Real reviews, from customers like you.

Transcription

1 Real reviews, from customers like you.

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3 THE VALUE OF AN HONEST OPINION THESE DAYS, THE POWER LIES WITH THE CONSUMER. The connection between a brand and its customers used to be a one-way channel. A tidal wave of advertising messages crafted in skyscrapers washed over the masses, picking up whoever happened to be listening in its current. That s not good enough for the modern consumer. They re bombarded with corporate messaging, pandering ad talk and sales pitches non-stop. To break through to a potential customer, a message needs to be two things: What they want to hear From someone they want to hear it from. These days, the power lies with the consumer. There s so much choice that it has become the job of the brand to do the listening. Corporate communication has turned into human conversation. Customers expect you to know about them; and they damn sure know about you. Enough, in fact, to almost completely disregard anything you say about yourself. Recommendations from people I know and consumer opinions posted online are the first and third most trusted forms of advertising, ahead of all paid media advertising. (Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising and Brand Messages report, September 2013) Customers don t trust brands, customers trust customers. That s a fact of modern business. It s why collecting and displaying a high volume of ratings and reviews is so effective. Showing consumers the opinions of people like them makes them 77% more likely to buy if they ve been collected and displayed by an independent third party (FlyResearch, November 2014). However, simply having verified reviews won t set you apart it s when you use the content throughout every aspect of your business that you see real transformation. It works both ways; your customers can trust the reviews before buying, and you can trust the sentiments within to improve your business. If you want to become customer-focused, it s time to listen to the customer. 3

4 CONTENTS PREPARING FOR LAUNCH 1. MARKETING 2. ADVERTISING 3. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 4. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION BREAK THE STRATOSPHERE 5. BRAND 6. OFFLINE 7. SOCIAL 8. COMMUNITY

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6 MARKETING If you want to drive conversion, increase trust and engage with your customers online, you put reviews on your website. It s a good start, but... clever businesses are now starting to shape their entire marketing strategies around the insights they collect through those reviews. Verified consumer reviews paint a 360-degree view of your customer. With a bit of data analysis you can begin to understand and target them much more effectively, making the most of your efforts and saving precious marketing resource. If your reviews are split into subsections, not only will shoppers appreciate it - you ll be able to take some great information about how to market to the many different types of customers you have. Different types of customers will have different needs and expectations, and even without any extra analysis, you ll have some worthwhile information about how to segment your market. To keep up with your customers, you ll need that info, because: 49% of people expect a company they have bought from before to provide them with a more personalised experience next time they shop. (FlyResearch, November 2014) Review data is also gold for personalised communication. Imagine a hotel marketer sending follow up s to his guests. If he knows one section of his database liked a particular day trip, he can suggest a similar one. Likewise, if an aspect of the service was negatively reviewed, the marketing can reflect this. 35% of marketers say data has improved customer engagement through personalisation. (Forrester, April 2014) Personalisation is the trend of the times and your reviews are the perfect marketing assistant. 6

7 ADVERTISING Once you have the strategy, the next step is to find the content. Advertisers know that user generated content is more believable than their own spiel, but have so far struggled to harness its power. By injecting the voice of the customer into advertising through consumer reviews, brands can employ the strong pull of word-of-mouth on a much bigger scale. Print advertising, , social, TV any channel you re currently advertising in can be enhanced with review content. A quote from a verified reviewer, with a third party stamp, builds trust and confidence. Having a consistent thread throughout your multichannel campaign is a great hook and user scores will be memorable when it comes time to buy. 49% of people who saw customer opinions collected by a third party ratings & reviews company in an ad campaign would be more likely to buy. (FlyResearch, May 2014) The technology now exists to have live scores in ads - trust is pretty important when you re dealing with live data. If the ad says the product scores an 8.9 out of 10, your website had better say 8.9 as well. Even if you don t use your customers words verbatim, you can tailor your message towards their general sentiment. All advertising can benefit from some focus grouping and if you have plenty of reviews online, your crowd already exists. Perfection is expected in advertising. Break the expectation and become credible. 7

8 CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE How do you know you re not doing enough to enhance the customer experience? The answer: when you think you re doing enough. Customer experience evolves with your customers - to give them what they want, you have to move even quicker than they do. Luckily, they re constantly giving you clues. It starts in the research phase; when potential customers are on your website. This is where expectations are set. Your product descriptions give one view, but to have a great initial experience, they ll need the real information contained in your reviews. Add a peer-topeer Q&A service as well, where potential customers can ask questions to existing ones. Not only is it informative for those researching, but the data within will have some really nutritious insights for providing a more personal customer experience. Now, let s take it beyond the website... Only 8% of people think these same companies deliver superior customer service. (Forrester, 2012) By using reviews to rank and understand your points of contact with the customer, like dealerships, branches or call centres, you can start to understand exactly where you re going right and wrong. Once you ve found the when, the why is only a bit of digging away. Reactive brands (the ones that somehow seem to lag behind when trends advance) all fall into the same traps: making customer experience decisions based on little or no solid data. Smart brands are constantly using the data they collect to improve the entire customer experience. They understand why things are happening, rather than just where or what. Their actions are confident, and they work. It s all due to the power of data, and if you re doing reviews the right way, you re already collecting it. 80% of companies say they deliver superior customer service. Allow reviews and UGC to shape the experience you provide for your customers. 8

9 PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION So, your customers are reading the reviews you re collecting - but are you? Every review that comes in is direct feedback on what you offer. Innovation should be driven by what your customers want and need, but you have to find out what they ve thought of your current products, and collect that information with enough granularity to dissect it. If you re collecting reviews in large amounts (which you should be) you ll be able to extract some juicy insights. 74% of people expect a review they write to be used by the company in improving its products and services. (FlyResearch, November 2014) Once you know what your customers want, tell them you re working on it! Actively engaging with consumers and letting them know you re listening makes them feel like part of the process, which might be the fertiliser they need to become brand advocates. You can take it a step further by inviting existing advocates in before the launch of a new product. Only 17% of people would buy a newly launched product before reading reviews. (FlyResearch, May 2014) Why not collect reviews for a new product before it has officially been launched? The benefits again go both ways; incorporating customer opinions (whether it s text, video or other media) into every step is the best way to streamline marketing activities and pricing decisions around your product launch. Don t risk a failed launch. Get the feedback before you build it and put it to work before you release it. 9

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11 BRAND If you have a great product, it will sell for a while. If you have a great brand, you ll sell well for much longer. The great thing about being a well-known brand is that people don t find you by accident; they actively seek you and your products out. How do you get there? Well, a good start is to get people into the habit of coming to you directly. You can do that by having plenty of content that increases your visibility in search results, so your website is the destination rather than comparison sites or competitors. The next step is to give your brand an identity; a trusted voice that speaks above all others and connects with customers. Using reviews is a great way of proving your brand is transparent and cares about the voice of the customer. reputation, and can overhaul current brand perceptions if you re having a little trouble in that area. Your reputation only goes as far as your customer touchpoints, then you lose control. A little effort goes a long way when it comes to maintaining a discourse with your customers. 53% of people said seeing a direct reply from a company to a customer would make them like the company more. (FlyResearch, November 2014) It helps here to understand the purchase journey: how are your customers finding you? What do they want to know during the research phase, and what can you provide them that effectively communicates your brand values? Reviews build your brand in two ways: creating content that defines your mission, and attracting the people you want to see it. Show a more personal side to your brand by participating in the conversation, responding to reviews where you can. This kind of interaction gives you control over your brand s Engaging content turns I want to buy into I want to buy from you. 11

12 OFFLINE In recent times, there s been a huge shift towards humanising the online experience. Extravagance and flashiness have been replaced with a more human, personal experience - just like the ones we used to have in stores. We ve spent so much time and energy focusing on the online experience that the bricks-and-mortar stores have been neglected. Combining the two doesn t have to be a hassle; it can bring together the best of both worlds. Digital savvy consumers want the in-store experience to seamlessly match the level of personalisation they re starting to get online - and why shouldn t they? A consumer sees no difference between your website and your store, so why should you? Some retailers are fusing the experiences by having tablets on hand to show review content collected online. Your sales staff can also benefit: 39% of people think that staff who work in store aren t knowledgeable enough (FlyResearch, November 2014). Educating the sales staff to refer to this content is a nice touch too. However, the power of this content shouldn t be confined to an ipad. 49% of people would find having reviews from an independent ratings and reviews company in store useful, and it would make 13% more likely to go to the store. (FlyResearch, May 2014) 77% of people expect the same level of service from a company s online presence and a company s store. (FlyResearch, November 2014) We know that on average, consumers who read reviews online spend 3.3x more time on your site, and view 3.6x more pages (Reevoo, May 2014). Displaying scores and reviews on product shelves and throughout your store or dealership brings those benefits into the real world. Having stations set up displaying reviews creates a clear link between online and offline. Bring in the personalisation element by allowing customers to segment the reviews to find ones from people most like them. And if you re showing reviews in-store, you should collect them in-store too. With a little creativity, brands can create exciting in-store experiences, and bring back those customers who are uninspired by the modern bricks-andmortar landscape. Your customers don t see you as being multichannel they just see you as a brand. That s how you should be thinking too. 12

13 SOCIAL For most brands, social media is the most direct way to connect with customers and answer customer service queries. However, since most people are on social media to interact with their peers, it can be tough for brands to get a look in. Allowing people to share the reviews they write with their networks is a clever way to get your brand and products seen on social media. It s a marketing Trojan horse with the believability and social proof that comes with a recommendation from a friend. On Facebook, an engaging app can aggregate reviews to capitalise on this interest and drive traffic to your own site. When it comes to social media advertising, using the opinions of real people is obviously a great hook. Put your customer data to work where it has the biggest emotive effect and you ll earn trust. 70% of customers helped through social media are likely to shop again and remain loyal to that brand. (Ambassador, 2013) Social media is just a continuation of your brand so make sure it s a continuation of your customer experience as well. Showing that you re listening to the voice of the customer and letting it be seen creates a personal attachment with your audience that s not just omnichannel it s omnipotent. There s a world of conversation happening on social media. Join in, but remember that people aren t there to be sold to they want to hear from real people. 13

14 COMMUNITY Having a dedicated group of brand advocates is pure gold for brands, but it requires constant effort. Word-of-mouth is a snowball but you have to provide the hill. Online community engagement is big business, but throwing money at consultants won t make brand advocates magically appear. 73% of consumers listed helping others as one of the main reasons for writing a review. (FlyResearch, November 2014) Things like peer-to-peer Q&A are great here, and can really help you identify strong brand advocates and influencers. To add another layer, go multimedia; photo and video reviews are extremely effective. Done the right way, you ll inspire your customers to contribute more content that s richer and more engaging. The snowball grows. 50% of people shopping online would prefer to see a mixture of media when looking at content provided by other consumers. (FlyResearch, November 2014) On your website, on social media, offline; building a community around your brand is one of the most powerful forces imaginable. It s all possible through user generated content. 47% of people would be willing to engage in an existing online community to talk about a company they liked, and what they purchased or would like to purchase. (FlyResearch, November 2014) Be loyal to your customers and they ll pay you back tenfold by doing the selling for you. 14

15 The sales benefits of ratings and reviews are well known. What sets forward-thinking businesses apart is how far they take it. By collecting genuine customer feedback in large amounts, you gain the trust of your customers and make them more likely to buy from you. By using it in every aspect of their business, brands can become completely customer-centric. And the business benefits of that go far beyond sales uplift. It s time to explore the possibilities of ratings and reviews. Sources: 1. FlyResearch is an independent market research agency. It surveyed over 1,000 people from its UK panel of 30,000 people. 2. Forrester 3. Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Report, September Ambassador 5. Reevoo stats are collected and aggregated across over 200 clients.

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