Customers nowadays are more aware about their favorite brands and what they do. They would appreciate more transparency and to get involved in the decision making process. Customers don’t believe in the basics of marketing and advertising anymore. And this is when businesses should take opportunity and start involving their customers into their strategy. Customers have a powerful impact on your business as they are your vital element in the sales process. Regardless if you sell a product or service, your business is nothing without them. So, let’s make sure you are not failing to take your customers opinion into consideration.
One of the most important steps in your business model is to understand your customer and their needs. When you take this huge aspect into consideration it means you are creating a custom product or a service to their needs. And in a saturated market, this is what will differentiate you among the others.
If you are a bigger business and you have targeted different types of customers it is recommended to keep this segment of your business well managed and organized. It can be difficult and overwhelming receiving hundreds or thousands of reviews and ignoring this opportunity.
Encouraging your customers to leave a review should be something to look at. Customer reviews can increase conversions by 270%*. Meaning that your business can benefit growth and online presence. On the other hand, more than 90% of customers will hesitate to buy from you if there are no reviews at all*. This also means no sales and no room for these following tips to be applied to.
So, how can you use the voice of your customers and start implementing that in your business strategy?
In one short word – simple! But we all know simple does not mean easy. Simply by listening or reading their reviews you can understand what your business can do better and what can be changed in order to deliver a better experience. You and your team can make decisions based on what they say, whether that being a review left on Google or directly on your website, it is important to consider them all.
- Start to use a review monitoring app that can gather all your reviews in one place and analyze them by different categories. Like I said earlier, you might be having a business that is targeting different demographics. Within these apps, you can easily divide those segments and further analyze them individually. Also, you can monitor your employees’ performance and help them to further understand your business. This aspect is important to consider in order to resonate with each one of your customers as not all of them behave the same.
- Use emotions and sentiments to develop a more personal relationship. We know that purchasing decisions are based upon an emotion. According to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman*, all purchase decisions are directly linked to the subconscious mind. When marketing a product or service, you have to make sure your customer will remember you by engaging with them. Your customer might have one emotion when purchasing and a different emotion after that. The sale process is not over yet. This is where you start building your relation and emotion-based interaction.
- Listen, analyze and then offer. It is important that all these steps are carefully being integrated. From your customer engaging with your business, the purchase decision and to the post purchase evaluation, we can add one more step. The offering step. This is when your business can offer back all that work that has been done based upon customer reviews. Let’s say you have a bakery and you want to remove one pastry and introduce a different one. What would your clients say? What are the initial thoughts of your product you want to remove? Is it necessary to make this change? What would the impact be? Make that informed decision based on benchmarking.
- Use that collected data from your customer reviews to set your strategy for the next few months. Make sure to use that review management app to the fullest. It gives you close insights into customer sentiments and how all these aspects can be measured. What gets measured, gets done! Set your key drivers, become analytic and drive your business performance to the maximum.
- Transform your customer reviews into a successful marketing strategy. This strategy is not new or revolutionary. However, it is something to be taken into account as 84% of people trust online reviews as if it would be recommended by a family member or a friend*. PS Word of mouth is not dead, it’s just receiving a new interface. There are various ways to implement these reviews. Some examples include reviews in search ads, testimonials in newsletters and in content marketing.
- Take advantage of your online customer activity. If your customers are leaving reviews it means they are engaged whether they left a positive or a negative review. Reviews are public, they are out there and can be seen by anyone. Benefit your business by that engagement and promote yourself. There is no such thing as bad publicity!
Understanding and showcasing customer reviews is a key element as this can influence their purchasing decision. Try to be present in their process since the beginning, increasing that trust, authority and engagement. There is nothing wrong with helping your customers achieve what they want or need. Customer purchase decisions will always rely on emotion or subconscious behavior. So get involved in that!
Support your business by considering all the important aspects that customer reviews can offer you. Implement your reviews, prioritize products with less engagement and reviews and understand that there is a possibility for negative reviews as well.
Sources
https://websitebuilder.org/blog/online-review-statistics/
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-subconscious-mind-of-the-consumer-and-how-to-reach-it
https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/