by tracking it this way, we can avoid that issue.
[00:18:16] Sean Garner: Another cool thing is if the automation doesn’t get them, manual actions can still be effective. We focus on people who clicked the link but the review didn’t stick. We’ll send them a personalized message, saying something like, "Hey, it looks like you started to leave a review, but it didn’t stick, or maybe you got busy. I’d love it if you could take just 10 more seconds to click the link and finish the review. It really helps us a lot."
[00:18:59] Sean Garner: Sometimes it's just a reminder. We see that happen a lot when people are in the office and they click to leave a review but then say, "I can't remember my password, I'll just do it later." Well, if we hadn’t followed up and tracked what stage they were in—whether they clicked the link or not—we wouldn't have gotten that follow-up.
[00:19:16] Sean Garner: So, there are lots of little nuances and tweaks we can make to the automation process. This is just one of the services we offer for all our local SEO retainer clients at SeanGarner.co. If you're interested in having something like this set up for your business, go to the website and schedule a call with me. I’d love the opportunity to hear more about what you do, the industry you're a part of, and the city you serve. We only work with one industry per city or service area so we’re not competing against ourselves, trying to make two real estate agents, attorneys, or medical spas compete in the same area.
How to Stand Out with Reviews
[00:19:53] Sean Garner: You can't really dominate against yourself. So we set it up that way to help our clients win. Please go to the website and start doing this today. This is an awesome gift. Go to SeanGarner.co/review-scripts or just SeanGarner.co. Scroll to the bottom, click on the Google review scripts, and start implementing these today.
[00:20:12] Sean Garner: You can take that first message, copy and paste it, and start sending it out to your friends, family members, and colleagues to get more Google reviews. Quick side note, if you want to know how many you should aim for, go to Google, type your service and city name. So, for example, "attorneys Denton, Texas" or "personal trainer Tulsa, Oklahoma." Look at the highest number of reviews the top business has. Our goal is to at least double or triple that number because we don’t just want to be better; we want to be the clear, undisputed winner.
[00:20:44] Sean Garner: When you have so many reviews, why would anyone talk to another business? I guarantee your competition probably doesn’t have this set up. So if you implement this strategy, you will instantly stand out as the clear leader in your industry. Take action, guys, go make this happen, and stand out online.
