Win customers with the right review response strategy

Justin Ulrich
So for those who are listening, I usually I ask the guests for like three fun facts about themselves and like the whole J-Lo thing. Like I didn’t even have to rewrite that. That’s how it came across. It’s so perfect.

Avi Goren
My four year old, we live in Texas and my four year old discovered Selena. And that’s been the end. We’re done with Frozen. And it’s Bailas de Cumbia for life.

Justin Ulrich
What a tragic, what a tragic story. But I totally I mean, when that movie came out, I was like, probably a senior in high school, I think. But yeah, it was it was popular back then. It’s a good movie. It’s a good movie.

Avi Goren
We haven’t let her see the end. So probably the next 10 years, wildly bummed out and disappointed. But that’s future Avi’s problem.

Justin Ulrich
He’ll deal with it. Man, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, I guess let’s jump in and maybe talk a little bit about if you want to take us through your background, kind of where you came up through and what got you to the point where you wanted to co-found this company Marqii?

Avi Goren
Yeah, for sure. Look, I love restaurants. There’s nothing better than that perfect meal, that place that makes you feel good.

And growing up, that was our Sunday night. Every Sunday night we were — it was some restaurant we were trying somewhere new or going to our favorites. It was just that constant.

You know, that constant weekly event that I just I love the space. And when I was in high school, I got to work for my local pizzeria on Long Island to Coco’s for three plus years, everything you could do in that restaurant I did from, you know, set up the breakdown to cashier to finally making real money and being a delivery driver. And I knew I wanted to stay in this space.

And so I ended up working at a Yelp for about two years after school. And I was a Yelp user at the time, it was 2011, 2012. And I was like, all right, I’m gonna I want to open a restaurant one day, let’s let’s get into Yelp and see what digital sides about.

And after about two years, I took what I could, learn what I could, learn the goods and the bads. And knew I wanted to start something in the space and fell in love with the tech side and kind of figuring out that wild, wild west of the digital side of running a restaurant. Right?

That’s the pain point. No one opens a restaurant to be like, man, I got the perfect point of sale. Right? It’s open a restaurant for the digital side of it. And so I want to try and automate that and take that off people’s plates. And over the next few years got deeper into the space.

And finally, my wife said it’s time to stop talking about this dream and make something happen. And in summer 2016, Marqii was born.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, very cool. So when Marqii was born, what was the main goal of the org? And what did you kind of focus on initially?

Avi Goren
So I was working before Marqii was working in an enterprise software business. And it was clear to me that McDonald’s had access to tools and features that your average mom and pop, you’re independent, would never be able to do. You’re dealing with off the shelf solutions, nothing is speaking to each other.

But McDonald’s has a hundred plus person engineering department, they’re going to build whatever they need. Right? And so when I when I left to start Marqii was about kind of democratizing your tech stack.

And allowing your independence to like I said earlier, no one opens up a pizzeria to deal with the tech side, to just get back to making the food, making the product, making the hospitality go round. Right. And so we launched as a specials app that allowed you to post and update your listings, right?

Because it’s all about as a local marketer and local SEO, it’s about updating that frequency frequently, right? If you have a happy hour, if you have a, and it doesn’t have to be a happy hour, you have a special, every restaurant has a special, it doesn’t matter if it’s your fish of the day, goat cheese, arugula salad, right? Or $5 you call it Tuesday night at your local bar, everyone’s got a special.

And so that’s where we were born. And as we got deeper in the space and started moving a little bit more at market, we signed our first multi-unit client in Gregorys Coffee, who’s grown from 20 to 50 plus locations by now. They’re like, Hey, specials are cool, but you know, what’s cooler?

Menus. Let’s talk about menu data. And all of a sudden we had this light bulb moment of like, holy shit, this is just one layer of the onion.

And as we kept peeling back, it was menu data and hours and photos, and all of these manual touch points that we needed to be automating. And slowly over the last five plus years, Marqii has transformed and transitioned into this tool that is truly built for multi-unit, multi-concept hospitality groups. It’s been fun and wild to watch.

Justin Ulrich
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say, but you know what’s really cool? Menus.

Avi Goren
I mean, my goal for the first few years of Marqii was anytime I spoke to someone, I wanted them to walk away and be like, Whoa, that guy’s really into menus.

Justin Ulrich
Well, you nailed it. You nailed it on this show. That’s for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m sure they are when you, when you do it right.

You’re leveraging the data and you know, obviously your passion comes through with respect to wanting to leverage the data to actually help others improve their business and not just, you know, throw stuff at the wall. It seems like a really cool product from what I’ve seen of it so far.

Avi Goren
Just to give you an example of a real life consumer version. I’m in Austin, Texas. I am wildly loyal to Polvos. It is my Tex-Mex spot. I know that menu, like the back of my hand from my pitcher of margaritas to everything. And we had a good friend come into town and he’s like, I want to try someplace new.

Let’s go to the spot Beaches, which is a bold move. I mean, we were like a Polvos crew that went out last night. And so we go to this new spot, but I’m checking the menu data, you know, a couple hours ahead of time.

And my wife’s coming and she’s recently, she’s celiac now, which is a whole other issue we’re dealing with. I mean, that’d be my biggest marital problem. And I go through and she’s like in the other room, I’m looking at the menu and I yell, Naomi, everything’s gluten-free, right?

It’s just that moment of excitement, two hours before we get to the restaurant, right? Like menus are part of that experience. It’s the first engagement sometimes with the client. So yeah, menus are crucial. Sorry, that was my menu take.

Justin Ulrich
A hundred percent. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. So what other things are crucial? You think from like a local marketing standpoint, what really moves the needle from what you’ve seen, you know, with your clients coming through your business?

Avi Goren
Yeah. So look, there’s a couple of crucial parts of local SEO and what Marqii is kind of essentially part of our by-product, right? If you’re updating your information, you’re keeping your data consistent, accurate, relevant, all of this is going to help towards local SEO because the reality is data is messy, especially when you’re past two locations, right?

So even having Justin’s Pizzeria on Google and Justin’s Pizzeria, an Italian restaurant on Yahoo are two conflicting data points. And I’m giving almost a real-life example. I have seen this thousands of times.

And so just having accurate data is like the first foundation of local SEO. And then you start piling in, hey, we’re going to be updating hours. We’re going to be responding to reviews.

We’re going to be engaging with these publishers and keeping everything fresh. You’re going to start to see that local marketing, that local SEO, organic discovery searches, pizza near me, lunch near me, right? Those really revenue-driving searches start to go up.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. They’re super high intent, those searches. We talk about it all the time. It’s like you’re catching someone right at the start of their journey. They are hungry. They want food now.

The first thing you do, if you’re just a normal person out there, you know you do it too. It’s like you open up your phone, go to Google, whatever, go to Yelp, best burger near me, best pizza near me, and you just start the search. Typically, you find it straight from there.

Once you click that button to get directions, you’re on the way. If you can leverage that data and actually get insight into those who are going to your ads or going through just organic search, clicking that button and getting to your location, that’s huge.

Avi Goren
One of my favorite stories also, I guess I’ll say it out loud, also one of my favorite clients is Gregorys Coffee. When we were starting, I was working out of the 23rd and Park location every day for the last year.

Justin Ulrich
I used to work in that area.

Avi Goren
Yeah, so I would do that, and then I’d go to Eataly, and it was an expensive work. Gregorys Coffee, in their first year with us, we saw their organic discovery searches 4x. You’re talking about coffee near me.

In New York City, that is a competitive, intensive search. Then the pandemic hit, and we start to see just everything’s gone, no one’s searching for coffee near me. Their post-COVID comeback story on just organic and discovery searches is absolutely wild.

We’re talking 10 plus million discovery searches a month across the brand. If you’re looking for coffee near me, and there’s a Gregorys nearby, they’re going to be shown. You’re talking about that.

We had some search results where they were beating out Starbucks and Bluestone. It’s really competitive. It’s a credit to what Gregorys does and focuses on when you talk about the fundamentals. When they launch a new store, there’s a playbook. This is what we’re doing. This is how we do it. We do not deviate. 

Now, with all their locations growing up, it’s been exciting to be a part of that and get those calls and emails of, hey, we got another one coming, another one coming, another one coming, because we’re doing it right.

Justin Ulrich
That’s awesome. The first time you mentioned Gregorys, it made me think of this. I worked for a company called Avero. Like I mentioned, we were at 19th and Park, right above Union Square Hospitality, right in that building. I’m sorry, Union Square Cafe. My boss, his name was Greg.

He had the Gregory. He still has it. He looks just like the icon, like the emoji, the hair, the glasses. I’m like, dude, I thought it was a joke when I first saw the coffee mug. Then I walked by the coffee place. I’m like, this is a real place.

Anyways. That’s interesting, though. The reason why then, from what I’m hearing, the reason why Gregorys does so well on those searches is because they’re standardizing. They have strict parameters around how they’re listing their locations, keeping the data very similar across each location that’s launching. Then Google and other search engines are respecting that and giving better search authority.

Avi Goren
Yeah. I mean, look, the more locations you have, the more exponential the opportunity, right? Because as you can layer in that repetitiveness, that consistency, the accuracy of that content, of similar matching name, address, phone number, menu data, all of that plays a role.

When you see someone with 50 plus locations like Gregorys is at today, you’re going to see exponentially better and stronger results from doing the right things, right? We’re not talking about reinventing the wheel. Local SEO is a puzzle.

Marqii can help with a large chunk of that puzzle, right? It’s kind of like a Peloton class. Hey, congrats. You’re not on the couch. You started something today. It’s never too late, right? You can always, that first step will always be better now than later.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. What are some things then if, let’s say Gregorys, you mentioned them as a client, they do it really well. What are some other folks that you think really nail their local marketing? They could be your clients or otherwise, but maybe just a brand that you’ve engaged with.

Avi Goren
Even on the smaller side, there’s another one in New York, Breads Bakery. You’re talking five, six locations and they own their category. You can’t look up Babka in the tri-state area without Breads Bakery coming up.

Even now, if you look up Babka, you’re probably going to get a Goldbelly link to Breads Bakery, right? That’s someone who they understand their category, their items. They’re syncing menu data constantly, so we’re pulling menu data from their point of sale, distributing it to their website, distributing it to location pages, and they’re following all those accurate guidelines to make sure that they’re found for the categories they own and what they want to own.

One of our earlier talk tracks with them was, hey, we know we’re really good at XYZ, we want to grow in the coffee category, which is a competitive search. But even if you can grow that 5%, 10% in New York City, you’re going to see pretty strong results, right? 

Another one is DIG. They’re now in the 50 plus range as well, growing. I think Allied Hospitality is involved with them now, and they’re someone who’s growing. They’re outside of New York now, right?

Tri-state area, I think they’re down even in the Bethesda area in Maryland. Another one who’s integrating menu data, doing all those right foundational things, and responding to reviews every single day. Every review is getting responded to strategically.

Justin Ulrich
That’s a big sticking point for a lot of listeners, because they may not have tools to help them respond to reviews every single day. So can you touch on that just a little bit, maybe on the importance of it, what’s at risk if they don’t, and maybe how they could leverage Marqii to help them do that?

Avi Goren
Yeah, absolutely. So let’s talk reviews.

Justin Ulrich
Let’s do it.

Avi Goren
Reviews are crucial, right? You’re not responding to every single review to just check a box. It’s not a, hey, Justin, thanks for coming in. Reviews are an opportunity. Review response is an opportunity for public engagement, free content, free opportunity to layer in trigger words. 

‘Hey, Justin, I’m so glad you had an amazing experience at our 23rd Street location. Make sure you come back and try our Fall Oat Boy Latte, available for the next two months, right?’ You’re layering LTOs. You’re layering in keywords that you’re also pushing through menu data on correct sites, that you’re also probably putting out some ads against.

And all of a sudden you have this 360 approach on how you’re including keywords, right? Then on the review side, we’ve actually found that clients who respond to reviews on Marqii over 12 months will see an increase in their star ratings because two reasons. A, you’re now engaging with the content and the data and you’re seeing low hanging fruit, right?

Let’s talk about low hanging fruit. Hey, you see five reviews talking about the state of the bathroom. Hey, that’s an easy fix. Let’s get the bathroom cleaned up, right? Hey, you’re seeing 10 reviews about iced coffee being too watery. Easy fix.

We’re not talking about new machinery, new anything, new hardware. It’s an easy fix. So we address the easy fixes, right?

And now you’re getting in there and you’re taking care of those wins. We also see updates coming back from reviews. We see people going in and actually updating a bad review because of engagement and opportunities and coming back.

So all of that is so important. The way Marqii will play a role is kind of, there’s three different options. We’re going to give you one dashboard that pulls in all your reviews from Google, Yelp, Facebook, Open Table, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Easy Cater, one place to rule them all.

You’re going to see everything. We’re also, because we’re only hospitality, you’re going to see third-party off-premise versus on-premise, right? The second food leaves your building, it’s different than sitting down.

You can’t control how many stoplights you see. You can’t control a bad turn. So you can’t compare apples to apples on an Easy Cater, Uber Eats versus necessarily Google and Yelp.

So when you’re in there, you can respond on your own or we actually have a product called Managed Review Response where Marqii will be an extension of your brand and we’re responding on your behalf. You’re approving the response but we’re responding in a strategic, local SEO intensive focused way that we learn through your onboarding, going through all of your specific rules on how you want to engage because we are that brand extension. 

Because again, we have clients who are doing four or five thousand review responses a month. You have to be able to do this at scale but still take the data, still take the analytics, right? Still understand the issues. 

I mean we’re working with an 100 plus location IHOP franchise that is doing a couple thousand reviews a month through us and they have specific tiers, right? If it’s one star, hey, we need to know immediately. This is something we want to know right now. The three to fives will sync up on Mondays, right?

And there’s different things in keyword. They hear a keyword, immediate notification, right? And so we want to be that brand extension and then our third tool which we just launched about a month and change ago is Suggested Review Response.

We are giving our clients access now to our magic AI button that we have been training for close to a year built on top of Anthropic. That is when I talk about a brand extension and we had to talk like a pirate last week and it was incredible. It’s basically the robot from Interstellar.

We can be like comedy up 20%, be more serious, do this, do that and it’s an incredible tool. We’ve already seen over 12,000 review responses generated with a 94% approval rate from the first generation. So it’s here, it’s working and so all of that is allowing our clients to truly take reviews from a pain point to a value add.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. It is a massive pain point and you’re talking about thousands of responses a week. That’s incredible to have the tools, especially they’re like the AI-based tools that help you kind of get past the blank canvas. 

And it sounds like it’s taking responses that have been done in the past and also learning from responses and helping to give better suggestions as the machine continues to learn.

Avi Goren
So it’s learning and then also there are very specific set of rules that you can create and you can create scenarios. So that’s all part of our onboarding where you’ll say for one stars, if it mentions these four key words, I want this to be the type of response etiquette.

Never use the word thrilled, never use this word and we’ll see it, obey all of this and follow along and grow. It’s been nuts to watch. I mean, in the first half of this year, we’ve responded to over 200,000 reviews on behalf of our clients as a business.

Justin Ulrich

Very cool and I love that you can teach it to put in keywords. That’s such a good idea from a local search perspective to throw your LTOs or other keywords for things that you know they’re going to be searching into the reviews.

Avi Goren
And that’s because all we do is hospitality. This tool isn’t built for AutoZone, it’s not built for doctors. This is built for people buying food, buying drinks, buying coffee, having a good time, celebrating something.

And I said this, you know, all the time that how many times you eat a day versus how many times you buy a pair of jeans. It’s different industries. You can’t compare retail to hospitality and so we build things only for this industry and we think it shows.

Justin Ulrich
No, that’s very cool. Do you have any examples of some things, maybe the way folks leveraged reviews, negative reviews and responded incorrectly or whatever it may be, an area where somebody maybe failed and you’re able to kind of learn from that failing and kind of fail forward?

Avi Goren
So we had a client that was obsessed with five-star reviews and the one-star reviews. The reality is they spent a lot of time trying to generate five-star reviews but the reality is five stars and one star is kind of BS, right? Those are your fanatics on each side.

I’m not going to go, I would rather go to a restaurant with four and a half stars or four stars at a thousand reviews versus five stars at 300 reviews because something’s fishy. No one’s five stars across 300 reviews. That’s not a thing, right?

What are you hiding? And so they were just losing their mind and focus trying to go after these one and fives when the reality is if you respond to the twos and threes, that’s your opportunity to move up. Those are people who said, man, I really thought this was going to be a different experience.

Yeah, I’m bummed that my, I thought there was going to be five shrimp and I got two shrimp or the ravioli were too small or this or that but they had high hopes, they had high expectations. That’s your win-back opportunity. Let’s get them back.

Let’s engage. Let’s take this offline. Let’s figure out a way to get that person back in our store, back in our location to re-engage and do it right and show them why we opened this business.

And we see people engage that way and you’ll, again, we can pull the data afterwards of people updating reviews because it happens.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, I like that win-back strategy. It would be interesting to see what the average frequency increase is of, from restaurants where they respond to their reviews, you know, getting those two, three stars, feeling good about your business and coming back. That would be really cool data to see.

Avi Goren
Yeah, well, and the other thing that people don’t realize, everyone thinks people just read reviews. No, no, no, no. People read responses. It’s so important, right? You’re having an opportunity to see how the business owner, how the GM would handle an in-store issue. 

And going out to eat is expensive these days. With two kids and a babysitter, it costs me 100 bucks to walk out the door. Then another 100 to 200 to eat and drink. I don’t want a three-star experience.

I want to know that when a mistake happens, because I assure you, mistakes will happen everywhere. How do you handle it? Right? Are you going to make it better? Are you going to go and fix it? Are you going to have a solution? Or are you just going to say, well, that’s on you. Tough shit. It’s a way to showcase your hospitality on how you respond publicly.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, I used to work at a company called Signpost and it was… 

Avi Goren
Oh, I know Signpost. 

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, yeah. So it’s like, it was shocking to see some of the negative reviews and then how people respond to them. It’s like, man, you are not putting your best foot forward from a brand perspective because that is like the human to human engagement experience that folks get to see from the outside looking in. It’s not like a branded commercial or highly branded content.

It’s like, this is legitimately how you’re going to be treated when you work with this business. So you need to make sure that you not only respond to the negatives, but you do so in a way that’s personable, it’s empathetic, it’s a way that you want to help make things better. 

And that is what helps people see like, oh yeah, even though they got a crummy review, they still handled it well. I still want to give them a shot at winning my business.

Avi Goren
Look, I worked at Yelp from 2012 to end of 2013. Reviews were emotional. They’re triggering for restaurateurs in that time.

What I’ve seen over the last 12 years is almost this evolution. And really in the last couple of years where businesses and restaurants, hospitality have started to say, okay, we need a strategy. It’s not just a headache now, it’s a strategy.

And we see companies that we work with like Levain, who has a head of customer support for a bakery. You’re treating people with support and strategy and technique to make sure that they’re having a returnable experience. It’s really hard to have a bad experience with a cookie, but I promise you people have it.

Justin Ulrich
Well, especially the more expensive those cookies get, then it’s like people are like, oh, they expect a lot. There’s some brands out there with some expensive cookies, man.

Avi Goren
Yeah, well, that goes back to something that I’m sure Kelsey, our marketing director is tired of talking about. Reviews are about expectations and expectations set up, right? No one is upset at Two Brothers Pizza, dollar slice at one in the morning.

It is exactly what you need and expect it to be. That’s exactly what it is. A dollar slice at 1 a.m., five stars.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Oh, it sounds good. I will tell you. Go ahead.

Avi Goren
If I have a bad $25 pie of pizza, I’m pissed, right?

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. The best pizza, when I would come to New York, when I was at Avero, I’d land, I’d get off the plane probably 10 p.m., 10:30 maybe, go straight to Artichokes, get a slice of that. Dude, that is like heaven, man.

Avi Goren
That was big. I mean, my parents are on Long Island, so I would bring them back a pie every now and then. I’m like, on the Long Island Railroad, this really hot, big, heavy box of pizza. If you throw artichokes on there, that pizza gains a couple pounds. It’s a heavy pie.

Justin Ulrich
You gain a couple pounds when you eat it. It’s a heavy slice, man. It’s really good, though.

Avi Goren
Yeah.

Justin Ulrich
Awesome.

Avi Goren
You mentioned pizza. You land in New York, you get 24 hours. Where are you going?

Justin Ulrich
I mean, honestly, my go-to was always Artichokes. I would get it every time I came in. I came in every four weeks or so. I’d stop it. I’d get Artichokes because it was all in the same area, so I’d go get Sugarfish when I couldn’t for dinner.

Avi Goren
Ooh, I love Sugarfish.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Union Square Hospitality Group was one of our clients, so we’d go to the Union Square Cafe quite a bit and then go down to Blue Smoke. It was a fun location.

Avi Goren
I think they close now, though. Their chicken wings were very good.

Justin Ulrich
They were very good. Very good wings. 

Well, awesome. Hey, let’s switch gears a little bit. Going through some of your fun facts, you played rugby. We mentioned that a little bit. Your Selena infatuation with that movie. Now, one thing, I reached back out to Kelsey. You mentioned her as your marketing leader.

I said, hey, if I could put Avi into AI, what would an awesome image be? She said it would be awesome if you could make him as Joe Pesci from My Cousin Vinny. I’m like, what?

She’s like, is that too niche? I’m like, that is the most bizarre request, but I’ll go with it. Here’s another. I gave it another shot here.

Avi Goren
You’re telling me a grit cooks faster in your part of the universe.

Justin Ulrich
That’s right. It was a fun movie, man. I remember as a kid, because we didn’t have cable growing up, that was always on like Fox or whatever.

Avi Goren
Maybe it’s my rewatchable. If it’s on, I stop what I’m doing. I don’t want to go too off topic here, but I think I look identical right now.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, man. Anyways, it was a ton of fun having you on. Before we jump off, why don’t you let us know how we could follow you, follow Marqii on the socials, and how do we get ahold of you?

Avi Goren
Yeah, come find us. Type in M-A-R-Q-I-I. We couldn’t afford the U when we started, so M-A-R-Q-I-I. Anywhere online, you’ll find us. Instagram, LinkedIn, website, come speak to our team. We’re at almost every conference you can imagine.

Justin Ulrich
Yes, you are.

Avi Goren
We’ll see you there, and then come find us. M-A-R-Q-I-I, we’d love to chat and learn more about what you’re doing.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, check him out. Check out Avi on LinkedIn. He’s got some great content that he posts around growing his business in public.

Also, Marqii, it seems like an awesome solution. I personally have never used it, but just the suite of tools that you guys have to help folks manage their businesses at scale, I would recommend you go check it out. 

Thanks for listening. Avi, thanks a ton for joining us in the lab, my friend.

Avi Goren
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Justin Ulrich
You bet.

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 @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.