Howdy manufacturers! Jon Hoch, founder of Power Equipment Direct, here with my buddy Charlie Daniels to prove a point today that you don't need to be a celebrity to get an endorsement anymore.

On the internet, especially our sites, everybody's got an opinion and everybody can be heard. And we get all kinds of reviews coming into the website. We get good reviews, and we get not-so-good reviews. And I'm going to show you how to handle and respond to some of these.

Basement Watchdog has actually been doing a very good job of responding back to customers that submit reviews.

Here's Mark, coming out of California, and he put together a really cool video. I love the title, "Sumpin's Happenin' Here." And he's got a nice video to go along with it. He recommends this product. In fact, I like it, other people like it, that's why it's the most helpful review.



Even Basement Watchdog responded back to Mark, and said, "Mark, we thank you for your great video and your recommendations. We love customers like you."



Wouldn't it be great if you're a customer and the manufacturer says, "I love your video and I think it's great?" Great way to respond back to customers, and to give them a little bit of love and give them a little bit of praise. That's how you get advocates.

And then there's the reviews that aren't so good. So we've got another case of Marcus, which is our most helpful critical review. And he basically thought it was worth two stars, and he thought it was junk, and he doesn't recommend it.



So what Basement Watchdog decided to do is, "Let's respond back to it." So they wrote, "Marcus, we are sorry that you had a bad experience. This occurrence is not common at all, and we'd love to assist you. Please call us at our 800 number with an exact extension for technical support."



They did a great job here. They kept it short, and they also gave the Bill Clinton "I feel your pain," and they also gave you a recommendation on where to go for it.

And then they went on and they continue to write reviews for almost everything and every customer. Now you don't have to go to that extreme, but it's something you might want to consider.

So how do you do it? How do you respond to these customers? Well, it all starts in our Manufacturers' Portal. You log in, you go into our ratings center, and you click on the "Respond to Reviews."



Here's the three reviews that Basement Watchdog hasn't responded to, but you can also go into the two-hundred and something that they actually have responded to.

What I recommend is, start with the bad reviews. Start with the one star, the two star reviews, because you get extra credit stars, and you get a little bit of better letter grade ranking by responding to those reviews. You don't get that for the three, four, and five stars.

So start with the one and two's, and you can go into the product, or click into the review. And the cool thing, is it'll show you how the review looks on the website, and all you really got to do is type in a response. So you type in "we're sorry that you're not satisfied..." and look at, "we're sorry that you're not satisfied with this system."

Next we're going to talk about what to do if the review is just really horrible and it's that "Devil Went Down to Georgia" review that you want to get taken off of the website.

We're going to talk to you about how to get the review removed from the website, and we're going to show that video to you next.

Thanks again for listening. From me and Charlie, we're outta here.

NEXT: Irrelevant Reviews: How to Request the Removal of a Review