Reviews & Comments Pt. 1 – The Benefits of Online Reviews for Your Business

From the Author

Welcome to the trilogy titled Reviews & Comments. As of now, you’re scanning the first part of it, called The Benefits of Online Reviews. It touches the very essence of online reviews. It’s a form of a quick and easy, yet significant introduction to the topic that is to be continued soon. May it serve you well.

Why Reviews?

It doesn’t matter if you’re doing B2B, B2C, C2C, O2O, C2B or R2D2. It doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO, C3PO, a salesperson, a marketer, a Ghost Tweeter, a Community Data Guerrilla or a Social Media’s Mr. Miyagi at your company – we’re all trying hard to sell our products.

And what does it take to sell a product? It takes hours of cooking up some cunningly plotted, Macbethian intrigue, oh, I meant strategy to plunge your competitors into despair, win your customers’ hearts and put yourself in the limelight. At least, this is how we do it at Brand24… Just kidding! You all know it’s not true!

In other words, to increase sales, we’re constantly seeking room for improvement at our companies, whether it comes to marketing, communication, sales or software. The process of buying and decision making is influenced by a whole plethora of factors beginning with the quality of the product, price, customer support, user experience, communication, good content, great website design, etc. Put the CTA button here, put a demo button there, change this color, put more cats in there, people love cats. To prove value, satisfy customers and sell the product, marketers are constantly searching for new tools, ideas and strategies, but somehow forget about online reviews.

With a great number of online reviews comes great conversion, says our CEO.

88% Of Consumers Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations

Bang! Case closed.

What often seems to be overlooked, is the importance of online reviews. What about them? They frequently appear to be pushed to the background of marketing strategy. Marketers and salespeople fail to recognize the benefits of reviewing products online, whereas there’s more to the picture than meets the eye. BrightLocal’s research proved that 88% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. What’s more, people tend to ignore the fact that reviewing online is just seemingly a unilateral benefit. It so happens that not only reviewees can score a point, but also reviewers, however, this topic will be the subject of my third article, so stay in touch! In the meantime, see some numbers regarding online reviews in business.

How Reviews Help Your Business

Online reviews actually bridge two worlds: the analog world of word of mouth with the digital reach of content in social media. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet these tiny, seemingly insignificant words of mouths spread momentarily and turn into the snowball effect. The majority of customers before buying a product or a service do in-depth research including prices, competition’s offer and customer reviews, as they are crucial to company income and online reputation. That’s why it’s significant to devote a considerable part of your marketing strategy to increasing online reviews.

Why are they so important? Below you’ll find it all in a nutshell.

1. Increased sales

It’s the ultimate goal of every business to generate income, as it’s crucial to a company prosperity and development. Positive reviews have a huge impact on customers and make them more likely to purchase a product or a service.

2. Feedback

Online reviews are a great source of customer feedback, as they may bring to attention customer concerns and suggestions of product improvement. Addressing issues publicly shows that your company cares about customers and is open to hearing out and discussing the product.

(Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer’s reviews on Amazon. I’m waiting for you UPS)

3. Brand Awareness

As you encourage your customers to review your product online, it enhances your brand awareness. A quality product and good interaction between you and your customers are sooner or later rewarded and spread around social media. A review breeds a review. When people see other comments, they’re more likely to engage in discussion, express their contempt or share a piece of advice.

4. Ranking

It often happens that businesses list their products and services at various marketplaces like we do, for example at G2 Crowd. When it comes to marketplaces, it’s crucial for business to gather as much reviews as possible. Marketplaces are all about rankings. The more positive reviews, the higher ranking. It increases your company website’s traffic and conversion.

Some marketplaces award outstanding companies with badges, but, again, it’s absolutely essential to have the required number of quality reviews. Speaking of which, we’ve been awarded with a High Performer Badge by G2 Crowd! We’re more than happy to see our satisfied customers posting positive reviews about our services. Thank you so much!

Is it possible to automate the feedback process?

The entire process of acquiring and managing reviews can be automated by using special tools. An application worth mentioning is Rating Captain, as it allows for holistic management of brand reputation on the Internet. You will find there both tools for sending invitations to ask for feedback and for analyzing the sentiment of all comments. This way you will know the reasons for customer (dis)satisfaction and how to respond to it.

A very interesting functionality are widgets with product ratings. By adding them to a product subpage, reviews will be displayed as stars in the organic search results. Google stars (rich snippet) attract attention, which increases traffic to the site, resulting in higher sales. Higher CTR means better SEO results.

Conclusion

All in all, it’s important to gather reviews, as they influence sales, conversion, rankings, brand awareness and are a perfect mean to obtain customer feedback. We live in times of highly educated decisions when it comes to buying; customers do a quadruple check before the final decision. They meticulously compare many offers using product comparison sites and research comments to check the credibility of a given product. Positive reviews improve your company’s position on the Internet and various marketplaces.

To have an even broader picture of your customers’ opinions on your product and brand, you can start using a social media monitoring tool like ours. It gathers data from social media, discussion forums, blogs, and other places. Check our blog to learn more about social listening and stay in touch!