The Best Advertising
Learn why customer reviews are your best marketing tool and how to actively collect and leverage them to build trust and attract new customers.
Hey marketer! 🙋♂️
The old truth says that a satisfied customer is the best advertising. So let's dust it off a bit. 🧹
In the last newsletter, I touched on this topic with a tip about QR code stickers for easier review collection from customers in physical stores. It sparked some interest, so I'll stick with reviews a bit longer.
More and more people rely on reviews, recommendations, and ratings. You're probably no exception. When looking for accommodation, before your first purchase on a new e-shop, or when choosing your next phone. We've simply gotten used to validating our choices through other people's ratings. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ That's just how it is. And it probably saves us from unnecessary missteps and saves us money and nerves. From a customer's perspective, it's quite an unsurprising given.
But from an entrepreneur's perspective (at least from my experience), it's heavily underestimated. Both actively collecting reviews and then working with them. 👈🏻 Whether responding to them or using them further in marketing. And yet it costs nothing.
On my profile on the freelancer portal, I have a beautiful 80+ recommendations. With our sportswear manufacturing company, we've collected about 60 so far. They read so nicely! Balm for the soul. 🥰 But you know what? Almost all of them had to be asked for. Customers are satisfied, but it doesn't occur to them to write a public praise. And a bunch of them even promised to write one but forgot about it. 🤷🏻♂️ Most people only start writing reviews when they're angry. Then they give the supplier a nice sour public rating. And when you don't try to actively collect the positive ones, suddenly you have one star on profiles and you're branded as crooks to be avoided. You don't even know how it happened.
Don't let it go that far. ⚠️ If you haven't worked with reviews so far, check your listings on review sites and Google Business, refresh your profiles, and respond to all the ratings you have there. Or at least to the recent ones. Thank for positive feedback, apologize for negative ones, thank for the feedback, and offer a solution outside the platform (via email, phone). And specifically ask all other customers to write a short review if they were satisfied.
Many people don't have a talent for writing and don't even know how to write a review. Help them by suggesting they just factually summarize what service/product they bought from you and how satisfied they were with it. No need to produce an essay. If you run an e-shop, add the request to one of the last status emails. Or if you use review platforms, work with verified customer systems.
Then actively use the collected ratings and reviews. Display them on your website, use them in marketing materials, reference them. It's one of the pillars of building trust with new customers. And don't let up on collecting new ones.
Fake reviews are a separate topic. That's a big no-go. ❌ Simply put - lies have short legs. And once it's revealed that you have fake reviews, you're embarrassed. Moreover, in the context of current regulations, even greater emphasis is placed on their verifiability.
💡 Using Reviews for Marketing
Use what your customers write about you in reviews and recommendations for creating content on your website, print materials, when setting up ads. How? Read through the reviews and notice what people praise about you. What they were satisfied with. What they mention there. See? Suddenly you have a set of benefits you can work with further. And when your existing customers appreciate it, it can also appeal to completely new ones. And you don't have to rack your brains about what to attract them with.
💡 When You're Starting and Can't Get Reviews?
Everyone started somehow. Starting a business and don't have any ratings? Even here I have a tip on how to appear more trustworthy so that the first satisfied customer appears. Work at least initially on your website with model examples of your services (case studies), where you describe how you would approach and handle various situations. You let them peek into what customers can expect. This way you won't have to invent fictitious satisfied customers who would confirm you're good, but you tell them yourself through model cases.
💡 And When You Can't Get Public Recommendations Due to NDAs etc.?
Anonymize already completed work and describe it again using case studies on your website. Let it show that you have something behind you, it just can't be published for some reason. And feel free to write that there - people from your target audience will probably understand it.
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Looking forward to the next article!
Jan Barborik
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