how to boost brand awareness and trust through online advocate reviews

INSIDE THE RESEARCH: How to Boost Brand Awareness and Trust Through Online Advocate Reviews July 29th, 2015

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Presenters

CHRIS NEWTONVP of Business Development

Influitive@csnew10

TIM HANDORFCo-founder and President

G2 Crowd@thandorf

WHY REVIEWS MATTER

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Potential buyers found that the people in their personal networks could provide a more transparent view of what to expect of a given product, post-purchase

Buyers Are Smart

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Build Trust Early in the Funnel

It’s where your buyers are:

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User generated content = search engine results

Improve your Searchability

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FOCUS GROUPS ON DEMAND:

Gather ongoing feedback from both your customers, and your competitor’s customers and what they love and hate

Gather Insights from your Customers, and Competition

HOW TOP BRANDS DRIVE MORE QUALITY REVIEWS

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Be Transparent in your Request

TRANSPARENT REQUESTS:

• Emphasize honest reviews

• Reviews help the community of buyers with their research

• Recognize that your product doesn’t do everything, emphasize what you do best

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Make it Fun!

Kevin Lau – Online Marketing Manager @ Quorum

“By tapping into our advocates, we were able to obtain approximately 100

4.5/5 star reviews in less than one year!”

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Make it Easy

• Provide a few bullets to help them think about what to write

• Provide a couple of examples

• After someone has written one review, encourage frequent reposting!

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Incentives & Recognition

• Up to 10X the number of reviews

• Combination of incentives

• Not sufficient for long-term engagement

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Long-Term Engagement

• Provide recognition for reviews

• Tie your review campaign to other initiatives that offer value to advocates

• Ensure that product feedback is heard internally

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Empower your Advocates

EMPOWER:First, we asked our advocates for feedback on

our new Influitive VIP Logo.

Then, advocates kept the momentum going by

contributing to other campaigns.

THE RESULT?

6 NEW REVIEWS ON G2 CROWD IN UNDER AN HOUR

RECIPROCITY:

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Scaling Your Program with Technology

• Winner of the 2014 Best Product Review Campaign Award in the BAMMIES

• Within 8 weeks: garnered over 1,900 new reviews on Salesforce.com AppExchange!

• Today: over 4,300 across all review sites, making Docusign the highest-rated eSignature application across all major review sites

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When is the best time to ask?

• Events/conferences

• Following an upsell/renewal

• New feature/product launches

• Leading up to a major purchasing cycle

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1.Old reviews don’t address new features

2.Newer positive reviews diminish the impact of older negative reviews

3.More current reviews can pull you ahead of the competition

Review Campaigns Must Be Ongoing

INSIDE THE G2 CROWD REPORT: THE RESEARCH

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G2 Crowd looked at 114 Influitive customers and found that on average they:

• Have more reviews• Are better positioned• Receive more page views• Receive more leads than other products in their category

Inside the G2 Crowd Report

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More Page Views

In the month of January 2015, the average product page on G2 Crowd received 10,282 page visits, while the average influitive customer received 35,667 visits.

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More Leads

Influitive customers who have performed a review campaign get 200% more leads compared to other products on the site.

REPURPOSING REVIEWS FOR EVEN GREATER VALUE

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Customer Proof for Marketing

OTHER MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES:

Pull the quotes and examples from the online reviews you drive to gain even more value :

• Testimonial Page for your Website

• Conference materials

• Industry specific handouts

• Case studies and blog posts

• Email signatures

Verified Reviews add Legitimacy to Marketing Claims

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Valuable Tool for Sales Reps

• Reinforce and even replace the sales reference call

• Provide industry specific proof

• Address concerns about competition

• Answer specific objections or feature concerns

AS A CLOSING TOOL:

AS A PROSPECTING TOOL:

• Negative reviews of competition can be a good place to prospect new leads

• Research top concerns for prospects, and the drawbacks of similar software offerings

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If You’re Not Ranking Favourably…

1.Use product reviews to drive your product roadmap

2.Use the comparison grids to create targeted marketing and sales collateral

3.Launch a new review campaign once enhancements have been released

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Reviews are here to stay

THEN NOW

LOCAL ADVERTISING

($20 BILLION)

TRAVEL($6.5 TRILLION)

RETAIL($22 TRILLION)

JOBS($122 BILLION)

B2B TECHNOLOGY

($4 TRILLION)

Consumer opinions posted on-line are the second most trusted form of advertising only to recommendations from people I know

SOURCE: NIELSEN

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Questions?

CHRIS NEWTONVP of Business Development

Influitive@csnew10

TIM HANDORFCo-founder and President

G2 Crowd@thandorf

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Data Sources for Further Reading

• “Survey says B2B buying cycle getting longer, more complex” Demand Gen Report

• “How Social Media and Industry Analysts Impact B2B Tech Sales” Hill+Knowlton

• “The 2012 IT Buyer Experience Survey: Accelerating the New Buyer's Journey” IDC

• “The Impact of Advocate Marketing on Product Reviews” Influitive & G2 Crowd