As a customer marketer, I love getting to connect with other customer marketers about the work we do. And, as a former G2 customer twice-over, I know how challenging running review campaigns and capturing voice of customer feedback can be, especially when you’re a small (or even 1-person) team trying to juggle multiple competing priorities.
So for the Customer Marketing Masterclass session at G2 Reach 2023 – I asked G2’s Senior Director of Product Management, Rachel Bentley to join me in sharing some best practices for review generation, and more importantly to help underscore the massiveimpact that reviews can have, not only on marketing, but across the entire spectrum of a company's operations.
For customer marketers looking to optimize their review strategies and maximize the value of every 👏 single 👏 review – here are just a few of the best practices we discussed in our session.
- Remember that not all reviews are created equal. Trustworthy, actionable, and engaging reviews are invaluable. They offer potential buyers essential contexts and help companies uncover their shortcomings, ultimately strengthening relationships with customers.
- Diversity in your review collection is essential. Essential to optimizing the value of reviews, this approach maximizes reach and ensures a wider audience. Consider implementing various strategies like in-app integrations, APIs, running review booths at events, and several other options that suit your customer base.
- Embrace the four pillars of review collection. In discussing the essentials of review collection, we highlighted four pillars: ask everyone for reviews, ask consistently, request review updates, and respond to all reviews. These practices harness the power of authentic feedback, keep your content current, and solidify your commitment to customer satisfaction.
- Know your users. It's crucial to understand your customers’ preferences and habits, which will inform you of the best venues and timings for collecting reviews. Be where they are and cater to their needs and habits.
- Leverage reviews as a marketing tool... Positive reviews can be powerful marketing tools. From incorporating badges to your website homepage, using customer quotes on product pages, leveraging review content on landing pages, and even using reviews on social media profiles, there are ample opportunities to take advantage of positive feedback.
- …and for product improvement. Reviews are presents, providing authentic feedback and actionable insights for product refinement and customer satisfaction. The feedback delivered in reviews can be quite personal to product managers, and insights translated from raw, customer-produced data are invaluable to shaping the trajectory of the company's progress. Don’t let this slip by; use it to inform and improve your products, addressing customers’ needs and feedback.
- Consistently respond to reviews. Managing reviews is just as important as collecting them. Engaging with feedback humanizes your brand and builds trust, and a proactive approach to reviews can definitely drive conversion and build trust with your customers, as over half of users read review responses and factor them into their decision-making process. Drinking our own champagne, Rachel does this on behalf of G2 – responding to reviews left about our solutions.
In the end, it’s all about embracing the feedback, engaging customers, automating the review-asking process, and embedding it into your product through G2's review levers. Remember, reviews can shape the perception and, ideally, the success of your business, so make sure that you leverage their power well.
These best practices provide a high-level summary of our discussion, underscoring the point that customer reviews are opportunities, not challenges. If you continually enhance your review collection strategy and use reviews to guide your product development process and marketing campaigns, you’re on the right path forward.
If you missed it, you can catch the recorded session from G2 Reach 2023. And don’t forget to check out the "Responding to Reviews" course in G2 University for more guidance on managing reviews.
by Eric Gilpin