“If you’re not amplifying the positive stories around your brand, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.” This past week, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Social Media Rockstar event in Minnesota alongside last week’s guest Lee Odden. Also speaking at the event was Aaron Weiche, CMO of GetFiveStars, an online review platform. I couldn’t wait to share his insights with you on this week’s episode of the On Brand podcast.

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About Aaron Weiche

A passionate, design oriented problem solver, Aaron has been involved in web design, development, and online marketing since 1998. In having helped grow 3 different digital agencies in the Minneapolis area, Aaron has helped launch over 350 websites for small business on up to Fortune 100 companies. In growing multiple agencies past the $2M mark in founder and executive roles, Aaron has a strong sense of brand, team building, user experience and the full digital life-cycle a campaign and its assets must deliver.

Joining GetFiveStars in 2015, Aaron has led the marketing, sales, and product UX initiatives helping the platform serve over 18,000 businesses globally and growing. The platform is a customer feedback and online review platform that helps brands and businesses listen, evaluate, and market their customer’s experiences. GetFiveStars automates the customer feedback process while capturing their Net Promoter Score and encouraging and monitoring online reviews.

Outside of his direct client experience, Aaron is a frequent conference speaker nationally on a variety of online marketing topics. His in-depth experience with web design, mobile, SEO, local search, and online reviews has led him to speaking at SMX events, SearchFest, MOZ events, MnSearch, SCORE, and many others. He helped launch Local University as a faculty partner, launched the MnSearch organization as a founding board member and has been an expert on the Local Search Ranking Factors report since 2010.

When not online, Aaron is a husband and a father to 4 kids. He can be found snowboarding, boating, watching college football, and the Minnesota Twins.

Episode Highlights

So what is GetFiveStars? “It’s a simple-to-implement online platform for gathering customer feedback. Previously we lacked a way of doing this as brands.”

“Gathering online reviews is like farming …” Aaron shared a great mindset for marketers thinking about online rating and reviews. “You have to plant seeds that you are listening — that you care about customer feedback.”

What about that one-star review? I couldn’t wait to ask Aaron the million-dollar question that businesses of all shapes and sizes struggle with. What do you do with that less-than-ideal one-star review. “Most want it taken down but realize they can’t. You have to ask everyone else to leave a review. That (negative review) can’t be the only online representation of your brand.”

Criticism is hard to take. “Small business owners wear many hats. We’re built to be defensive right away.” Aaron shared that GetFiveStars has actually built an innovative feature into the platform that holds responses so they don’t get sent in anger while emotions run high (a pretty smart response to human nature).

What’s one thing marketers should be more focused on with online reviews? “Complete your Google My Business page.” That’s a critical step to capturing customer feedback that you can’t skip.

What brand has made Aaron smile recently? Aaron told a great story about a little something extra — a smile after the sale — he got from the smart folks at Cambria countertops.

To learn more, go to the GetFiveStars website as well as his personal site. You can also connect with him on Twitter.

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