Dispensary Reputation Management: How to Get More Reviews & Keep a 4.7+ Rating

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Eduardo Silva: Good morning everybody, good afternoon if you're joining us from the East Coast. We're going to be getting underway here with our podcast shortly. We'll allow a couple more seconds for other attendees to join the podcast and we'll be right back with you.

Wonderful. We'll be getting underway now with our podcast. Today's podcast is on star power so we're going to be talking about how to get more reviews and keep a high average of 4.7 plus rating for your business. Really important for any business out there, but especially in a consumer facing business such as cannabis dispensaries. Today's podcast is really really exciting so I'm really excited to get started. Now with us, so let's talk about how to get more people talking about your dispensaries. In our agenda for today we will be covering why reputation management is crucial for sales, how to maintain that 4.7 plus star rating and why you should, three proven ways to get more reviews. A lot of great content here for today. My name is Eduardo Silva. I will be your host for today's podcast. A little bit about myself — around 18 to 20 years in marketing communications and sales experience, really really excited to be part of this fast growing industry as well as to be your host for today.

Before we get underway with our podcast a few housekeeping items just to set the stage. First and foremost we love those mobile phones, as a matter of fact us marketers we live and die by them. However for the content that we're going to be covering here today we do recommend that you either silence those phones and or put them face down on your desk so that you allow for no distractions. We're going to be covering quite a lot of content today and as we normally do we move quite fast. Familiarize yourself with the Zoom interface if you are attending us live via the podcast Zoom. There is a Q&A button on the top of the podcast so if you actually navigate to the top you should see a little panel there, or that panel could also be on the bottom, so look for the Q&A button. We do have panelists here today live that can answer any questions for you as we're going through this content. And then finally make sure to stick around, we do have a special offer for those who are attending the podcast today and we'll be sharing that with you at the end of the podcast. Once again thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join us.

Why Reviews Matter

So let's get underway. What people say about your dispensary online can help score you even more customers but you need to be part of making that conversation happen and ensuring that it's going in the right direction. Right now 82% of customers check reviews for local businesses — that's four out of every five customers. How many stars people give you, what the reviews say and how you respond can all impact whether those customers order from you or go to your competition.

So why do reviews matter so much? Well reviews provide potential customers with social proof. Essentially they help to legitimize your business by showing that you are who you say you are and they also clue potential customers into what they can expect from you. Do you offer good deals? Are your bud tenders helpful? Is your dispensary welcoming? Reviews can answer all of these questions for potential customers. When people are first seeking out a new dispensary they want to minimize the risk and find a spot they can trust. Your reviews help make that easier for them as long as you're actively asking for them, monitoring them and responding to them. This is all part of reputation management.

Reputation Management Fundamentals

So let's talk about that. Reputation management is the process of staying on top of what people are saying about your business. Reviews have become such an integral part of consumer behavior that dispensaries need to allocate time and resources to monitoring and responding to reviews. You also need to create an experience that customers want to write about.

Those stars do matter. What we actually recommend is maintaining a 4.7 star rating. We have found this to be the sweet spot for getting more sales. Yes of course five stars is the ideal but it's practically impossible to keep everyone happy, we all know this. You need to have a four star rating at minimum. Just 53% of people would consider using a business with fewer than four stars. If your current rating is low you need not to worry, that just means that there's room for improvement. And according to a study by Location Three, improving your review score about 1.5 stars could equal to 13,000 more leads. That's a lot more sales.

Now to get started with reputation management make sure that you've claimed your dispensary listings including your Google My Business profile, your Yelp profile and your other dispensary listings. We also create and optimize profiles for you and post on the most relevant listings so that you can actually gain the credibility and the links needed to improve upon your reputation.

Now your Google My Business profile is especially crucial because when someone searches for your dispensary it will always show up and so are your reviews. It's also one of the leading places people actually click. Google uses Google My Business as a local SEO signal and takes into account your reviews when providing searches with actual results. So if you want to show up as part of that local pack in SEO when someone is looking for a dispensary near them you need to maintain good reviews with Google My Business.

Now there are three parts to reputation management. First you need to create a positive experience that people want to talk about — we're going to dive into this in a moment. Next you need to implement systems that encourage and make it easy for people to leave your reviews. And lastly you need to respond and manage your reviews. These are three components and they're all connected, and if you want to benefit from your star power you need to keep all three in check.

Creating a Positive In-Store Experience

Here's how you can do this. First you need to train your bud tenders as well. They aren't just sales associates, they are valuable resources for your customers and they are the face of your business. These are the people that your customers will interact with the most. So training your bud tenders starts with the hiring process, looking for qualified individuals who are eager to learn even if they don't have a background in the industry. They should be interested in cannabis and want to learn more. Once you have your team you should engage in regular training. Your team should know about the different cannabinoids and terpenes, they should also be able to talk about consumption methods and THC/CBD ratios. Plus they should know all about the products you carry. Now you can't expect them to learn all of this stuff on their own during your onboarding process. Your bud tender should be trained on the essentials. In addition you should also be training on your new products as they come in. Your bud tenders must also be trained in customer service. Customers are diverse and your bud tenders must know how to assist everyone that walks through your doors. Help your bud tenders understand your mission and give them the tools they need to work with so that they can serve your customers.

You should also make asking for reviews a part of the bud tender's job, creating a simple script such as "thanks for shopping with us, if you appreciate our service make sure to leave us a review."

If you want people to vouch for you you need to create a memorable experience. In addition to friendly and helpful staff, your store should be clean and attractive. Your decor and music should appeal to your target market. Your waiting area should be comfortable and you should do whatever you can to reduce the wait times. That may mean having ordering kiosks or iPads in the waiting area along with product information and other resources. Pricing and product selection can play a huge role in keeping customers happy. Make sure that you are stocked with the types of products your target audience wants to use and that you're also offering exciting deals and loyalty programs that people want to use. Not only do you want customers to leave with a positive experience but also to leave you a positive review, and you want them to come back time and time again — and this will help you achieve it.

Managing and Responding to Reviews

You want to ask for reviews frequently. It's crucial that you have fresh reviews. Customers find those to be the most relevant, plus they are the first ones that pop up when someone is looking for your business. Not only should your bud tenders mention it but you can also have a sign at your checkout or a postcard you can actually slip into your customer bag. Put a QR code on them and make it super easy for your customers to leave your dispensary a review. I promise this is not a waste of time because 76% of all customers that are asked to leave a review go on to write one. So ask, ask and then ask again. It's very important.

So how often should you be checking your new reviews? To be truly on top of your reputation management you need to have a system in place to consistently check for new reviews. Depending on the size of your dispensary that could be the store manager's responsibility or a larger part of someone else's role like your customer experience manager or social media manager. MSOs should check their reviews daily while smaller one store operations can probably check every other day. You can also use a digital marketing agency like us to handle this process for you. We offer different levels of reputation management so you can actually select what works best for your business.

Once you have people talking about your business it's time to engage with them and maintain your star rating or improve upon it. You should always respond to reviews. BrightLocal says that amongst customers that read reviews, 97% read businesses' responses to reviews. Plus people expect a response. This helps actually show that you care about what people have to say and that you value their feedback. They took the time out of their day to say something about your dispensary and you should take the time to thank them for it. You want to respond to both negative as well as positive reviews. For positive reviews state the person in your own brand voice, something like "glad you had a great experience, come back soon" or "so happy that you love Gorilla Glue, it's one of our favorites as well." Make sure to switch it up to different reviews and personalize it as well so your responses don't come across as canned or just too robotic.

Handling Negative Reviews

Let's talk about negative reviews. I'm not going to lie, they are quite a big suck of time as well as energy but they also present your store with an opportunity to take someone's negative experience and turn it around. And if you can't do that you can still learn from the feedback. When you respond to a negative review you can often make the situation better. If the problem is handled well many reviewers will change their reviews to a positive or even delete the original negative review. It's not all about the negative poster though, other people will read that review and see how you handled it because it shows who you are as a business. Customers want a transparent personal relationship with the companies they trust. Responding to a negative review shows that your business cares, is responsive and is willing to engage with customers.

A negative review can actually get you riled up so don't respond immediately. Look at the problem from the customer's perspective. You have the opportunity to turn the situation around with what you say. Apologize to the customer for the experience and share your contact information to take the conversation offline. Keep it short and simple but be kind. For example, "hi Mary, I'm sorry you weren't happy with the service you received during your last visit. Please contact me at email dispensary, in a review and letting us know what we can do better."

Now you're probably wondering whether you can just delete negative reviews. Unfortunately this is not as easy as it sounds. Google will generally delete reviews if they contain profanity, also if someone or that person who is leaving the review has left multiple negative reviews this is considered spam and Google will take action. Reviews posted by competing businesses, fake or irrelevant reviews, or reviews by disgruntled former employees are all in violation of Google's terms of service so you can request that they be taken down. Just so you know though this isn't an instant process, it takes Google time to check over everything and to be quite honest they don't always delete every review that they should. So you should still take time to respond to a negative review even if you request that it be deleted so that people who see it in the meantime won't be put off.

We know this is a lot to take on board but to be honest it's all part of running a reputable business in the major social media and the internet. You have to control the narrative. Reputation management is all about amplifying the positive aspects of your business while taking on board any feedback and criticism to make your dispensary even better.

Now you may be thinking I have enough reviews, I'm all set. But that's just not how it works. People want to see new reviews. According to BrightLocal's local consumer review service, 48% of consumers only pay attention to reviews written within the past two weeks. You need a constant stream of fresh reviews to maintain your rating and relevancy. Plus consumers like to read about 10 reviews on average before trusting a business.

Three Proven Strategies to Get More Reviews

So how can you encourage those individuals who are happy with your shop to leave a review? I have three more important strategies to share with you. But first I want to mention those sites that promise you positive reviews. Review mills are a bad idea. Illegitimate reviews can get your business kicked off a review site and most customers can spot phony reviews. They're a waste of money and they aren't worth the risk. Go about getting your reviews in a legitimate way.

So if reviews are so crucial how can your dispensary go about getting more of them? The first method for getting more reviews is to use SMS automation. This is primarily for individuals who have opted in to receive text messages from you. They're individuals who are in your loyalty program and they likely enjoy shopping with you already. By creating an SMS automation you can make it easy to touch base with them after they visit your shop. Write up an eye-catching text thanking them for stopping by and ask them to share their experience. You can have this text trigger in a variety of ways. One thing we like to do is have SMS sent after a certain number of visits — that way you know the customers are fans of your shop since they keep coming back to buy from you. You can also have it sent after a large purchase or even after every visit, it's entirely up to you.

Using a review gate can also help increase your reviews while maintaining that 4.7 star average. A review gate helps you monitor who will be leaving reviews for your business by sorting out those who have had a positive experience with your dispensary and those who did not. You can get feedback from unhappy customers and help troubleshoot their issues while sending happy campers to review sites to share how great your store was. This is a great tool to combine with your SMS because it makes it simple for people to both leave reviews and have their complaints heard and addressed. This can help make you more responsive as well. You will know when people are taking the time to leave reviews or feedback so you can quickly respond.

Another way to get more reviews is to use email automation. Many dispensaries are relying on online ordering because of the pandemic. This means that customers generally have to offer their email addresses in order to use them with your menu or receive updates on their orders. If people are opting in to your emails during the process — you are signing up for the email list to get your deals — there's a good chance they enjoy shopping with you already. To make sure they leave you a review, consider creating an automation that sends a short email after someone visits your store. Thank them for stopping by and let them know that you'd love to hear back how their experience was. Provide a link directly to your Google reviews so they can easily leave one for you. The goal with all of these methods is to make it easy, remove the barriers and make it simple for people to leave you a review.

Reputation Management and SEO

Now we've helped dispensaries manage their reputation for years. We help our clients create SEO friendly Google My Business profiles and can help with both getting reviews and responding to reviews. Ultimately reputation management is an important part of any SEO strategy. And according to Moz, reviews account for up to 15% of Google's local pack ranking factors. Reviews help legitimize your business with both potential customers and Google itself. The better your reputation the more likely your store will show up higher in the local search results. This isn't just about placement though. We know that the higher up you are on the organic search results the more clicks your website will get. This is vital traffic. These individuals are interested in cannabis, they're interested in dispensaries — this is highly relevant web traffic which means they're more likely to purchase from you. Most of the online revenue that our customers get is from organic traffic so you cannot take this lightly.

Q&A

So as promised we are offering a deal for today to get you started with reputation management — get 20% off your first month of SEO with review management built in. Now we're going to transition over to questions. Once again you can submit your questions on the Q&A function here on the podcast or even via chat, entirely up to you. We do have some questions here that were already asked during the podcast so we'll take it from here, but by all means please feel free to ask any questions.

What's the most important review site to focus on? Great question. Now Google, because it's also responsible for the most searches and it uses reviews as a local SEO factor. So Google — if you're going to focus on any review platform please focus on Google. This will certainly help you in many different factors.

Okay great question. Another great question here. Can the same people keep leaving reviews? No, only one review can be posted per Google account. And if someone is actually using multiple Google accounts to leave reviews for the same company this will likely get flagged by Google itself as spam. So great question there.

Another question coming up here. Can my employees review my business? Oh this is a tricky one. So the answer to this question is Google does not allow for current or former employees to leave reviews. Why is that? It's considered a conflict of interest and also those aren't very reliable or valuable reviews, right. So they could actually end up sounding a little canned or disingenuous, and what that ultimately is going to do is going to actually probably lead customers to sense that they're not necessarily organic reviews. So it could actually hurt you, right. So be worried about that. Great question.

So here's another question, this one I'm sure is a burning question for most of us. How long does it take to get a negative review taken down? We've seen anywhere from a couple days to several weeks. But the reality is that Google doesn't always comply with taking down reviews, right — because you got to read through a lot of the terms of services and that could be kind of a lot of gray lines there, right. So if there is a very clear infringement to the terms of services then it could be a little faster. But if it's not I wouldn't necessarily count on it. Again you should still respond to any negative review in the meantime, because if you do have prospective customers — which you will absolutely have prospective customers looking through your reviews — you don't want this big red flag sitting there, right. So respond, respond, respond. Great questions there.

Closing

I want to thank everybody for taking the time to join us here today and also for sticking with us. You've qualified for a free Yeti Tumbler. What I would like to do is have everybody also click on the link here to schedule a call with us now so we can go ahead and get your shipping confirmation and get this process quickly scheduled for you. So if you have any other questions we are always very much open to addressing those offline. Thank you so much for your time, have a wonderful rest of your day.

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