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- Peter Lohmann's Mailing List - Issue #65
Peter Lohmann's Mailing List - Issue #65
Getting Google Reviews, Scare a Property Manager with 5 Words
Google Reviews Matter
I’m on a mission to get our Google score up.
We started October at a 4.0 with 292 total reviews. That places us at #4 when ranked against our local competition:
I believe getting a great Google score (say, 4.5 and above) is probably the best way to get more owner leads, and convert them at a higher rate. Plus, it helps with leasing too.
Here’s my plan to drive up our score:
Set a target. We need to know where we’re going. So I picked 4.2 as the goal for the end of the year.
Calculate what’s needed. There are several google score calculators that let you put in your current number of reviews, current score, and desired score… then they tell you how many 5-star reviews you need to get there. This one says we need 74! That’s about 1 every business day.
Get old scores updated. Anything less than a 5-star review is dragging down our rating at this point… especially those awful 1-stars. I had my personal assistant create a list of every single 1, 2, 3, and 4-star rating we had ever gotten, along with the name of the person and their contact info. Next, I will be reaching out to all of them, as the business owner, to ask if they are still unsatisfied, what we can do to help, and finally ask them to revise their score. Most people won’t do it… but it would only take a few updated scores to drastically lower the amount of 5-star reviews needed.
Get your review link. You want the actual link from Google that takes people directly to the actual review page for your business. Here’s how to get it… search your company name, you should see this panel pop up. Click the right button (highlighted) until you see the "Get more reviews" panel, open that up and there's a link:
Our Google Business page
Go get new reviews! Lots of ways to go about this, and many of them have been discussed in detail elsewhere. Briefly:
Set up your software to automatically ask for reviews and include the link.
Train your team to ask for them after positive interactions with clients, tenants and vendors.
Consider running an internal promotion to reward those who get reviews or get mentioned by name in reviews.
Use your network… friends, family, peers, anyone who has engaged with your business in any way. Manually reach out to people one by one if you have to. However, do not have employees leave reviews directly (this is against Google policy).
Beware… if you give or a receive an abnormally large number of reviews in a short period of time, your reviews or your account may be flagged by Google.
I will report back at the end of the year on our progress!
The Multifamily Wealth Podcast
Shoutout to Axel Ragnarsson and his great podcast. Axel has thousands of weekly listeners, and his show is excellent.
I was a guest on the show last week, and if you like this newsletter or my podcast, you’ll definitely enjoy this episode. We talk a lot about the tactical operations behind property management. Whether you're a single-family or multifamily real estate investor, this episode provides valuable insights into the profitability and structure of property management companies. Axel and I also tackle strategies for enhancing tenant satisfaction, boosting renewal rates, and ultimately optimizing your bottom line.
Listen on:
This week’s issue is sponsored by: AppFolio.
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Teach it your processes to automatically complete common workflows
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Scare a Property Manager in 5 Words or Less
I was dying laughing at all the great replies to my post on X (Twitter) last night… check it out and add your own:
Scare a property manager in 5 words or less.
— Peter Lohmann (@pslohmann)
11:40 PM • Oct 19, 2023
Industry News and Events
I just back from NARPM’s National conference in Atlanta and had a blast… more on that next week.
Sales Mastery Live (Allbound Conference) from RentScale - December 4th in Austin TX (the day before the LeadSimple user summit). I’ll be there!
PM Systems Conference - January! I’m speaking. This is a great alternative if you didn’t snag a ticket to the LeadSimple conference.
Closing Thought
How to raise money for your first real estate deal
Many beginners find a deal, tie it up, then start trying to raise capital. That’s a good way to end up with a busted deal & egg all over your face.
Instead, you want to let your initial capital base dictate the kind type & size… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Moses Kagan (@moseskagan)
8:34 PM • Oct 6, 2023
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That’s all for this week! Have a great weekend. -Peter
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