Partner Bootcamp

Webinar Transcript

[The downloadable transcript of this video, the presentation deck, and other materials will be available in the Resource Center].

The Reputation Management dashboard has been revamped. The tool now has three key features: Online Reviews, Customer Experience, and Listings.

William:

Hello, everyone, and thanks for dropping by. Yes, these are the businesses we found and agency partners who talked to us.  This is our Partner Bootcamp from SEOReseller, and today we’re talking about How to Sell Reputation Management to Your Clients.

[slide: About the Panelists]

Now, I’d like to introduce myself first. My name’s Will Kramer. I’m part of business development. I’ve been a project manager with SEOReseller for a while, and I’ve worked with some of the larger partners in our business.

So, it’s been a while, but I’ll tell you today that I’m a bit excited about what we’re talking about – pretty fresh, pretty new. Something that we developed this year, but it’s been in the works, and I’d love to introduce you to the guy behind it and the team that runs it with him. Hey, Josh.

Josh:

Hey, Will. I’m very excited to be in this webinar. This is my first time. I’ve been in SEOReseller for the past few years, and I’ve been leading the development of the different products you see in SEOReseller since then.

I’m very excited about the Reputation Management dashboard. We launched this, I believe, last March. It has good traction, and we’ve got many partners coming in. 

You can see a lot of their feedback here in this particular presentation and their experiences that we will share with you.

William:

Exactly. We’d also like to thank every partner that signed up with us. It was a good number. And, believe me, as Josh said, the feedback helps us. It does, so we’re looking forward to many of you guys sending us some of your questions, and we’ll address them.

Just to let everybody know, if you’ve got a question right off the bat that you just got an itch for, feel free to call the numbers you see on the right side.

[Update: To access the Reputation Management dashboard, you must have an Agency Pro subscription.]

William:

[slide: What Happened During the Previous Partner Bootcamp Webinar]

Before I move forward, I want to remind everyone, so you can check out the last webinar we did, another one of our Partner Bootcamp series, “The Expert Game Plan for Selling Web Design.” So, we wanted to help partners figure out who to sell web design to.

Josh:

And how to sell, and what materials to sell. A couple of months ago, when we did this webinar, we introduced you to the proposal builder and mockups.

Now, a couple of months after, we upgraded that same proposal builder a couple of months later. 

You can create SEO, social media, web design, and reputation management proposals in the next few weeks.

William:

Perfect. And that’s Josh’s team and their work.

[slide: Discussion Overview]

So, we’ll briefly describe what we intend to talk about today. We want to express how important reputation management is today, why it is, and how it can grow your business.

Josh:

At the same time, we want to talk about the problems and we want to talk about opportunities for clients if you use reputation management. 

We also want to talk about how you can help these businesses, how you can help them manage their reputation, promote their importance, and how you can approach these clients differently as a partner of different levels.

William:

[slide: Why Reputation Management is More Important Than Ever]

Perfect. Now, Josh, I got a question for you. And I know it’s on the slide, but why is reputation management that important? 

As I know, we both talk to partners. But I know that when you talk to partners, you delve deeper into their business and how to structure their products and packages.

What have you seen so far?

Josh:

[slide: Your Client’s Online Reputation Starts When You Build Their Online Presence]

Before we even developed reputation management, we researched our partners and clients. We wanted to see the common pain points they need to address.

One of the biggest things we found out is that online reputation right now is one of the biggest things, simply because anyone who has access to Google can know your reputation immediately. 

When someone searches for you, when someone looks for your business, they can already see all the reviews, all the blogs written about you, and all the conversations.

William:

Makes sense. Even from my end, my background was web design, but not getting found is, you know, we always talk about that on these webinars. 

Most people, or anyone listening, know this has been around for a while. The thing is, it’s changed so much. 

So, I think it’s essential that you guys understand now why your online presence is key today, so you know that just to stretch things out, you have to be visible.

Josh:

You have to be. There are around 72 million users on Yelp using the service every month. 

You have a billion users using Facebook, and these guys are all searching for businesses on these different platforms – not to mention the people searching in Google and looking for businesses there. 

So, clients now (small businesses) want new business and want to increase their business, but they have these problems that they do not yet know how to start their business online.

William:

Right. And some of them are there, and they’ve tried. They just don’t know how to do it right. That’s why we’re here today – to help you figure that out and get the information to them.

Josh:

Yeah. Exactly.

William:

[slide: Your Client’s Potential Customers are Reading Reviews Before They Make a Decision]

So, let’s talk about reviews in general and how important they are in your customers’ ability to make a decision. Why do they matter?

Josh:

That’s a big thing.

Whenever a particular client or a customer is searching for a business online, one of the first things they look for is the different reviews for the business. 

These are the ones that instruct them if they will use the business or not.

You can see in the presentation that 53 percent of the customers use the internet to find a local business, and 50 percent read reviews before they even step inside the business.

William:

Exactly. It makes sense if you think about it, but at that scale, it’s huge, right? And I think part of this. 

We’re going to jump into it in the next slide. But most businesses don’t realize how important reviews are – even the negative ones.

Josh:

[slide: Negative Reviews Have a Direct Impact on Your Business]

Especially the negative ones. While doing this deck, we did a lot of different research. We stumbled upon this research by Go Fish Digital, which said that for every negative review, the potential number of your customers for that particular business drops by 22 percent. 

So, for one negative online review of a particular business, the potential number of customers drops by 22 percent. If you have three negative reviews, the potential number of customers coming online drops by 60%. 

If you had a thousand potential customers for this month because you have three negative reviews, that are now roughly only four hundred.

William:

That hurts. I think it’s also about getting them to understand that aversion towards negative reviews is a misconception, it’s a misjudgment on your client’s part, and it’s a matter – like it says here – it’s a matter of knowing how to handle those bad reviews.

Josh:

Yeah. It’s also a matter of knowing that you cannot just leave reviews alone but know what to do whenever you find a negative review.

[slide: How Reputation Management Grows Your Business]

William:

So, now we’re moving on to how reputation management can grow your clients and your business.

Josh:

Reputation management is not just addressing the different problems that a small business has. One of the big things about reputation management is that you can use reputation management to grow the business further. 

It’s not just managing their reviews. It’s not just building their presence but also increasing their business using their good reputation and ensuring revenue goes up.

William:

Well, that’s what we’re trying to express here through a sales funnel. Maybe some of your customers don’t realize it is part of it.

Some may think, “I just have to have that property so people can find us. I need to see what people are saying about us.” There’s a structure to it.

One of the things that we want to point out is how important it is to have accurate listings right off the bat. 

When people are searching for you and trying to discover your business (well, it’s not your business but the customers – although yours, too), managing that is extremely important. It doesn’t mean that you have to be everywhere to be seen. 

It’s about being in the right place at the right time. It’s all about discovery. You know what they say, “Location, location, location.”

Now, this part is interesting, and I think you’d have a better answer for this, Josh. It’s a question about that consideration stage when a client has found you.

Josh:

When we built reputation management, it was built around the methodologies that we have, that we know work for building and managing reputation management. 

Are these really three words? We’re going to discuss this further with their slides. It’s build, manage, and promote. These key things correlate to the sales funnel that you are looking at now.

When you build their online presence, more customers discover small businesses. You create better consideration when managing their reputation and reviews to generate new ones. 

You’re turning this traffic, turning the visitors online into actual users or customers. 

And then, when you keep promoting the business, you’re now turning the customers into not just regular customers, that’s brand advocates, promoters of the business whose lifetime value now multiply simply because you’re managing their reputation.

William:

Exactly. And it’s just another way of pointing out how important it is. And, of course, it’s another way of getting them – it’s a pitch. You want to show them the fact that this is part of your business and it’s part of your sales. Listen to your clients, manage them, and then ask them to promote you. It’s the key to that.

[slide: How Does Your Agency Help?]

Now, how would your agency help? Like, where do you come in?

Josh:

This was what I discussed a while ago regarding the methodology.

You come in by introducing these simple steps – you build their presence, manage their online reputation, and then promote their business.

It’s very simple.

[slide: 1. Build Their Presence]

When you build their presence, it means that you look first for where are the customers of your client. 

Are they a restaurant, or are they a lawyer? If they’re a restaurant, you must go to different directories, such as OpenTable, Zomato, or Yelp. Then you have to build the listings there.

I’m sure you’ve already read a lot of different listings as well, so you have to make sure these listings have a lot of different materials. You have a lot of images in them. You enrich them.

Then you have the number one thing that Will was saying a while ago – you have to make sure that these listings are accurate, so when customers look for your clients or small businesses in these different directories, they’re going to get the right information.

More when these customers search online for the business. Because you built their presence enough, we will see your clients at the top of the search rankings.

William:

I got a question for you, Josh.

Josh:

Yeah, sure.

William:

So, the keyword here is building. And you mentioned that it’s all about picking the right listing, directory, or place to be. 

But my question to you is, are there – well, it’s a rhetorical question because we both know the answer – But, frankly, it doesn’t matter that you have more than everybody else. Is it the key to that? Should you have more?

Josh:

Well, it’s interesting because I wrote something about it many weeks ago. You can find it on our blog – the title answers your question. The title is “You Don’t Need to Be in All Directories”

William:

Right, because not all listings are equal.

Josh:

Exactly – you just have to be in the right directories. In that particular blog, I discussed that one of the prevailing myths in local SEO is that you must be in hundreds of directories. That’s just not true. The truth is, you have to be in the right directories.

That’s why in SEOReseller, what we do is that we segregate the different directories into which ones are the most important. 

We have specific directories, which we call core directories – these are your basic microsites, like Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp.

Then we have primary directories, citations, and niche sites like Avo or Open Table. And then we have the secondary directory, which has its value, but it’s not a killer if you’re not in them right.

William:

Great, and I guess it’s all about quality and relevance.

Josh:

It’s really about quality and relevance and knowing the local ecosystem.

William:

[slide: 2. Manage Their Reputation]

Okay, now we want to discuss how you can help them manage their reputation. In general, for me, at this point, because you built that presence, you should start to see more people react. 

Let me give you an example: if you’ve got someone who’s never spoken to you before, you suddenly realize they’ve got this horrible review. You didn’t see it coming even though you’ve put yourself in the right places.

The next step is paying attention to everything you’ve built, which is key here because you don’t have to worry about people saying great things about you. 

You must also pay as much attention to people writing things you know aren’t fair and everything else. But paying attention is key.

Josh:

The foundation of managing your reputation is first ensuring you know what happens in the different directories, sites, and online conversations about your client.

So, whenever there’s a sample discussion on Twitter about your client, you have to be there. You have to know it whenever there’s a new review on Yelp. 

You have to know it whenever it is a new review on Facebook or in any other directory you have to know it.

You can’t manage it if you don’t know it. And the worst thing about a negative review is a negative review that you haven’t answered for a long, long time.

William:

Right, that’s damaging. Not just there because people could take that somewhere else.

Josh:

Yes. I was surprised by this when I was doing research for this deck. There are already 123 million reviews on Yelp, and more than 50% are less than five stars.

William:

Does that say something about Yelp in general?

Josh:

It says something more about the people who leave reviews. If you think about it, if you’re a satisfied customer, you’re not incentivized to leave a review. But if you are an unsatisfied customer, you want the business to pay attention.

You want to grab their attention, you want to tell them what you’re feeling, and you want to – I don’t know, get free food – whatever the objective is. You want to tell them something.

That’s why many of the reviews you see online are negative. This is a bit unfair because the good customers who love your business also deserve to review the business.

What they need from your end to manage your reputation for your client is those small businesses need to know that they have to prompt their good customers (satisfied customers) to leave reviews for their business online.

So then you’re converting these particular customers and going to use these reviews to convert the new traffic, new leads, the new prospects into your next customers. The cycle goes through, and you’re increasing the business and the profits.

William:

Yeah. Right back to the sales funnel. This gives you a clearer picture and your client a clear picture of the atmosphere around their business – yeah, as Josh said. 

People who are happy with the product or people who are happy with the service tend not to say anything. So, if you can solicit positive and negative reviews, that puts you in control at the start.

Josh:

Yeah. One of the pain points we encountered with many of our agency partners at the beginning – before we even developed this product – is that they always asked us how to get rid of yelp review right.

William:

Exactly. I’ve heard that.

Josh:

Many agencies want to do that, and I will tell you how to do it – you can’t do it.

Yelp reviews will stay there; the only thing that you need to do to make sure that you negate it is that you have to tell a fair story about the business, which means that if you have a negative review, first and foremost, you have to make sure that you answer it. 

Second, if you have a negative review, you must ensure that you also have a positive one.

William:

Yeah, because you can turn that negative review into a positive review. Then most people tend to smother a negative review by adding different reviews, and that’s where it all gets messy.

Okay, so that was managing your reputation, and that’s why it’s important to your client to get that started.

[slide: 3. Promote Their Business Online]

But now, they need also to see that it’s an actual way to promote their business. It’s all about loyalty and advocacy of happy clients – even those negative guys or negative clients that wrote reviews about your clients. 

They become one of the strongest advocates for your business or your client’s business. There are so many opportunities out there.

Josh:

The people who rate the business negatively tend to be the most passionate users, and this means that they care about the service that they have and that they care about the business. 

So, by promoting the business, getting in touch with these people, and ensuring you address their problems, you are not only addressing their issues but also showing people that you care about their reviews. 

Now, you’re using all these reviews to promote the business.

When you keep on building positive reviews for your clients, what you’re doing is you’re investing in free marketing, which will last forever for that directory. 

Five years from now, when someone visits that listing again and the positive reviews are still there, they can see that this business was performing well even back then. 

All the more reason for them to go to that particular location and try out that particular business.

William:

Exactly. I think also it’s important that your clients understand that this is a great way to build a referral system.

Josh:

Yes. We are SEOReseller, and we tend to always talk about SEO.

William:

I’m keeping my lip shut.

Josh:

But one of the things and trends we notice is that people are searching for more than just SEO businesses. We know that. The searches and different platforms have increased over the past few years. 

So, customers are now searching for many different businesses on Facebook. That’s why Facebook has a business manager already and Facebook has Facebook pages.

Clients are now searching for businesses on LinkedIn or Yelp, which are searches with high intent. Then when they see a business, they want to know if they should consider it. 

So, when you’re generating reviews for your clients, when you’re making sure that they’re found in these listings, what you’re doing is you’re investing in their marketing not just for now but also in the future.

William:

Right, and it’s all about being proactive and, I think, establishing control over that is key because you could leave it, you could set everything up. 

You could manage your reputation and leave it there, but the number one source of your positive reviews will come from you.

But, it has to appear natural at the end of the day. And that’s you talking to the guys who set the reviews in the first place, regardless if they’re negative or positive. 

So, tell your clients to promote their business online. That’s key. 

[slide: How Do You Sell Reputation Management?]

Here’s the fun part and the real reason we’re talking. So, what we wanted to do at the beginning of this webinar was to lay down the train of thought that your clients need to be in. 

But this is where you start to make more sense of it, which is really for you as partners. How can you leverage reputation management – that was the first part. Now, how are you going to sell it?

[slide: As a Service of Its Own]

Josh:

There are three ways, based on the early agency partners we’ve had and many different conversations with agency owners. We’ve seen three ways agencies succeed in selling reputation management.

The first one is selling it as a full-service. A couple of agency partners that I’ve talked to do this service. What they’re doing is that they’re using your reputation management to start their digital marketing agency.

William:

Right.

Josh:

They’re not selling anything else. They’re selling just reputation management. So, what they do is they buy the tool, they use the suite, and then they use their own time to manage the reputation of their clients. 

This allows them to mark it up higher than the average price – times 15 or 10 than the actual price they pay us.

William:

I have a question, Josh. When you’re talking to these partners, what client base do they have?

Josh:

It’s the typical client base that needs a reputation. These are primarily the businesses that have no idea what to do online regarding their reputation, but they know it’s important. 

They’ve seen people go to their business, telling them they found them on Google or Yelp. But they don’t know how to manage these businesses.

William:

Makes sense.

Josh:

So, these particular partners who have invested in learning reputation management who has the backing of this tool or suite. They come into these businesses with no online reputation. 

They talk to them. They guide these businesses into what is important in reputation management. And they eventually close them and make sure that they’re the ones taking care of their business.

William:

Right. 

So, I’m assuming that most of the pain points for these customers are, “It’s just too big for me,” “I don’t know where to begin,” or “Should I hire someone?” “Should I just create a Facebook account?” “How do I do it?” That’s usually probably where they’re coming from.

Josh:

Yes, these are the businesses we found and agency partners who talked to us. These businesses have no time or inclination to use the internet for anything, but they know it’s important.

William:

Yeah. Even from a traditional marketing standpoint, and if anyone’s been around or their business has been there for years, they know how important word-of-mouth is.

The question again – I hate to bother you with these – but if a partner gets/decides to go in this direction and sell it as a service of their own, how much time do you feel they’ll need to spend?

Josh:

Initially, at the start, they have to give us some time to make sure that the business’s reputation is well established. Meaning they have to make sure that they have total control of all the listings.

The initial investment in terms of time would be in making sure that the business is in the right directories, that the directory listings are accurate, that it’s connected to the dashboard (our dashboard), and that they have the right type of reviews.  

They have to build these reviews if they do not have the right reviews.

Then the next steps after that are, now that you know that the business is in the right directories, you know that you have a connection to these particular directories. You have a tool (like ours) that alerts you whenever you have new reviews in these particular directories. 

Now that you found that you have a tool that alerts you whenever there are changes in these directories, that’s the time that you make a weekly request for reviews for the different customers of the client.

So, the way more successful partners use this method is that they set up a call or an email with their clients/small businesses every week.

They ask them for a list of customers they had for that week. They only asked for the emails, so it’s up to that particular agency to request reviews from these customers.

William:

Right, okay.

Josh:

And they also build a way for them to answer the different negative reviews because it’s not all about generating reviews. So, the way we do it as well is that they invest heavily at the start to know how these businesses want to address negative reviews.

When they see a negative review, they will reply to the clients or customers leaving the review. Then they just alert, and then they just follow that to the actual client afterward.

William:

Okay. I have more of an understanding. You know that I used to sell to end clients of some of our partners.

Josh:

Yeah.

William:

I think a great way to prove value, and I think it’ll have more weight, and then the next way to sell it. But for me, it’s all about the fact that you’re there constantly with them, building something from scratch, and they’re seeing it build up. 

Then each review that comes to you and how you’re managing it, you’ll have a customer who will stick with you for a long time.

And because they’re going to get the education from you too. So, this is perfect as a service on its own.

Josh:

Yeah. At the same time, the value is there. You don’t need to talk about abstract theories or hypotheses, concepts, or anything – you’re just talking about the reputation of a business, and any business owner knows the importance of that.

William:

Exactly. Let’s get to the second one – and it’s like a foot in the door.

[slide: As a Foot in the Door]

Let me see if I understand how the foot in the door works. 

Okay, so for me, if I were to go about it, what I want to do is – let’s say I’m approaching a client whose business has been around for the last ten years. They built their website quite a while back. And back then, certain things needed to be in place for you to be visible. In SEO, that’s changed over time.

So, I’m talking to someone who feels like they know what they’re doing. But they don’t realize that so much has changed over the years. Certain things have just been left behind. 

I don’t want to smother them immediately with every other digital marketing effort.

I mean, it’ll probably be okay. When I’m looking at a review right here, and I see that it says that the business has been over eight years and you’ve gotten this new chef on board, but I check out the review, it was from like 1991.

That’s great back then, but you know people move along. So, that would be my foot in the door. 

You know what social media can do for you – that’s where I will be coming from. I’m going to tell them about back then when you couldn’t track most of the stuff you’re looking at now, and we can do that for you.

You get – right there – instant notifications. There’s instant reporting. That’s a dashboard for you to view everything we’re building. 

It starts that way, and it’s a small markup because you’re trying to get them to understand the new stuff, the digital space today.

Josh:

It’s a foot in the door. You’re just trying to give them a face of what you can offer.

William:

Right. And then suddenly, you’re offering them web design because people are starting to talk about your website and searching for you. But they can’t find you – that’s the whole point. 

You’ll hear what they’re saying because you just put yourself out there. An excellent way for people to talk to you is through reviews. That’s how I’d go after this.

Josh:

That’s exactly how many of our partners now use this reputation management dashboard to close new clients.

One of the other ways they’re doing this is when they’re looking for a particular client, and they know this client has an existing provider agency and want to prove that they’re simply better than the particular agency.

What they do is that they sell the reputation management for a very low markup – let’s say $50 or $100 every month. 

They do this because they want to prove that their technology (the technology you buy with the reputation management suite) is superior. The design is better than what the existing provider has.

Now, when they offer this dashboard to small businesses and see the technology behind this particular tool, they get a taste of what the technology could be if they offer PPC, social, or SEO. 

Now, they can get all the client’s business from that other provider to their agency.

William:

You know what? I just thought about it. It’s a great way to break people into SEO, social, and PPC. Because, to be honest, it’s referral traffic, right? And there’s a bit of that when you’re on Facebook and that social traffic. 

Eventually, look at the opportunities you’re getting from this, imagine if you start working on this next, and then build a roadmap for them. It’s a great way to excite them.

Josh:

And it’s not a hard sell. Start with a very low price. Then, you build up on top of it.

William:

And I think by that time, they’d have understood just how valuable the service is because of that.

But I got a question for you. People need to know that at this stage, you can just focus. In the previous webinars, we tend to talk about how you should focus on a niche you’re comfortable with within your network or something you can leverage.

When you’re working with reputation management, tell me, Josh, how does that apply if you want to cater to a specific niche?

Josh:

Well, we built reputation management with a mission in mind. This means we know that many of the different agencies’ way for them to succeed is focused on a certain subset of small businesses. And that’s just really that particular one.

So reputation management – specifically the reputation management suite – provides you with a list of important directories. 

For example, for a lawyer and restaurateur, dentist, or plumber, these are the things we highlight for that particular business. So, when approaching these small businesses, you can leverage this fact to explore that particular industry much more.

William:

Right. I understand because the stats are all related. Especially when you’re dealing with one area, you could be not just on a specific niche, maybe a specific location if you wanted most of the people in the area, you’ve got a bigger picture of what the market is like in general.

Josh:

Yes.

William:

So sweet. That is how you can sell it as a foot in the door, and that’s just a supplement.

And here’s the best part, at SEOReseller, we always started as SEO, and that’s the core fundamental here. And it’s sometimes hard to paint a picture, really, of how to get someone through the door. 

But thank you, Josh. Now there’s something that helped make it a lot easier, so I was so excited.

[slide: As a Complementary Product]

Alright. Let’s get to the third and last one, and it’s a complementary product. You’ll notice that when we’re emphasizing the clients you can approach, it also depends on where you’re at as an agency.

Let’s put it this way:

In the first slide, the first way to sell, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to get people. You’re trying to get businesses or clients to understand how important is to be online. And that’s a great way to get them through.

The second one is about a foot in the door and eventually selling them on just to get them a higher understanding.

This one focuses on agencies with clients that have been around for years. And this is a harder way to approach, but it’s also the most challenging. It also is the most rewarding.

When you’re talking to a client who’s been, say, ten years earlier, five years, but they’ve been working with three agencies – each agency has a different product or service the client needs. One is doing local reputation, and one is doing local SEO. The other one’s doing PPC. It is a challenge to get in there, but the point here is that it can act as a complementary product.

If there’s a hole in their methodology, this is a great approach. And most of the time, people don’t understand how it all ties in together. I just mentioned a customer that’s getting services from three different providers. 

What you’re doing here is you’re putting it all together in one go – they’re already doing SEO, they’re already doing PPC, they’re already doing reputation management. You can come into that conversation, have this at the start, or whatever you want, but in one go. And look at that; the markup is pretty easy.

Josh:

And, Will can speak to this based on experience. He has grown more than 24 of our partners through this six-digit recurring revenue.

What these partners asked us is, “What else can I offer? I’ve already sold social. I’ve already sold SEO. I’ve already sold PPC.”

William:

It’s always the pressure that you get when we get that. “What else? What else can I get?”

Josh:

And this is the product that rounds up every offering – all the offerings for digital marketing. Now that you’re taking care of their traffic by SEO, now that you’re taking care of unfiltered traffic from social, and now that you’re taking care of their PPC, now it’s time to take care of their reputation with reputation management from SEOReseller.

William:

It almost sounds like a pitch. But, again, it’s got to be part of your solution. And like from another example. So, you have a customer, and let’s just say they have been doing SEO, and they have been doing a few other things on the side. They have a good understanding, and it seems there’s no way you can get in.

There is. As reputation management can sort of put it in place for them, you want to set the SEO, put the PPC, and look at all the traffic you’re generating.

Here’s the point: are they talking to them? They’ve got all that traffic, telling you, “I don’t need it. I’ve got traffic coming from PPC from Adwords. I’ve got good organic traffic; people know where I am.” 

But what are they saying? Are you talking to them? They said, “Yeah. I’ve got marketing campaigns here and there.”

Really? Let’s see where the brand stands and what they are saying. Now, that’s also another way to go about it. And that’s also selling it as part of a solution.

It also tells you how well the other agency is doing because if you’re able to coordinate them there, most people overlook this, and that’s why we added it. 

You know, it was something that most people didn’t appreciate, and then you added it as part of your digital marketing effort.

Josh:

It rounds up all your digital marketing effort. You’re giving the reputation management. Now you’re giving them everything.

William:

Perfect. Okay. So those are the three ways to do it.

And again, if you want to send us your questions, we’ve got a Q&A section at the end. And again, if you have questions now, shoot them over, and if you want to talk to somebody over the phone, then call the numbers on the right side.

[slide: For Our Partners]

William:

Alright. So, now we’ll be offering you guys a playbook, a product guide, and a white-label email. But the white-label video should be coming.

Josh:

Yeah. These are two of the top requests from partners. First, a white-label marketing video that allows them to advertise the business or advertise their business to different clients. 

Then, a white label explainer demo, which allows them to give this video and explain to their clients how to navigate the system. We’ll have that by tomorrow, and we will be able to send it to you soon.

There’s also the demo dashboard you can use to pitch to your clients now. When we released the reputation management last March, it came with a pitch deck at the Resource Center. 

It came with a demo dashboard, which you can find out how to use in our Help Center, and the sales guide, which explains how to sell it to your new clients.

The following three items – the playbook, the product guide, and the white label email – will further strengthen your pitch or how you can service your clients with reputation management.

[slide: New Reputation Management Features Coming This Week]

And so, if we’re talking about a lot of marketing materials that we’re doing, we’re also talking about the new features we’re releasing in the next few weeks. 

So part of the big things we’re doing in SEOReseller is that we’re just not building the product for you. We’re also building the way for you to sell the product. So it’s very important to us to equip everyone with a way to sell the product.

One of the biggest features now is the reputation management proposal, which we will release in the next few weeks. We’re also going to upgrade the listings finder that allows us to detect duplicate listings and to upgrade the way we find the different listings online.

William:

Alright. I’m even excited about that, but I’d love to see the paperwork, and I did.

[slide: Reputation Management Roadmap]

Josh:

So those are just the minor features. These are the big features, and now we’re talking about the reputation management roadmap.

One of the pieces of feedback we receive from our partners is what we’re seeing now in the deck. 

They wanted a way to quickly audit a business and measure if it needed reputation management. They want a way to post on social any positive review quickly. 

They want a way to analyze the different competitors quickly. Finally, they want a way to request reviews via text messaging.

So, you see our roadmap for the year for reputation management in the deck. 

There’s a lot of things – I’m telling you, I’m very excited with it as well – there’s a lot of things that we’re building at SEOReseller for you, not just in reputation management, but with a lot of different things.

But for reputation management itself, we’re building a reputation management audit. We’re building a social media posting capability. We’re building a competitor analysis. Then we’re building text messaging for reviews. 

These are big developments for reputation management, and we’re lining them up for you this year.

Just a fair warning, but you’re not going to get charged extra for any of these. 

Whatever you’re paying now is what you will be paying for the future, regardless of how many new features we will add to reputation management.

William:

Wow. Okay. That part got all the eyebrows raised. I’ll be honest, Josh. The one I’m excited about really is the audit.

Josh:

Yeah. You’re not the only one excited. There are a lot of different partners. Because I’m the one doing the demo for reputation management, whenever I do it, they always ask, “You give me an excellent web audit. I need an excellent reputation management audit.” But all the partners that wanted this particular feature, you’re finally going to get it

William:

And then the rest of this stuff is what you’re developing for the year.

Josh:

Yes. We aim to create the best product and reputation management suite for all digital agencies. Our goal is to grow businesses, and in SEOReseller, our goal is to grow businesses, and we want to equip you with the best product for you to reach that goal.

William:

Well, Josh, we’re going to get to the Q&A session. But I got to thank you for being here, for everybody here, and the whole team. I swear I am genuinely excited. It’s just not about this webinar.

Josh:

Honestly, it’s not me. It’s our CEO and our engineering team who’ve been developing this for a long time. 

They are the ones who are also very, very excited to have a lot of the different partners try it out and see it make an impact on good businesses worldwide.

William:

And we got to thank them too. Thanks, guys. You asked for it, so here we go.

Speaking of you guys, this is the last slide, and we’d like to jump into our Q&A portion.

[slide: Q & A Portion, Schedule a Call]

So again, feel free to call us at any time. If you’ve got any questions, those are the numbers on the screen.

Josh:

And also, if you want to, we’re showing you the link over the past few slides to learn more about the reputation management. 

If you want to schedule a demo with me again, you can go to the link at this deck and schedule a demo in my calendly. If there’s no time for you in that particular calendar, just message me, and we can probably figure something out.

William:

See, Josh is paying that much attention to you.

Josh:

I learned from you.

William:

Let’s see what we got—our first question in a long list of questions.

First question, Josh –  what type of business would benefit from reputation management? E-commerce only?

Josh:

No, it’s not the e-commerce that will be your target with this one. We’re talking about the reputation of a business, so if you’re asking what business would benefit from improving its online reputation, it’s all business.

But if you want to focus, it will be the small businesses. These people don’t pay much attention to their online business. These people need your help; they’re very, very good at what they do. 

They may be plumbers who are very good at plumbing or dentists who are very good at dentures, but they don’t know and need help a lot in managing their online reputation, and that’s where you come in.

Go to these particular small businesses. Then, offer your service, demonstrate the value, show them how good you are, and show them how good the technology behind it is.

If they’re satisfied, then you can proceed to onboard with your reputation management service.

William:

Right. I’d like to add that the brand is essential in any business. At the end of the day, how are you representing yourselves? You got to know what kind of feedback you’re getting.

So, what type of business would benefit from reputation management? Everyone. Because as much as it could have that strong positive feedback, or what kind of leverage you could have, it’s also going to be the opposite.

But we’ll jump to our next question – how do you manage international clients?

Josh:

Well, that’s also what reputation management is built for. So when we make reputation management, it’s very focused on the English-speaking market. 

So in reputation management, the listings itself is very concentrated in the US; it’s also focused in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and even South Africa. We manage all their listings.

The core of it, the requesting of the reviews, the requesting of the feedback, the finding mentions are -really location – it’s not location dependent; it’s just language-dependent, so you can only use this, of course, for the English-speaking market. But the core of requesting reviews, the process of requesting reviews, and the core of finding the different mentions there, finding the different conversations online for you to service, you can use this suite.

William:

Exactly. It also applies to the last question, e-commerce only. 

You have products in your store that basically will get reviews. It’s part of it, essentially. The point is to get feedback, be proactive, talk to them, and get them to file reviews in the right places wherever you’re at. That’s what’s key.

Now our next question is – how do you sell reputation management if the client says they’re fine with how they manage their reputation?

Okay, I have heard this before. I know what I said earlier, not just for reputation management. They’ll tell you, “I’m sorry, but in all honesty, I am okay with where I’m at, at this point.”

And I’m going to emphasize, “Let’s see how okay it is at this point.” So we’ll go over everything, and, of course, you’ve got to be prepped. You’ve got to be prepared for that call, so if you have that audit and did your research. If you’re talking to a client who says that to you, and he’s right – you should have done your prep.

But all you have to do is point out that there’s so much more than just managing it. Like we said, build it. That’s what we have this tool for. We can expand it more than it is today. Promote it. I mean, just because you got someone like this, your customers got someone who’s on it 24/7. Is he doing it right?

Josh:

Yeah, and ask them the question – Do they have time to deal with everything? Do they rather deal with their reputation? Do they want to deal with all the management of their locations and the other online listings, or would they focus on growing their business?

William:

Exactly. Alright. I think that’s fair enough for that question. Let’s get to the next one – I can’t see the value it provides to my business; what’s the best way to handle this objection?

It’s focused primarily on sales.

Here’s another one – he says he doesn’t see the value. Clue here: if you’ve got to that point, it would be best to go back and start over. You need to prove value. That’s the only way to do it. Start from the beginning and reassess where they’re at. What has the customer done so far? And what can be done better? So it’s all about solutions-selling, the benefits – everything across the board, but pay attention to the fact that it’s their business.

That’s right. Maybe they don’t see the value because it doesn’t apply to them. But if you can just paint a picture for them and start from the beginning, you have to point out that you have to prove to them that it is valuable. 

You shouldn’t have gotten to that question, or they shouldn’t have been able to object like that if it had been handled in the beginning.

Alright. Do we have time for another question? Let’s do one last.

Okay, the last one – is reputation management included for clients with a local SEO package?

Josh:

No, but it goes well with it. So, we built reputation management right now because it’s a SaaS tool you offer to your businesses. It’s not yet something that is packaged with local SEO.

This particular question goes back to what we were saying a while ago. This is how you offer reputation management as a complementary product. You sell local SEO, sell it with your reputation management as well, because now, not only are you taking care of making sure that they’re ranking on the local searches, you’re also making sure that they’re managing their reputation.

William:

Okay. The last question – can we sell it as different packages, one for smaller and one for bigger businesses?

Josh:

Right now, it’s the same package for every business. It’s just $25 for a location at 50% off; it’s $50 if it’s not 50% off, and that takes care of one location.

So maybe the right question with the right answer for this is not the actual suite but how you will manage it if you’re offering it to two different types of businesses.

For example, suppose you’re approaching a small business, and they tell you they don’t have the budget right now to deal with reputation management. In that case, they don’t have the budget to pay you to manage their online reputation management. 

You can come in there and just sell them reputation management itself as a SaaS tool. You give it to them, so they can use it to manage your tool, and it’s a lot cheaper than having you manage that for them. This is for really, really small businesses.

So now that when you go to a bigger business, you have a more robust package. You’re not just offering the tool. You are offering all the other services that come with it. You offer reputation management as a tool they can use for their business, but you’re also offering reputation management as a service you provide for their business.

William:

And it goes back to what we were saying earlier about the three ways to sell it in the first place.

So, let’s put it this way – it’s about it’s not about creating tiers for the size of the business; it’s about what they’re exposed to and where they’re at basically in the digital space.

I got a question for you, Josh. It’s $25 a month, right?

Josh:

Yep. If you want to know more about it, I can discuss it extensively once you schedule a demo. To do a quick run-through, we have the local citations finder, which is the listings management. 

We have the mentions tracking and social in social media and then SEO on different sites. It tracks different keywords across the internet for you, called mentions.

We have a review management system that allows you to generate reviews for your business and track all the reviews from many different sources – we now have 845 directories from which we follow and get reviews. 

Finally, we have feedback, a feature that allows you to generate unique reviews for your client’s business. Use it for different marketing materials and SEO by putting it in their sites and getting schema without fearing being penalized by Google for duplicate content. It’s a unique feature for your site.

William:

Awesome. And the new features that are going to be coming out free?

Josh:

Yep. Just any new feature that we add comes with the pricing that you’re going to pay now. You’re not going to pay for anything, any feature we will have for reputation management.

William:

Perfect. Okay, Josh, thank you so much. It was one of those webinars I was excited about.

Josh:

Thank you for guiding me in my first webinar.

William:

Well, this will be the end because you’re still building a lot of stuff. 

Moving back, guys, if you have more questions, please feel free to call us and schedule it; those are the numbers on the screen. And there’s also the link to your schedule. Josh and I are open to anything you want to ask us.

Thank you so much, everybody, for being with us, and this was the Partner Bootcamp series by SEOReseller. Bye guys.