How to get more Google reviews

Chuck: Welcome to raise the rank digital marketing podcast, just for roofers, get marketing tips and strategies from Chuck muggy, digital marketer and roofing company owner. Let's start leveling up your roofing company with entrepreneurs that practice what they preach and live what they teach.

Okay. Welcome to our latest podcast. Brandon is going to be on with me today. Brandon has been working with me for about, I guess, what nine years. So Brian, his background is he started off as a roof salesman, like say nine years ago. And then he did some sales manager duties and sales training. So he's, he's sold, he's trained, he's managed.

So he's run a ton of leads, closed many, a deal commercial deals. He's done some big commercial deals along with residential. So condos and apartments and things like that. Okay. So Brian has got a lot of experience at running leads, talking to clients, phone calls, all that kind of stuff. So our topic today in, uh, just remind everybody that we grab a topic and we don't really have a script or anything.

We talk about what's going on. And today we're going to be taught. We're actually, we're going to be doing a series on the phones because the phones are such a problem. According to Google, over 50% of all phone calls for small to mid-size businesses go unanswered. That's a huge problem. So Brandon are going to talk about.

And Brandon wanted to talk about what happens before the call and what does the homeowner thinking? Okay. That's important too, because before the call, you're either going to get a Google organic lead or you going to get a Google paid lead either way. These are important. Now I'm going to let Brandon talk just a little bit about how hard it is to, or hard, but it's a little harder to close a Google.

An organic lead or Google my business lead. And simply because you're probably going to be up against more companies because they can't stop them from calling other companies. And that's why it's so important to answer the phone. Then you're going to say you're going to be in a bid situation in some cases.

And at that point, your demo is going to be extremely important. How well did you demo this client or this prospect? And that, that leads us back to a lot of conversations at Brandon I've been having, because pretty much everybody in our community runs from a Google paid as PPC. And the problem is when you don't answer that phone, the analytics that come with answering the phone, the call duration for one.

Does not get fed back into Google ads. So Google analytics, CallRail, all this tracking that we do is going to feed back into the Google, your Google ads account. And then Google is going to know that a 92nd. Okay, well this keyword or this key phrase generated this particular impression, and then we've got this click.

So we got this click on this particular keyword and we had a three minute call duration. Okay. Well, that's a, that's a conversion for Google. So Google's going to go out and search for more of that same thing, that same type of client, uh, in today's world of security and things like privacy and stuff like that.

It's called cohorts. So Google's got everybody out there grouped, and co-head already knows all this stuff. So it is searching for that particular type of person for that particular. Keyword or key phrase and it wants to serve it to you again. But if we don't answer that phone, we're missing a lot of analytics.

So it's going to hurt your paid ads account. And if you don't answer the phone, they're going to keep right on call. And so let's just say that you're busy and you call back in 10 minutes. Okay. It's highly likely, they've called at least one to two more companies. So now we're in a competitive mode. So we're on our heels instead of on our toes.

It's almost like being in a boxing match. So we don't want to be on our heels. We want to be in autos and be proactive and stop them from calling. So now you got to think about what's the intent. Okay. Well, I was telling Brandon there's only three types of searches on Google, transactional, informational, and navigational.

So we don't care about navigation, it's informational or transactional. So. They could be in the high power of the funnel and looking for information. So you guys have got to give them that information, you and your website have got to answer questions, solve problems, and build trust. And then we're going to get to what Brandon, the CC or the contract.

So we've got to answer the phone. It is so important. And Brandon, and we've got Brandon listening to call rail right now, simply because of his background. And Brandon, I'm gonna let you talk about some of the calls that you're here and, uh, some of the problems that we're seeing, because in some cases we're seeing what, 60, 65%, maybe even 70% of the calls not being there.

Brandon: We are seeing that, unfortunately, you know, the number one thing with the calls that I've seen myself as we just get busy, they go unanswered for whatever reason. Um, I think, I think we forget that the most important thing is is those phones ringing. You know, that how we handle that phone call it experience that customer has Google leads are really hard.

I heard you mentioned that they're really difficult to run. For various reasons. But I believe if we were to make that homeowner feel at home, feel comfortable and feel like you're confident that they reached out to a professional because we answered the phone, we took the client's information and then we got out there in a timely manner.

It's going to, it's going to ease a lot of things. It's just, like you said, it's gonna, they're gonna stop possibly calling more people. Or if they do call more people, did they answer the phone the way you did? You know, there's some, there's some things that can be set right up front to gear them to feel that you're more professional.

By the way that we answer that phone. Now you did say, we were talking about the analytics. I've got a question for you. What can we do if we miss the call? How do we get that? Is there any way to redeem yourself with Google? Is there any way we can call the client back through call rail? Is there any way to get that?

Well,

Chuck: you can call them back through call rail and, uh, we're, we're trying to, uh, we're launching what's called lead center. W actually they launched it. What we're trying to do is get everybody in it. Uh, we tested it. Of course it's relatively new. It was only about four or five months old. Maybe it may not even be that old, but no, to answer your question, uh, there is no.

Redeeming yourself at that point, you miss that opportunity for Google to care. Cause you got to remember we're coming from that keyword, that key phrase out of it, out of an ad group. And from that particular phone call. So yes, we can call him back from call rail and there's some cool things going on there.

We'll get to a future podcast, but no, we lose those analytics and it hurts.

So, I mean, when we miss that, then Google is going okay. One is not getting any of the analytics, but two is looking for that call duration for a conversion. So, you know, three minute call, four minute call a five minute call. That's telling Google a lot of things and Google will feed you because at the end of the day, yeah, you're.

You're paying Google and Google's making a ton of money, but let's face it. We make money behind Google. I mean, done. Right. And you've run your leads, right? You're going to make money behind Google and Google. That's what Google wants. Google wants you to make money because guess what? You're going to spend more money with them.

So. Yeah, the phone is important. We got to answer the phone. We've got to get those analytics back into Google ads. Of course, if it's a foreign film, things like that, that's all going back into Google ads. So the call rail metrics are extremely important in getting future clicks. Because if we say, say they Christ roof repair is going to get us on the roof, we're going to be able to get up there and get an inspection.

That's what a solid. But there's all kinds of different intent there with different keywords. Keywords are going to drive different intents. So you may have large, we've got two clients right now that are in the middle of, well, actually three or four clients that are in the middle item, actually. The intent, there has gone strictly from informational to transactional.

They're looking for, they're looking for tarps, they're looking for roofs, they're looking for words. So it is hard core transactional. So we need to be, and there's a lot of phone calls get missed down there and that situation, I mean, everybody's to their eyeballs and swinging elbows. So it's, it is what it is.

But you know, on any given day, the phone is the most important thing. That you can do it it's, you know, in my, in my, my recommendation is no matter what you think, as far as the money hire somebody that does nothing, but answer that phone and set appointments. Don't just answer the phone and then text it to a, how many times have we seen somebody answering the phone, then they take that information.

They text it to a PM or salesman. And then it gets dropped. The ball gets dropped right there. So that also leads to the client or the prospect having to field two calls from you. So they're going to get one call then they're gonna get a PM to call them to set an appointment. Okay. That's not good. We're starting off on our heels again.

We need to answer that call and book that appointment so we can run a demo. If you can't run. The demo at that appointment time, then either the PM can reset or you find somebody else that can run that appointment at that given time. Brandon, you should have a lot of experience in this. I mean, if you had a lot of problem doing resets or, I mean, that's typically not a huge.

Reset reset on your point.

Brandon: No, it just depends. I mean, you, you don't want to reset if you don't have to, but you don't want to go out and you don't want to burn, you spin your wheels. So, you know, if you don't have both, decision-makers there or something like that, you definitely want to reset, but it getting that client, getting that call, capturing that information and setting that appointment right there, one and done is the best way.

No doubt.

Chuck: Okay, well, uh, Brandon we're, we're starting to run long, but I think we've covered the fact that it's important to answer the phone, uh, the analytical part of the phone call itself. What's going on the duration time of the call. Uh, course we record the calls, but that's simply to qualify the lead.

Google is not listening to the call. They're strictly looking at the call duration time to figure out if this was a conversion or not, you know, 32nd phone call is not. So we're going to do a series on this and, uh, you know, we'll do another podcast next week, Brandon, on more of the phones. Cause this is this, this is so important.

We're seeing it really hurt some guys. And we're, we're seeing, we're seeing a lot of lost money. Just go down the drain.

Brandon: Yeah, for sure. And I don't think it's intentional, but I think there's some things being missed that could definitely help for sure.

Chuck: All right. Well, next week, maybe we can go in a little bit more about maybe what does the homeowner do if you don't answer the call, things like that.

So, you know, we could go on and on about this for hours, but it probably an entire day, if you want to know.

Brandon: Oh, yeah. You know, I want to talk about for sure next week, you know, what, what's that person what's that person's job answering the phone. What's their number one job. What are their number one duties?

You know, that, I think that's something that gets blurred. Sometimes. I think we should cover that as well.

Chuck: Well, let's wrap this one up today and I will see you next week and we'll, we'll plow into another.

Brandon: See you next week.