$$$ in the stars: Reviews to revenue

Zack Oates
What’s up Justin? Stoked to be here, man.

Justin Ulrich
I am amped. Been waiting for this episode for a long time. Mainly, I’ll just kick it off with a little story. So, you know, a couple months ago, we were talking with each other, and I was talking with you about potentially creating a podcast, the Local Marketing Lab. And you gave a ton of encouragement, said, “Absolutely, do it.” And you gave me some insight on how to effectively launch and engage guests and gave me some secrets for success. And because of that, we’re here today. So I really appreciate you doing that.

Zack Oates
I love that you launched a podcast. There are so many people that I’ll send out information about how to start a podcast, and nobody does it. So I love that you’re doing it, man, because so many people just, I don’t know why they get afraid. Maybe they’re worried about being on this side of the microphone. What do I say? Who do I interview? Who’s going to come on? And it’s like, I don’t know. Just start trying it and see what happens.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, just do it. I think for the most part, I think a lot of things from a marketing standpoint are kind of, there’s barriers that get in front of people getting started. Like, there’s a level of commitment or there’s a lot of thoughts around, like, is it going to be good enough or just doubts? And until you start, that’s what we encourage our listeners to do with a lot of things. Just start doing something, generate some key learnings and go from there.

Zack Oates
What do they talk about that? Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. Just try it. It’s never going to be perfect. I tell people all the time when they’re like, oh, I don’t know what to do for social media. I know you had Shawn Walchef on here, and he’ll talk about that all the time of, like, pull out your phones and do a video right now and post it to your social media, because it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Justin Ulrich
Exactly.

Zack Oates
I’ve got $100 microphone. Okay, whatever. It’s $100 microphone. I’ve got, like, a $20 arm for my microphone to make it a little bit easier. That way I don’t have to set it up and take it down. But honestly, you know what I did for the first while, I had no microphone. And then you know what I did? I had a stack of books, and I took my $100 microphone, the stand that I came on, and so the microphone was just raised up a little bit higher. That was it. 

And guess what? I’ve done over 250 podcast episodes, and probably 50 of them were done without a microphone. And guess how many emails I’ve gotten, Justin, of people that were so angry that the sound quality was so bad. You want to know how many? I could count them on no fingers. That’s how many.

 No one has ever been like, your sound quality is poor. I’m unsubscribing. It’s like, all right, whatever. And our podcast has just grown and grown and grown. And now we’ve had people like CEO of Olo, founder of Planet Hollywood, CIO of RBI, the CEO of Panera, CEO of Red Robin. I’m about to get on with the CEO and co-founder of Dave’s Hot Chicken here, literally right after this podcast. And we’re doing it with a $100 mic. So, folks, just try it. Just do it. Get out there. Do it.

Justin Ulrich
Just do it. Yeah. And what’s incredible is everybody wants to do the same. They all want marketing, right? And it’s all like, the rising tide raises all ships. Like, you’re talking about all these heavy hitters you’re getting on the show. It’s relatively easy to do so because they all want exposure for their brands as well. And it’s free marketing, so why not? Super cool tactic. 

Let me ask you this, with regards to tactics, what do you think, given all your years in the industry, because I know that you started off when you were but a wee lad as a soda jerk and kind of worked your way up in restaurants. What do you think is one of the most important aspects of local marketing?

Zack Oates
When I look at local marketing right now, so much of it has to do with your online reputation. You have to have a solid online reputation. What that means…now, if you have 3.9 stars on Google, you might as well not exist. Because if you type in “Best hamburger near me”, Google automatically filters out every hamburger joint under four stars. 

I could be in the parking lot of Justin’s Burgers, type in best hamburger near me. And if you’re 3.9, 4000 reviews, you’re not showing up. So what we got to do is the floor is four stars and then how do you get beyond that? Right? Well, you don’t want to get five stars, four nine suspect. But 4.7, 4.8, 4.6, that is the ideal score. That’s where you want to be with hundreds, if not over 1000 reviews. And if you’re at 4.7, 4.8 with 1200 reviews, chances are there’s a lot of people that are going to find you. 

And when they type in lunch near me, best burger near me, whatever, that’s how you get found. It’s about being found on social media, about online reviews, because with the online reviews, that’s where people are going. That’s where everyone goes to online reviews before they go to a business, before they look it up, before they decide where they want to go. So you’ve got to have banging online reviews. And that to me is just paramount between for anything to be successful in a business.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, I agree. We had Rev on the show a few episodes back and it was the same thing. It was his number one point was you got to get your reviews squared away. If you think about the customer journey, when I’m hungry, I’m hungry now, I want to find a place now. That’s the first place I’m going to do is Google or look on the different apps, what’s the best XYZ food near me? And it’s going to pull them up based on reviews. 

Zack Oates
Word of mouth marketing is the number one form of marketing from the Stone Ages to today. But how that word of mouth gets shared has changed over time, right? Nowadays, you know, back in the day, it was like, literally I would call Justin and be like, oh, Justin, you’ve got to try this place. I would send a postcard from the restaurant, I would talk about it with my friends. I would invite people to go out to eat there. 

Now, it’s online reviews and people will trust. Get this, people trust online reviews more than they trust their friends and family. And so it’s really critical to nail that and to have a strategy around that. If you don’t have a strategy for online reviews and your strategy, “Ah, let’s just let the good times roll.” You’re missing out on thousands of dollars a month. Thousands. 

Because we’ve done studies and the Harvard Business Review did a study on this. We’ve done our own study on this and found the same exact thing. A difference of one star is about 9% revenue. Because what happened was we were able to show that there was a large brand and they put us in half the locations, didn’t put us in half the locations. And after four months, the Ovation locations had 1.1 stars higher on Google and over 9% increase in revenue in four months. 

So it just over and over and over again, we have found the benefit of having that strategy to improve and to control your online reviews. And really what it comes down to, to start, is making sure that you’re giving your guests an easy way to give you feedback, right? 

Because if you’re only getting feedback from your online reviews or shoot, maybe you’re trying out long surveys, you’re not getting an accurate depiction of your guest. It’s not enough. It’s not a high enough percentage of people that are coming in. 

And the other thing is, do not under any circumstance, invite guests to leave a review for an incentive. If you have something like, you could go to Yelp right now, and they are publicly calling out restaurants who are putting out these ads that say, leave a review and get a free burger, show us a five star review and get a milkshake. Show us your five star review in line, and we’ll add free dumplings to your order. 

Any of that stuff will be flagged. Your listing is at risk of being completely delisted, and you will be publicly shamed on Google and Yelp. So do not incentivize for reviews. Now, here’s the caveat, Justin. You can incentivize for feedback. So incentivize for the feedback. Figure out what’s going right. 

And while you can’t review-gate, you can’t push happy customers one way and unhappy customers another. You can still invite people to leave reviews. And if you’re creating a great experience, then happy people are going to leave reviews, right? So don’t review-gate, and don’t incentivize to leave reviews.

Justin Ulrich
Very good. I literally couldn’t have said it better. At a previous company I worked at, we did a lot of online reputation management. That’s the exact same feedback that we would have given there as well. So what are some things that you’ve seen companies do to help – you talked about having a strategy for either getting feedback or improving feedback. Like, what are some tactics that someone could put in place this week to try to get the ball rolling in the right direction to improve their… 

Zack Oates
Put out a QR code and saying, how are we doing? Give people a place to give you feedback and then have the last step of that feedback to leave your review. Right. And if you’re doing that, you’re going to push reviews. And if you’re doing a good job, you’re going to push more good reviews than bad ones. 

So I mean, literally get a QR code, create some Google Form and do it right. That’s why I tell people all the time, they’re like, well, Ovation seems so simple, why can’t I do it myself? I’m like, you can do it yourself. Now, you don’t get all the tools on the back-end system, right? You don’t get the data aggregation, you don’t get the 34 scores that we get from analyzing all the feedback. You don’t get the opportunity to communicate in real time via text. There’s a lot of things that you don’t get. 

But the fundamental premise is not a hard premise. Ask people how they like their experience. Right. Do a table touch digitally. Now, unfortunately, we do own the trademark for digital table touch, so you can’t actually use the phrase digital table touch because that’s really what we do. We are like, hey, how was everything? 

We’re that friendly server, except nowadays if you ask them, they’re never going to be honest with you. Whereas back in the day, they may have told you what was going wrong, but nowadays, if it’s good, they say it was good. If it was bad, they say it was good, and then go leave you a one star review. But digitally, we found that guests are so much more willing to be honest.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, that’s true. Even if I’ve had a poor experience, they ask me to my face, I always tell them that was good. Nobody wants to be. It comes off as rude or demeaning. Telling someone they had a. Even though it’s candid feedback, telling someone they had a bad experience just doesn’t seems wrong to do it face to face. Having that digital tool is, I think it’s pretty critical to be able to capture that feedback that’s honest and accurate so that you can actually make changes based off of it. 

Very cool. So let me ask you this, Zack, who’s doing stuff from a local marketing standpoint that you’d like to call out, maybe they’re doing something really cool or innovative or unique that stuck out.

Zack Oates
The two people that we’ve already talked about are Rev and Shawn. Rev Ciancio and Shawn Walchef those are two people that are doing things very differently and they’re both working so well. And they’re two people that if I had a budding restaurant, I would follow them and I would take as much advice from them as you can. 

And frankly, I would probably hire them too. I love both of them, you know Rev has worked with us for what, three years now, consistently. So we love working with Rev. Shawn has been a longtime customer on our board of advisors. Like, just someone that’s been so helpful in giving advice and helping shape who we are. 

Another person to check out is Scott Porter of San Diablo Churros. He was actually our very first customer. And he’s been able to not only keep his catering and his catering business reving, but he’s been able to even go into CPG. 

Hold on, hold on. Check this out. Here we go. This guy went from a restaurant to packaging up Churros, a churro kit in the box. And it’s called Churro Fiesta in a Box. And it is just such a cool idea. It’s got churro maker, churro mix, fillings. It’s got some fun things for a party. So he pivoted to this during COVID and just has crushed it. 

And so it’s been really cool to see people trying different things outside of the norm. And so anyway, that’s something I really appreciate. Someone like Scott who gets out there and tries. Those are three people, I think, that are doing things in different ways that are all being extremely successful.

Justin Ulrich
I can, I can definitely attest to what you said about Shawn and Rev. And if you’re not following them, you need to follow them. I follow them. I’m constantly getting new content ideas and continue to learn. Even being a marketing leader, they still have such great advice and input, insights. I can leverage it daily, so definitely give them a follow. I love the example of the churros. I love churros myself. And I saw the box.

Zack Oates
Yes. San Diablo. Go check them out. They’ve been amazing. And their tagline is something like “Heaven-sent. Wicked good.” And they really are so good.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, that’s pretty good. One of the things that I also understand you think is really good is…

Zack Oates
I love pizza. I love pizza. I love pizzas so much I could eat pizza, like when I go to the International Pizza Expo, I eat pizza for breakfast. I eat pizza as a snack, for lunch, as a snack, for dinner. And then after like four or five days of eating pizza all day, every day. Literally, the only thing I want is more pizza. Like, that’s all I want. I just want pizza. I love pizza. 

One of my favorite pizza places. If you don’t know Tony Gemignani, he’s phenomenal. I love his pizza place in Vegas. It’s one of my favorite pizzerias around, and it’s called The Good Pie. So it’s down there on Fremont Street. Amazing pizza, all kinds of pizza. It’s great. 

Via 313 is another awesome pizzeria. If you don’t know Mike Bausch, someone that you should follow. Andolini’s Pizzeria, voted one of the top ten pizzerias in the nation. There is just so many amazing pizza places. And Sophie’s Pizza in San Antonio. You wouldn’t expect it. It’s not like a super well known brand, but amazing pizza. 

There’s great pizza in…what’s that place called? I follow them on Instagram and they do Texas style pizza. And they do such good pizza. Hold on, I need to. Texas style pizza. I gotta, like in Grapevine. Sauced. That’s right. Sauced. They do amazing pizza as well. They’re based in Grapevine, Texas. And I just. Everywhere I go, I just try to have the best pizza. And there’s so many places to go. I would go to a pizza place over a five-star steak restaurant any day of the week, and I love me some steak.

Justin Ulrich
Wow. Wow. Let me ask you this. Have you ever enjoyed pizza in a hot tub?

Zack Oates
Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.

Justin Ulrich
That floating on the water.

Zack Oates
I don’t even know what to say. That is unreal. I need that blown up. I need that. Put it on a picture behind me. That is incredible. What did you use for that?

Justin Ulrich
I used an AI tool called Mid Journey. Now, what’s even better is I was creating this. I was laughing so hard because it’s so bizarre, and I really wanted to capture your energy. But when I started digging around and everyone was telling me how much you love pizza and hot tubs, I thought this is exactly how you’d spend your ideal evening. Soaking in a hot tub, steeping in pizza, and then transitioning into a nice, warm bed.

Zack Oates
Oh, my gosh. That is unreal. Justin, this is unreal. That is so good.

Justin Ulrich
I’ll send them over to you. These are as good as NFTs without the value.

Zack Oates
Oh, my gosh. The Zack Oats Pizza series of NFTs. I love that. Oh, my goodness. Elon’s going to hop on that. Or at least maybe we’ll get Mr. Beast to buy some of those. Dude.

Justin Ulrich
Someone’s going to do that.

Zack Oates
That’s amazing. I’ve never even heard this Mid Journey. I’m so going to use this. It’s so cool.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, yeah. It’s a ton of fun. It’s a ton of fun. We like to do something special like that for all of our guests. And some of them are hit or miss, but some of them are gold. Yeah. So how should our listeners follow you?

Zack Oates
Check us out at ovationup.com. You can find me and some of my musings on LinkedIn. Just type in Zack Oates. Zack with a CK. Oates with an ES, like Hallin Oates. And yeah, be happy to connect there.

Justin Ulrich
Awesome. Absolutely give Zack a follow. He’s got tons of great content, always showing up at different events, always on different podcasts and panels. So hats off to you, Zack. Check out Ovation: Ovationup.com. They’ve got some super simple two question surveys that help you kind of keep a finger on the pulse of your guest experience. 

So in honor of Zack, grab a slice of your favorite pizza, maybe even the whole dang thing. Throw it in a hot tub. Jump in. Enjoy your weekend.

Zack Oates
Dude, that was so fun.

Justin Ulrich
Hey, Zack, it was a ton of fun. It was a ton of fun. I appreciate you joining us in the lab.

Zack Oates
That AI pic was so funny. Oh, my gosh.

Justin Ulrich
As always, thanks for joining us in the local marketing lab. This podcast was sponsored by Evocalize. To learn more about how Evocalize can help you grow your business, visit evocalize.com. 

If you learned something from today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook at evocalize. That’s Evocalize and on X at Evocalize. 

And remember, keep innovating and testing new things. You’ll never know what connects with your customers best unless you try. Until next time. Thanks for listening.