You're listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

Are you ready to master your marketing so you can ditch your reliance on the online agents and grow your direct bookings?

I'll be sharing with you exactly what it takes to grow your direct bookings and the simple marketing steps to get more profit in your pocket.

Hello and welcome back to the Get4Fullly Booked podcast.

I'm your host, Sarah Orchard.

Today we're talking about something you almost certainly already have and that's reviews.

You've probably got them sitting on Google, maybe you've got a handful on TripAdvisor.

You might have loads that are actually on Airbnb or booking.com or you might even have a good old fashioned hard book guestbook.

We do.

And actually a very large number of guests, probably about 75% of guests, actually do write in the guest book and I'll share some ideas about how you can use that.

And if you're anything like most accommodation businesses, you probably look at them occasionally.

You feel very pleased when they come in and to read the comments that people make about your place, but then you do absolutely nothing else with them.

They sort of just sit there hanging about, sort of in the online world.

And that, I'm afraid, is a huge missed marketing opportunity because your reviews aren't just a vanity metric to make you feel good and they aren't there simply so you can look at your lovely 4.9 score, you know, or 5 star rating and feel really smug, or at your super host badge that you're proudly displaying for Airbnb.

Although, let's be honest, we all do do tend to do a bit of that.

Your reviews are actually sales content.

They are something very powerful that can help you with your marketing.

They are potential guests telling other potential guests that, yep, this place is worth the money.

Yep, it really is as good as the pictures.

Yes, the owner is wonderfully friendly and easy to deal with.

The location is brilliant, and yes, the hot tub view really is as good as it looks in the pictures.

And perhaps most importantly, it's yes, you should certainly book this place.

So today we're going to look at how to make your reviews actually do a bit more selling for you.

And I've got three key things that I want you to think about.

Number one is to stop treating your reviews as a score and start treating them as marketing messages that help with the selling process.

Number two, build a simple system for getting more of the right reviews.

And number three, put your reviews where your guests are actually making their booking decision.

And that One is really fundamental, so there's a lot to get through, so let's dive in.

So the first one is about sort of this mindset shift that reviews, you know, we all know that we should collect them and we just feel like it's something that we should do.

It is trust signals, it's social proof, but it is a bit of a fundamental mindset shift to think about it as your marketing messages.

So if I asked you, you know, what are your reviews, you might say, you know, I've got five stars on Google and I'm a super host on Airbnb, or I've won the Excellence Award on TripAdvisor.

But that's not actually what your reviews are.

They are evidence.

They are social proof, you know, evidence from people who've already experienced what you're selling and what you deliver.

And it builds trust.

I know I keep talking about trust signals, but it really is important.

And if you listened to last week's episode when I talked about what happened to the folks photographs for our Treehouse business, you'll know why that's so important.

So if you have missed that episode, go back and, and check it out.

And this trust and this evidence is incredibly powerful because when someone is considering booking a holiday cottage, they're not just asking, does this place look nice?

They're asking.

A whole load of other questions are sort of going through their head, you know, and primarily they might be thinking, will it actually look as good as the photographs?

Because obviously they know that's marketing and they know that you're showing off your best stuff.

Will the bed be comfortable?

Got no way of telling that, you know, and getting a bad night's sleep is probably a fundamental flaw in a guest experience, because everyone wants that.

Will it be clean?

Will the owner be responsive?

Can I get hold of them if there are any problems?

Is the location as private as they said it was going to be, or is it going to be noisy?

Is it really dog friendly?

Or are dogs just sort of tolerated?

Is the hot tub view really that good?

Or is there something like a massive electricity pylon sat behind?

And actually, when you look the other way, the view isn't quite so good.

Is there anything I need to know?

And will they regret spending the money?

Whether that's £500, 1,000, £2,000, you know, they will be weighing up whether they want to make that investment.

And you can answer all of those questions yourself on your, on your website.

But when you say that the beds are incredibly comfortable and you've got you know, 400 thread count, you know, Egyptian linen and fluffy towels, you know, that's marketing.

But when a guest says that the bed was so comfortable, we didn't want to get up till lunchtime every day, that's proof you see the difference.

It's one is you telling people how good you are, and the other is your customer telling them, and that has a lot more weight.

So that's why I want you to start looking at your reviews differently.

Not just to ask, what's my star rating?

And keeping an eye on it, but asking yourself, what are my guests saying that could help me market my experience and my stays better?

Because if you go through your reviews, I guarantee you'll find phrases that are absolute gold.

So, for example, you know, the comments might say, we didn't realize how private it would feel.

I could have stayed in that bath all day, every day.

They almost had to evict us.

It's the little touches that really made the stay the most comfortable bed we've ever slept in.

Do tell us where you got it from, please.

The attention to detail was amazing.

They literally had thought of everything and more that we could possibly want.

Now tell me, which of those would you rather write yourself on your website or have a real guest say?

Exactly.

So I would like you to do a little exercise, go through like your last, I don't know, 10 to 20 reviews.

Don't just look at the star rating.

Look at the language that your guests are using.

Look for recurring themes.

What do they rave about?

What surprises them?

What do they mention that you are not mentioning in your marketing messaging on your website?

Because maybe you just can't see it?

What objections do they remove?

You know, things that people might be worried about booking your place?

Maybe it is the remoteness.

What emotional words do they use?

And particularly look for things that you would never think to say about your own property.

Because I think often guests will use language that we wouldn't probably think of using in our marketing because that's where the gold is.

And also if you want to attract more of those guests, obviously the language that your guests use will help you to connect with more of those ideal guests.

And if you struggle with this, obviously this is a bit of a a quick cheat.

But get your new AI best buddy, maybe Claude, or have a chat with ChatGPT and ask it to pull out the sentiment or the repeated themes of your guest reviews.

So if you put your, like your Google review profile into AI and ask it to pull out the overriding sentiments and themes, it will do that for you and that really is very powerful.

That is total gold because your guests will notice the things that you've become blind to.

We live here and we have the most amazing view down the Wye Valley.

And when people see it for the first time, they literally like double take and go like it looks like a painting.

Is that real?

We wake up and look at that every day.

The feeling that the Hideout gives people in terms of the seclusion, we've been really like leaning into that because of the fact that they're the only guests on site.

And actually when they're in the Hideout they do feel like they are completely on their own in the middle of nowhere.

But actually our house is only 150 meters away from them.

So our marketing and particularly like our social activity and our website has to convey that.

So those little sentiments that you can draw out and those common themes that you can draw out from your reviews, they become like a framework and the, and the bones of your marketing.

You know, if someone gives you a review and they talk about the cozy log burner that could become an Instagram post.

A review about how quiet the location is can become a cornerstone of some of your website copy.

A review mentioning the brilliant local pub could become part of a blog where you talk about the five best dog friendly pubs close to insert your business name.

A review about how easy your check in process was because you know that that might be a pain point could be on your FAQ page.

So reviews are basically a huge pile of like free customer insights.

So you need to use it.

And this brings me to a really interesting fact.

Think about the last time you bought something online.

You probably didn't just look at the product description, you looked at the reviews.

If I go on to like Amazon or any like buying platform, whatever, like online retailer, there are other online retailers other than Amazon.

But you looked at the reviews and quite possibly you scrolled straight past some of the glowing five star reviews and you wanted to click on the ones where there was more comments or the ones that were maybe middle of the road or negative to see what people were saying.

You might want to search for the most recent ones as well to see whether a product is consistent or if it was new, you know how it's been perceived.

Why?

Because we're naturally skeptical of marketing.

We know that businesses want us to buy and they are selling.

So of course they're going to tell us that the product is amazing in the description.

But another customer, they're not trying to sell to us.

I mean that's how it feels.

That's the magic of reviews.

It's essentially word of mouth, which is the best form of marketing, but done at scale.

And traditionally, if I wanted to know whether a holiday cottage or a glamping site was any good, I'd ask a friend, have you stayed there?

Now, you can ask hundreds and thousands of complete strangers or you can ask AI to go off and do a review for you and find out the ones that have got the best reviews and therefore are the best options.

And actually, reviews do weight quite considerably on your AI search results.

And I've done quite a few episodes about AI, so do go and check those out.

And this is why reviews, they're just so important for us as accommodation business owners.

You're asking someone to spend a significant amount of money, they're often booking months in advance on an experience that they haven't had yet.

That is a trust problem.

They're not just going and buying a sandwich or a can of coke from the garage.

They're making a high, potentially both emotional and financial investment.

We get a lot of people coming to stay with us for very special occasions.

We had a proposal only yesterday, you know, so therefore there's a lot riding on it.

And that means that you really have to create a strong trust and credibility with that consumer.

And reviews do help bridge that gap.

So don't hide them away on a page called reviews that nobody visits on your website.

Make them part of your marketing, messaging and your selling process.

So they should be at every step of the customer journey with your business.

Which brings me to my next point.

It's about how you collect reviews as well.

And I think most hosts, we hopefully are doing something where, you know, the guests have a good time.

Obviously you might not want to send this to the guests that you had a problem with, but ultimately, you know, they say they had a great time.

You send a post stay email with, you know, please leave us a review, or they maybe send you a message, the text message or a WhatsApp, and they say they've had a great stay and you just say, oh, thanks so much.

And then, you know, a few weeks later you're sitting there wondering why you haven't got more reviews.

Well, you didn't really ask and maybe you didn't ask in the right way.

You know, there's absolutely nothing wrong with asking a happy guest for a review.

And in fact, Google actually makes it really easy to collect reviews.

You have a direct review link that you can grab from your Google business profile and a QR code so you could have that showing in your accommodation and that makes requesting reviews much easier.

We use that in our post date emails and our post date SMS's where we ask for reviews and we put the link there.

TripAdvisor also provides tools for doing that and but the key is sort of when and how to ask and not making it feel awkward.

You know, you don't want it to sound like you're bullying the guest.

Please leave us a five star review because actually they may not want to leave you a five star review and you definitely shouldn't incentivize people to leave positive reviews because it's actually goes against the rules on Google and TripAdvisor particularly.

But instead make leaving a review part of your guest's journey.

So for example, your post day email could say something like, we hope you've had a wonderful stay.

If you've enjoyed your time here, we'd really appreciate it if you could share your experience in a Google review.

Make sure you put the link.

It helps future guests know what to expect and it really does help our small business.

Keep it simple, keep it friendly, human.

You're not telling them what rating to leave.

You're asking for honest reviews.

You're also showing as a business that you're asking for feedback and you want to learn that you're delivering a good experience.

And just don't send them to like your homepage on your website and say, you know, find us on Google and leave a review.

Give them direct links, one click.

Done.

And here's another trick.

One of the things that we've done that's been really effective is we have a physical guest book.

And As I said, 75% of guests fill in that guest book.

And what my hubby A does once a month is we cop, we write.

He writes down what they've written in the guestbook and he sends it to those guests that haven't left a Google review with a link to our Google review and saying, you wrote this amazing comment in the guest book.

Thank you so much.

You know, he tries to reference what they've written to make it personal and then he says, we're a small business, it would be amazing if you could actually leave this on Google.

And here's the link.

Now obviously now what the guest has to do is, you know, copy and paste and that makes it so much easier for them to do it.

You're not being pushy, you're just asking them to spread the word.

And actually, you know, you might make a joke about the fact that they might want to keep the hi depth secret, but actually it's really helpful for us as a small business if they would share that rather than keep it to themselves.

So, you know, you do need to try and make it as easy as possible.

And another thing is, don't only ask for reviews, make sure you listen to them as well, because your reviews can tell you what your marketing should be talking about.

I touched on this about if you get AI or you go through your reviews and you see what the sentiments are, if all of your last 15 guests are independently mentioning the same thing, that's not a coincidence.

That's a really key marketing message.

And you might find that you're not even talking about it in your marketing or on your website, in your socials.

Maybe they mentioned the seclusion and the privacy and feeling like they were the only ones.

Like I said, maybe it's the fact that dogs were genuinely welcomed with open arms rather than being merely tolerated.

Maybe it was your attention to detail.

Maybe it's the fact that the cottage was much bigger than it looks on the website in the photographs, and that's telling you something about your photograph.

Sometimes, you know, when people say things like, it was much better than we were expecting, for me, that is always an indication that your website is not doing a good job of selling the experience.

Take a look at your content and your photography in particular.

So your guests are literally telling you what sells your property and sometimes you've missed that completely.

So pay attention lots to this.

Okay, my last point, and I think this is a bit that many hosts do miss.

You collect the reviews, you get a Google rating, and then you do leave all these reviews just sitting on Google.

And like I said, that can help you with AI.

It can help you with your search rankings.

That's not a bad thing.

You need to collect more Google reviews.

But.

But you're sort of hiding your light under a bushel and you're not using it to maximum effect.

So you're collecting all this.

It's like having all these amazing photographs, but then just keeping them on in a drawer and not showing them to everyone.

Your reviews need to be visible.

They need to travel to different locations.

So think about, you know, your guests and their booking journey.

They might discover you on Instagram maybe.

Then they Google you, they visit your website, they look at your availability, they check the price, they maybe go back to Google.

They might ask an AI tool for some input.

They might even go and check you out on TripAdvisor.

They might go and look at your social media profile.

They'll maybe send the link to their partner on WhatsApp and say look at this place.

And at every stage they're looking for reassurance so we need to make sure we give it to them.

So your website should have reviews in strategic places.

So that's not just on a dedicated reviews page or one review slider, which I see all the time.

Like having a review slider on your homepage and that's the only place it appears.

So let's be honest, you know how many people click on the testimonials, which is also is a. I advise you to change it to reviews because often when people are searching and they want to find out about a place, they'll.

They'll type into a search engine reviews on and the place name, your business name.

So change it from testimonials to reviews.

But nobody wants to go and click on that dry testimonials page and scroll through.

Put relevant reviews next to things that are helping you with your marketing and with selling.

So you're talking about the hot tub and the amazing.

You know it has got a stunning view.

So put a review beside it that talks about that.

If you're talking about your secluded location, make sure there's a review that supports that.

If you're talking about being dog friendly, put a review beside it.

If you're talking about the romantic nature of the property, put a review beside it.

You get the idea.

You definitely want to put strong reviews near to where you've got like calls to action.

So if you've got a description and then you want someone to take an action, so that's to go to another page for more information or to like a book now button.

It's always really helpful to have a review close to that as a supporting message.

It is that social proof.

It is those trust signals.

It will help to at that point where the person is thinking, should I go any further, do I actually want to spend the money?

That's when this reassurance sort of matters the most and you're able to push them over the line.

I mean your homepage should ideally make it immediately obvious that, that real people love staying with you.

And I often again when I do, I've done over 100 website audits and when I look down sort of on the homepage, I often find that the review slider or some reviews are sort of stuck at the bottom of the homepage.

So they've got a scroll and scroll and scroll.

They might not get that far or they might just have a comment at the top saying, rated five stars on Google or, you know, Airbnb superhost.

But actually you want to show the reviews themselves because that's much more powerful.

The actual words of the person on your social media.

You know, reviews make brilliant social content, so don't make Every post like 5 star review.

Thank you, Jane.

You can do more with it.

I've, you know, you can take one interesting snippet from a review and you could build a post around it or, you know, maybe even a carousel.

You could use it.

I love when I get.

I. I basically message the guests the day after they've arrived to check that everything's okay.

And often they send me a quick message back saying, oh my God, it's amaz.

And I'll then grab that as a screen grab and I'll put it on a story with a video clip or a static image.

Really good way of reinforcing feedback and using it as social content and building those trust signals.

So, you know, if someone says the photos don't do this place justice or, you know, that tells a story or we spent most of the weekend outside, show an image of your outdoor space with that.

With that review or that caption over it.

The little touches that made our stay were so thoughtful, etc.

Show those little touches because you may just feel like, well, everyone does this maybe.

We get lots of comments on our interior styling and the like.

We have upcycled pieces and things like that.

We also put a few surprises in for the guests that they're not expecting.

So some of that can make really good content for socials.

And the review becomes the hook.

And then obviously the content provides the supporting evidence to show that this is what the person in the review is talking about.

Email marketing Reviews are brilliant for email marketing.

I always include about three reviews in and I do tend to use the same ones, but I have them in every email campaign that goes out in amongst some images.

So if you're sending out an email about.

So for example, where we are now, and I'm recording this in September, we're thinking about autumn break.

So if someone.

If you're looking to promote autumn stays, include a review from someone who stayed in October.

Or if you're promoting Christmas, you might have some Christmas imagery, but include a review from someone who stayed at Christmas.

If you're talking about dog friendly again, make sure that the review is from a dog owner.

From a dog owner's perspective, you get the gist.

That's the clever bit.

It's sort of just not just dumping your best reviews everywhere, but actually matching the proof to the messaging, the imagery and the proposition that you're putting towards your guests to book and Google.

Don't forget that Google reviews are, you know, are doing a great job before someone gets to your website, um, as I said, it can impact on your search rankings and your Google business profile can appear in obviously search maps.

It is actually now being used, the reviews are being used as sort of indicators of trust and credibility and authenticity for like AI tools.

So, you know, you definitely want to make sure that you've got Google Reviews, but make sure that you're actually responding to them and do tailor your responses to what the person has commented in their actual review.

Don't just copy and paste the same review in like response each time, like, thanks, hope to welcome you soon.

If you struggle with that, put the, I did this the other day, put the review into a AI tool and basically ask it to customize the response and you'll get much more human, funnily enough, much more human personalized responses to each one.

And that applies to TripAdvisor as well.

But it's, you know, all of those touch points that we have with our guests, it's important that our reviews are scattered across that.

And a quick thing about negative reviews, again, people get really worried about negative reviews and I'd, I just say, you know, make sure you always respond to them in a professional way.

Again, if you struggle with that because you get a bit annoyed like we all do, especially when you know that the guest is being unreasonable and it didn't really warrant the score that you got, put it into AI, put it into Claude or Chat and get it to write a very polite and professional response.

But give it some framework of why maybe if the guest was incorrect or unreasonable, give it some of the context and you'll get a really good response that you can post.

But you should reply to every single review that you get, whether it's positive or negative.

Don't have arguments online, keep it professional.

And actually sometimes I think having the odd negative review just shows that you're a genuine business and that it's not all made up.

You know, it is real.

So three steps really for reviews that I want you to think about is step one, think about mining your reviews.

So go through all of your online reviews that you've got on Airbnb, booking.com, google, TripAdvisor, maybe get AI to review it for you.

Find out those common 10 best customer phrases or Sentiments, themes that are coming out.

Make sure that you bank those for future use and that you, you can then start to use them in your marketing messaging.

Number two, create your review request system.

Make sure that that's well thought through and that you've got a very consistent process for and multiple messages to collect reviews from your guests.

We also put it in our Touchstay guide, there's a section in there as well with the links because people often take, obviously take that with them on their phone as well as us sending them emails and SMS's about leaving reviews.

And like I said, Google makes it really easy with that review link and the Q code.

And you know, number three, you know, put your reviews to work, think about those 10 phrases, think about whether that's actually incorporated across all of your different marketing touch points.

You know, your website, your socials, your email, your Google business profile.

Maybe if you use things like Pinterest and make sure that you've got reviews across multiple pages on your website, not just on the homepage and definitely not as on that lonely testimonials reviews page sitting there all on its own.

And don't just say guests love us, you have to show them.

So I hope you found that useful.

I share lots of more tips about how to leverage your reviews in my marketing club, which is the fully booked business club.

I'll put a link in the show notes.

So if you want to get more marketing ideas like this and actually tap into my knowledge and experience of what works, do come and check out joining the membership.

But in the meantime time I want you to think about what you're doing with your reviews and are they actually helping to sell your stays.

So if you just.

Your answer to that is, well, they're just sitting on Google and TripAdvisor and I'm not actually doing much with them.

You've got some work to do, but the good news is that your guests have created some of your best marketing content for you.

So you don't need to invent the words, you don't need to be sitting there scratching your head.

With the help of some things like Claude and ChatGPT and other AI tools, you can actually turn those reviews into ultimately what is going to be some of your best marketing.

And you just need to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time.

So stop treating your reviews just as a score or a number and start treating them as one of your most powerful marketing assets because your future guests don't necessarily want to hear how brilliant you are.

They want to hear from someone else who has stayed with you exactly how brilliant you are.

And that's exactly what your reviews allow them to do.

So I hope you've enjoyed this episode.

Thank you for listening.

And you know what I would love you to do if you enjoyed this episode?

I would love you to leave me a review because you know how much us hosts love those five star reviews.

Next week I've got a great guest joining me on the podcast who is a host and an industry expert.

So we've got two for the price of of one.

Don't miss that episode.

I'll see you next time.

Thank you for listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard if you want to see if you are ready to ditch the likes of Airbnb and grow your direct bookings, put your business to the test with my free Direct Booking Roadmap quiz.

Head to my website get fully booked.com quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profit in your pocket.