How to Address Negative Reviews The Right Way

0:00Welcome to Marketing School, the only podcast that provides daily top-level marketing tips and strategies from entrepreneurs that practice what they preach and live what they teach. Let's start leveling up your marketing knowledge with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Su.

0:20All right, so we're going to talk about how to address negative reviews the right way. So some context here. The last, you know, our feelings have been a little hurt, but it's okay. You know, we've got some recent reviews on Marketing School. You know, there's like one in five star. And the last, maybe three before that were like one star. So I don't know if it's the same person, but someone's been hitting us. You know, they're like tech bro-y. You know, they worship Elon Musk, whatever. it is. So we're trying to address it. And we want to talk about in this episode, how you can address negative reviews, not just for podcasts, but for any channel that you're on, right?

0:49Could be for your business, negative reviews, right? Could be for your YouTube channel, whatever it is. But we thought this would be an interesting topic. Look, you know, you're going to get negative comments. You're going to get negative reviews. The question is just, when are you going to get them? For Eric and I, we try not to take them to heart. We kind of actually like them, not from a negative standpoint, but from a standpoint of it teaches us how to improve. What's frustrating is, is when you try to make those changes and you still get negative reviews, you know, it can be a little bit irritating because you're like, man, I thought I was fixing it.

1:19And then, you know, you see that people don't really think that you're doing what they want and you keep getting negative reviews. Overall, you know, just keep pushing through, look at the negative reviews. Don't worry about responding to a more. So first, you need to focus on what you can do to fix it. So focus on fixing it. Second, then worry about responding. Most people, and I'm not saying you should never respond. Most people with negative reviews, what they do is they try to focus on the response. What can I do to make that person happy? Well, they were negative because of experience or your product or service or whatever it may be.

1:58Yes. Responding is good, But the reason it's negative is because they weren't happy with the service or the product. And you should be focusing on fixing that so you don't keep getting more negative reviews in the future. And that's a big mistake that companies make. They focus too much on the response instead of taking action and fixing the root problem. Here's what I'll say. You know, when you look at negative reviews, you want to look for signal versus noise. So a lot of people are just going to say a bunch of stuff. Sometimes there's just something going on in their lives and that's fine, right?

2:27It's like, oh my God. Sometimes you get a comment, oh, you're so ugly or whatever. That's something that you could do, right? But there is going to be noise. For every maybe 10 negative comments, maybe there's one bit of signal. And if you start to see the same comment over and over, you guys are saying the same things over and over, or you guys are sounding really bro-y or whatever. That's how we're addressing it is more so we're doing these reaction longer form clips. Now, yesterday, we spent about 30 to 35 minutes, and we're just reacting to the news and talking about how people can think about that from a marketing and a business perspective.

3:00And we're going to see how the feedback is for that. And then people might say, oh, I like this part. I hated this part over here. And I'm going to give that feedback. Neil and I are going to talk about it and we're going to iterate on it. We don't take that personally. What I really want to show both of you is that this is not necessarily for everyone. So if you take a look at my screen, I'm sharing it right now on YouTube. So here's my screen. So this is me over here on the Principles You test. This is a Ray Dalio Adam Grant personality test. Highly recommend everyone takes it. It's free. We're not getting paid to say this.

3:27I'm receptive to criticism, 99%, right? Which means if you give me criticism, I take it as a compliment, right? Let's not go into like, you know, why that is. That's just how it is. Now, if you look at Neil, he's 93 % receptive to criticism. So anytime he said something to me, I don't think I've ever gotten offended. And when I've said something to him, he's never gotten offended too. It's just like, oh, okay, maybe there's something there. Maybe there isn't, right? But the key thing is to also understand how you are and who it is that you're working with. If you have another partner that you're working with on your business or your YouTube channel.

3:55Some people are really not receptive to criticism and you have to understand how they work. So this is another wrinkle that I wanted to add in here. Neil? Yeah. Look at it as a way to grow. It's like in marketing, if you want more traffic, you want more revenue, you want more sales, you want more conversions. The best way to get that is by talking to people. Just like how you would run surveys, think of those negative reviews as feedback from a survey. If you can focus on improving it and solving those problems, you'll notice that your revenue and your marketing will be much more efficient. Yep.

4:25So look, that's all we got to say. And please give us feedback, by the way. Please give us criticism on the reaction videos that we're going to be doing on a weekly basis. And that is it for now. And don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and also on YouTube. And goodbye. We appreciate you joining us for this session of Marketing School. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit marketingschool.io for more resources based on today's topic, as well as access to more episodes that will help you find true marketing success. That's marketingschool.io. Until next time, class dismissed.