5 Tips To Market Your Brand Using Customer Reviews By CIOReview Team

5 Tips To Market Your Brand Using Customer Reviews

CIOReview Team | Monday, 02 April 2018, 07:34 IST

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Unless you have spent last 10 years of your life into total oblivion, you must have heard about the impact of customer reviews on buying decisions. Customer reviews are the new favourites of e-commerce platforms and play a vital role in increasing online conversions.

Therefore, it doesn’t really matter whether you are comfortable with the idea of using customer reviews for the benefit of your business or not; they must still be an essential part of your brand’s marketing strategy.

The value of customer reviews can hardly be ever overstated as every single research has confirmed that reviews have a huge potential of influencing one’s decision to buy a product. Around 90 percent of online users believe that they rely on online reviews just as much as the recommendations from their close friends and family.

Now here, it’s important to understand that even though reviews are intrinsically helpful to improve your sales (in most of the cases) the way you approach them ultimately decides if they will really work for your brand or not:

1.      Use Customer Reviews to Your Brand’s Advantage

You will agree with the fact that online customer reviews are nothing but an evolved form of the age-old marketing technique, known as Word of Mouth (WOM). 24*7 access to internet has made it easier for the user community to share their experiences and views on your product. So, don’t hesitate to feature best reviews on the homepage of your website where it should be most prominent to the visitors. Adding an identity of your customer (name & photo) will further increase the credibility of the reviews. However, make sure to take permission from your customers before doing so, as few of them might not be comfortable with the idea of sharing their identity on a third-party online channel.

Furthermore, you can also set up an entire page dedicated to your testimonials. Check out Policybazaar Review Page to understand how India’s leading web insurance aggregator showcases customer testimonials as its proud possession.

Following this practice will not only add credibility to your brand, but will also prove helpful for the online visitors to get honest answers for their queries  as well as encourage them to check your brand’s social media channels; thus, bringing-in more business to your brand.

2.      Emphasize on Quality

To guide your customers better, you must understand that your reviews should go over and above the star ratings. The prospective (or even existing) customers are looking for quality content where they can get every detail on a product, its usage, its drawbacks and upsides, how it is better than other brands and so on.

So, when you are providing your customers with reviews, give them a chance to know more about your product rather than merely following the number of stars.  Naturally, positive reviews make the customers trust the brand more and inclined to buy its products.

3.      Use Negative Reviews in Your Favour

Blocking out negative reviews might seem tempting at a time. However, not only it is a dishonest thing to do but can also prove to be bad for your business in the long run. There isn’t a single product/service yet been made in the history of mankind that have been lucky enough to receive a 100% satisfaction rate by all the customers!

Every customer is different. Your products that are good for a particular customer may not be good enough for the others. Remember, there is always a chance that some customers won’t like even your best products.

Besides, updating only positive reviews can make your customers sceptical about the authenticity of your website. Therefore, try to use the negative reviews in your favour by responding well to them. Turn customers’ criticism into an opportunity to show how you care for your customers by responding in a helpful and constructive way. Doing so will not only improve your customer retention but will also be able to secure a nice place among potential customers.

4.      Respond to Reviews Timely

Next, you need to focus on the importance of replying timely to the negative reviews. Responding on time shows that you are serious about your customers’ feedbacks and you care.

Encourage your customers to interact with you on your social media platforms. Show them that you are willing to help them and get their problems resolved. This will not only build customers’ trust around your brand, but will also set you apart from your competitors. If you can't handle social media accounts, there are companies like Los Angeles social media marketing company that can help you in this field.

Popular ecommerce website, Zappos is a brilliant example to show how this practice should be followed.

5.      Do the Sorting Carefully

It’s always convenient to follow the easy way out and sort your reviews by the most recent. However, this means that you are missing out on the very fundamental opportunity to rightly advertise your brand.

Let’s try to understand it better. What if all your recent reviews are merely star ratings and don’t have any content or substance. Or, what kind of an impression would it leave on your customers if two of your recent reviews are negative and yet published on the very top due to sorting?

That’s why it makes sense to use the right sorting approach, which is to use a combination of different sorting options such as “most helpful”, “most positive”, “representative sample”, “best linguistic style”, etc.

Bonus Tip: Keep an Eye on Different Review Sites

Remember the old days when people used to refer to directories to find the contact details of a particular person, shop, etc? Review sites such as Yelp, Review Center, etc. are nothing but the modern evolution of those directories. The only difference is that these reviews sites primarily focus on providing reviews for different brands.

You can always create an account on such sites and use them to build a positive and customer friendly image of your brand. However, you’ll need to focus on few important listing details on these websites. For instance, your contact details should be easy to access and also, your logo should be prominent on the page rather than hidden at the bottom of the page.

Closing Thoughts

It doesn’t matter how much efforts you are putting into selling your business to the customers, you shouting alone about how good is your business is most certainly not going to make them reach out to their wallets and shelling out money on your business.

However, hearing it from your customers can certainly spawn their interest in your business. So, it’s about time you start following this change and adding-in your customer reviews to show off how great your products and services actually are. 

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