Given the opportunity to get a tree planted in your name—and thus help the environment—would you write an online review?
While most people may still loathe sparing even a bit of their time writing such a review, this “one tree planted” concept has been proven by Daniel Vivarelli’s Starloop as capable of obtaining hundreds of genuine online reviews on sites like Google and Facebook.
How does Daniel Vivarelli’s software help your business grow? What effect does it actually have? Learn more in the interview below:
In order to broaden our reader’s understanding of you, can you give us a brief character profile?
Daniel Vivarelli: A character profile? Sure. My interests have always revolved around both entrepreneurship and nature and I’ve always been fascinated in intersecting them in meaningful ways.
I think I’m sensitive to people’s needs and this trait has allowed me to meld my interests together to create Starloop. Having empathy helps me understand the needs of our Members and helps me find solutions to solve their problems.
Why did you choose to go into the Online Reputation Management industry over other alternatives?
Daniel Vivarelli: Simple. When it comes down to ROI, reputation management punches far above its weight class. Although there are definitely other areas where I could explore my interests, I found my way into the Online Reputation Management (ORM) industry because of its potential to drive solid growth for both small and medium-sized businesses.
To those not in the know, the revenue boosting potential and ROI that a business can receive from their online reviews is probably enough to leave even the most acute businessmen in shock.
To be more specific, it’s been found that around 80% of consumers now use reviews in order to finalize their transactions. If you choose to ignore this large customer pool, your chances of getting ahead of your competitors is slim.
Put another way, if your business has a sparkling, five-star reputation, and more reviews than your competitors, you can expect ROI significantly higher than all other forms of advertising and marketing.
Speaking of, please tell us a little bit more about why online reviews are comparable to other forms of advertising and marketing.
Daniel Vivarelli: It comes down to risk and ROI. Other forms of online advertising & marketing can be costly and can take a long time to reach positive ROI, if they ever do. It’s a much higher risk to dump time and money into SEO or PPC or funnels than it is to invest in your online reputation.
That’s not to say that you should abandon those methods of marketing your business. But, even just taking into consideration how fast, how affordable, and how easy it is to obtain the hundred or so positive reviews it takes to make a stand on Google with the right methods, the benefits of ORM become obvious to anyone paying attention.
Please tell us a little bit more about your view on consumer behavior in 2022 and beyond.
Daniel Vivarelli: To be frank, we’re never going back to a world without online reviews. Reviews are here to stay and these reviews will only continue to help buyers determine where they’re going to spend their money.
There are even statistics out there that report that the actual percentage of consumers reading reviews is now at 90%—not 80%—but either way, this is not just a fad that’s going to be going away. Especially not after COVID-19. I don’t think I have to explain how social distancing affected the way today’s consumers shop, I can only emphasize that, no matter what, online reviews are only going to get more important—not less.
Now that we’ve cleared the air about the online reputation industry, let’s start talking about you and your work at Starloop. Please give our readers an introduction to your business.
Daniel Vivarelli: Starloop is an ORM service with an original concept that fuses commerce and ecology. Put more simply, one day, while we were racking our brains to figure out how we can help our Members get reviews, we suddenly thought of the idea of planting a tree for each review.
What was the biggest hurdle that you faced when developing Starloop?
Daniel Vivarelli: Finding the best way to get more reviews. Or really, just fine-tuning our software to be more effective at getting reviews. We wanted a solution that our Members could count on to obtain five-star reviews and create a strong reputation. For that, we couldn’t just rely on asking someone to write a review, it’s just too awkward.
We understood that asking someone for a review is basically asking them a loaded question; they know we’re asking for a good review. This awkwardness isn’t great for engagement or conversion.
Discovering this, we tested relentlessly to make sure that what we had on offer was a truly reliable solution. This meant tightening our scripts, incorporating more natural language, working out bugs along the way, coming up with the plant-a-tree idea. It’s a continuous effort, and as such, I consider it the biggest hurdle to overcome in our growth.
Facing a potential client, how would you persuade them to choose Starloop over other alternatives?
Daniel Vivarelli: Reviews are difficult to acquire if you don’t have a strategy that is both effective and simple to execute. When it comes to persuading potential clients, all we need to do is show the number of reviews our Members are currently receiving to prove just how good Starloop’s conversion rate is.
There are many overly complicated, expensive, and low-conversion solutions out there. There are even solutions for obtaining fake reviews if someone wants to risk their reputation to the dark side. However, if you want genuine, positive five-star reviews, I can confidently say that Starloop can get the job done at a lower cost and faster speed than those alternatives.
To finish off this interview, can you share with us one of Starloop’s current long-term goals?
Daniel Vivarelli: Presently, we’ve helped our Members acquire over 70,000 reviews and planted 70,000 trees as a result. Our current long term goal is to help more people grow their sales, plant 1 million trees and continue doing our part to help protect our planet. We’re a small beacon proving that doing good is good for business.
Cameron Dickerson is a seasoned journalist with nearly 10 years experience. While studying journalism at the University of Missouri, Cameron found a passion for finding engaging stories. As a contributor to Kev’s Best, Cameron mostly covers state and national developments.