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How to Use Customer Reviews to Gain MORE Conversions
Our daily buying decisions are often based on positive customer reviews. Think about it – most of us check out customer reviews before we purchase at any store. We pore over product or service reviews online, comparing how many stars businesses got on Amazon, eBay, or Etsy before making a purchase.
Customer testimonials are a valuable tool for effective marketing. When fully taken advantage of, you can turn every positive customer feedback into additional sales.
Any business can use a positive customer review to get some exposure online. This goes regardless if your business is set strictly online or if you have a physical store.
If you've been receiving positive reviews from previous customers, you're probably wondering how to use these to their fullest. If you haven't been getting reviews despite having many satisfied customers, how do you ask previous clients for a testimonial? In this guide, we're helping you acquire and use customer reviews to gain more conversions and grow your business even more:
How to Get More Customer Reviews
To start your marketing campaign, you need to acquire more customer reviews. Below are strategies that will encourage more customers to leave testimonials:
Post-Purchase Emails
Strike while the iron is hot – send a follow-up email to a buying customer post-purchase to get them to leave a positive review. If you're on Flodesk, it's easy to track the customers who successfully made a purchase on your website via the Checkout feature. The Checkout tool creates a segment automatically for buying customers. Create a workflow and send a post-purchase email asking for a review.
App-Based Alerts
If your business has a mobile app, you can create special alerts for feedback requests that would pop up briefly on the screen. The request could feature a question that clients can answer quickly, e.g., “Are you enjoying this app?” “Help us get a 5-star rating,” or “Tell us how to improve your experience.”
Social Media
Make full use of your social media accounts and ask your followers to review your business. You can ask your followers to tag your business in social media posts, use a branded hashtag, and post short reviews in the comments section or via direct message.
Using social media to solve customer concerns is the norm these days, and you can also leverage this to ask for reviews. After solving the issue, ask the customer to take a moment to write a positive review.
Website Pop-Up
This is one of the most popular ways to collect customer reviews. Create a pop-up form that enables clients to leave positive feedback. Make the entire process of leaving reviews easy and quick so customers won't lose interest. Also, timing is everything when it comes to setting pop-up forms. The form must be non-intrusive and well-designed so it won't put off readers.
Review Snippets
Search for a service on Google, and you'll probably come across businesses with rating scores on top of the searches. This is Google's rich snippet reviews, and it features star-rated companies and a short excerpt of a review or rating left by customers. This feature is meant to help users gain information about a product or service without going through every website listed on the search pages
To create rich snippets, you'll need to use Google's Structured Data Markup Helper. Here is a step-by-step guide on how. Do note that Google has a set of guidelines for creating review snippets, which you must observe to avoid getting penalised.
How to Use Customer Reviews to Boost Sales Effectively
Now that you know how to collect customer feedback, it's time to make the reviews work harder to boost your sales. Below are ways to use customer reviews to attract more leads and gain more conversions:
Share Reviews on Social Media
Easily, one of the best ways to use customer reviews to drum up attention online is to share them on social media. Most users use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok.
Start by conducting market research to find out what social media sites are popular among your core audience. If you haven't already, build a community by inviting potential customers on these platforms. Once you have a decent following, you can post positive feedback to inform followers about your business or product.
Highlight Glowing Reviews on Your Online Promotions
Customer reviews make terrific marketing tools on and off social media. Use an online photo editing tool like Canva to create images that feature customer reviews. Use these assets to market your business online and offline. Don't forget to feature your website so more people will know about your business. This goes primarily online when you want to drive more clicks to your website or get people to check out whatever products they have in their carts.
Showcase on Sales Pages
Make your sales page work harder by reserving a section specifically for glowing reviews. Choose your best customer reviews and post these on a specific section of the sales page. We suggest posting positive feedback in the middle section of the sales page for maximum exposure.
About 95% of customers check for online reviews before buying a product. In addition, 58% of customers are willing to pay more for a product that gets positive reviews from previous customers. If you highlight the positive reviews on your sales pages, you are removing any doubt from consumers' minds about taking the desired action – to click that buy button or sign up for your service.
Testimonials at the Checkout
Many customers require a little “push” to get them to process a purchase. Try posting customer feedback on the checkout page to boost sales and reduce cart abandonment. The Checkout page is a great place to post testimonials because these give customers a better impression of your business.
With trust and credibility boosted, there's less chance of people abandoning their carts. Customers also feel more secure knowing people only have great things to say about your business.
If you're on Flodesk, we highly suggest exploring the Checkout feature to create and customise your purchase pages. Apart from featuring customer testimonials on your checkout page, you can also upsell/cross-sell with related products, high-rated products, and popular products.
Sort Out Issues to Avoid Bad Reviews
Reviews, positive and sometimes negative, can be used to promote your brand and spark renewed interest in your products among previous and current customers. Start by responding to all reviews and working hard to smooth out any issues, solve recurring problems with your products, and actively turn critics into loyal customers.
Never ignore negative reviews, and avoid engaging in tense or aggressive exchanges. Better yet, reach out to a frustrated customer and offer a refund, small discounts, next-purchase freebies, or other incentives to smooth out the issue in hopes of changing the bad review. Most customers will likely turn a bad review into a good one if the customer service is excellent.
Once the problem has been solved, you can use these instances as content to promote your business. You can frame it as turning critics into loyal customers or highlighting the amazing customer service.
Get Reviews from Popular Personalities
Popular personalities in your niche industry have a vast reach, and your core audience will likely be familiar with these influencers. Getting positive reviews from these people will boost your business' popularity.
Research shows that 71% of consumers are more likely to buy a product if a brand works with popular personalities they trust.
You can use social media to check for influencers and micro-influencers to team up with. Be mindful of the personality's content, tags, and shares because their image should align with your brand. You can offer to send your products for these influencers to review and request a feature in return. You can then promote the feature on social media to boost credibility and increase sales.
Utilise User-Generated Content
Nowadays, this is something that every business needs to use to their advantage. You’re going to find so many customers who are just willingly creating content, such as unboxing and reviews of products and services that they bought from you. UGC adds authenticity and credibility to a brand's image. So, when potential customers see real people sharing positive experiences or using a product, it fosters trust. You’ll find plenty of marketing agencies; even the Australian experts from Due North will strongly recommend that every business use this. You need to come off as authentic, and this is one of the best ways to go about it.
Make customer feedback pop with Flodesk
Now that you know all the effective strategies for leveraging positive reviews, it's time to use these reviews for future promotions and grow your business. Take full advantage of Flodesk's email templates and automation tools to request positive feedback whenever you make a sale.
[…] On top of these benefits, you also benefit from a marketing perspective. Apps can be used to deliver push notifications to your customers, instantly directing them to your products with one click of a button. You should also consider introducing app-specific discounts – like a code for all orders placed via your mobile app. It will encourage more downloads and lead to more conversions. […]