Looking for a restaurant for date night? I bet you read the Tripadvisor reviews. Buying a new mascara? The one with 34,000 5 star reviews on Sephora is hard to look past! And you wouldn’t be alone. According to reports, 94% of online customers read reviews before making any purchasing decisions. And it makes sense - with a proliferation of products, services and options available to us, quickly and easily online, it's hard to judge if its a high quality product that is going to serve your needs when you cant touch and feel like you can in store, ask questions of the shop assistant, or see the gaggle of other people in store trying to get their hands on it!
So this is where reviews come to the rescue!
Positive reviews help:
Build trust
Improve consideration
Increase conversions
Increase your rankings
Creates social proof
Lets dig into these more deeply
Trust:
I know you as a brand say this product is great, but of course you’re going to say that! You’re trying to sell me something! Unless it’s a brand I know, love and trust, then getting a consumer to try a new brand/product/service can be challenging.
Positive reviews help consumers to trust you as a brand. Seeing that other consumers have engaged with your company and had a positive experience, means they are more likely to trust that you, and the products you sell, are going to meet their needs and give them a positive outcome too. Trust is hard to build and easy to break, so make sure you aim to get lots of positive reviews!
Improve consideration:
If I hadn’t heard of your brand before, but discovered you online and saw that you had hundreds of positive reviews, I would definitely get some FOMO! Why haven’t I heard of this? Why haven’t I tried this? I better get my hands on this! If Im thinking about switching from an existing brand to a new brand, positive reviews will increase the consideration of your product in that mix of options being considered.
Increase conversions:
Great - through your marketing efforts, online and offline (and utilising influencers for gifting) you have got the customer to your website. Congratulations!
Now that I’m here, what’s going to get me to part with my cold hard cash for something from your company?
Reviews.
Reports show that 92% of consumers hesitated to make a purchase if there were no customer reviews, and products with reviews are 270% more likely to be bought than a product without. For a higher priced product, this likelihood increases to 380%. Wow!
So don’t miss the opportunity to get your website visitors to become customers. Utilise the power of reviews to increase conversions.
Creates social proof
As humans, we’re inclined to want to be a part of the pack, which in years gone by kept us safe and protected from being eaten by lions! Now we all know we’re not likely to be eaten by lions in the 21st century, but we do still want to be a part of the pack. The social proof of reviews helps us know what is popular, trending and approved by others. This helps to validate my purchasing decisions, and confirms that I am aligned with a brand that is perceived positively by others. It’s a fast and easy way for customers to feel safe in making their purchase, knowing that other people are using and liking this brand too.
So now that you know the power of getting authentic user generated reviews for your brand, its time to get started in generating them. This used to be a challenge, but now #gifted is here to make getting authentic reviews fast, efficient and affordable. Just set up your #gift and set your request to be for reviews on your website, facebook, amazon store or all three, and let’s get your conversions skyrocketing!