A vast majority of customers tend to read reviews before deciding whether to do business with you or not. This is due to the fact that traditional product recommendation in the form of a product description is made by the retailer or manufacturer while reviews are seen as user-generated content. This means that people leaving these reviews tend to be much closer to your target demographic than your marketing team. The problem with this lies in the fact that not every user (or even every satisfied user) is going to leave a customer review. This means that you have to take a more direct approach and ask customers for reviews. Here are six tips to help you do this efficiently.
Offer incentives
The simplest way to get reviews is to offer your audience an incentive for writing them. Most commonly, leaving a review would award a customer with a set of points that they could later redeem for a discount. It doesn’t have to be a valuable discount, seeing as how it’s the point system what matters the most. This is due to the fact that it can gamify the review-writing experience, especially due to the fact that purchases and other activities may help the customer accumulate these points for a more valuable discount.
A follow-up email
Sometimes, if you’re confident in the performance of your product, you might want to wait for your customer to sample it before following up with a request for a review. Later on, when you send an email, you might find that as much as 25 percent of buyers may be willing to leave a review, which is more than a staggering figure. This is actually an amazing alternative to post-checkout popups, which are quite risky and might act as a double-edged blade. While they might not be annoying enough to earn you a negative review, they definitely won’t contribute to the customer’s post-sale experience.
Mobile reviews
Keep in mind that on the eve of m-commerce, it would be outright irresponsible for your business to ignore the immense power of mobile reviews. Here, you might want to focus on different review-gathering methods. For instance, there are some platforms that provide you with a way to get customer feedback via SMS, which is an incredibly mobile-friendly technique. Other methods do so via an app, which is a potent solution in the smartphone-dominated era. All in all, reaching out to a demographic that uses a specific device is more than welcome.
Make a poll or a survey
The problem with getting reviews lies in the fact that your definition of a review might be too traditional in form or format. A half-hour-long YouTube video review of a product or a lengthy Amazon review aren’t the only two methods available. The percentage of satisfied customers or star-based ratings can also act as reviews. After all, even if you don’t classify them as reviews, no one can deny that they serve the exact same purpose. They’re the guarantee of quality and a persuasion tool in hands of retailers and manufacturers.
Help guide their answers
One of the biggest problems that reviewers face is lack of experience in this field, which may discourage them from even trying. You see, a lot of people simply don’t know how to write a review, which is why you can help them with a simple two-point review principle. What you want to review readers to know is A) why the person in question (the reviewer) bought the product and B) did the product do what was promised. This will simplify the process so much that it may make the idea of leaving a review much more appealing to the general public.
Thank every reviewer
The last thing you need to keep in mind is the fact that your reviewers may return for another product, another service or on another occasion and that the chance of another review increases every time. So, other than outright rewarding them, you need to thank them in order to make the overall reviewing experience more pleasant for them. This doesn’t take more than several minutes of your time, yet, it might make a massive difference, not just for your reviewing system but for your brand image, as well.
Keep in mind that in the present-day digital marketing, more and more people tend to insist on user-generated content in the form of reviews and testimonials. Previously, we’ve discussed six simple methods to help you with customer reviews and since these six methods are so easy to implement, there’s no excuse for failing to follow through with this important customer requirement.
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