For every forward step people take down the purchase funnel to buy goods and services, they take two steps back on account of distrust. As consumers in our internet based world, we’re less inclined to believe sales pitches for products we cannot touch or see without checking on peer opinions first. It comes as no surprise then, that testimonials have the highest effectiveness rating for trust-building in the marketplace. How high? As much as 89%! Consumers, on average, are 63% more likely to buy a product after reading a positive online testimonial, and spend around 11% more when they do. One of the many reasons Amazon has taken over so much market share from retail spaces.
This is why customer reviews are – and will continue to be – an indispensable tool to open multiple cyber doors that lead to the same sacred temple ground within your business website: the product purchase page.
The two gatekeepers who control the warren of customer-entry portals to this inner sanctum sanctorum are search engines and social media platforms. And of the two, it is the former, with its complicated and ever-changing matrix of SEO rules and regulations, who’s the harder entity to please.
The marketing advantage of customer reviews is that the concept is already pre-approved, by its very nature, to be SEO-friendly. Customers love testimonials. Google loves customers and therefore loves testimonials too. And on account of their fresh, unique, contextual and highly social nature, Google loves testimonials even more.
If this hasn’t convinced you already to build or beef up the testimonial strategy on your own domain and third-party review sites, let’s break the idea up into 4 very compelling parts:
CUSTOMER REVIEWS PROMOTE WEBSITE AUTHORITY
• Google is always listening to the chatter in the consumer marketplace. And the more it hears your business’ name come up – and come up positively — the more value it adds to your business’ authority. You become high-value search result links for search engine users. (Notice that the more you scroll down the search result pages, the star ratings become less and less visible next to links.)
VISIBLE STAR RATINGS QUADRUPLES CHANCES OF YOUR LINK BEING CLICKED
• When faced with a page full of search results, how does a potential customer choose which link to click on from the top stack? Visible star ratings! Five little yellow stars that not only catch their attention, but help them make spot-decisions about your reputation, credibility, popularity and trustworthiness. (Studies have shown that first-impressions create strong cognitive bias that tends to remain unchanged as customers move down the purchase pipeline.)
CUSTOMER REVIEWS ARE THE NEW `BACKLINKS’
• For the longest time, the laborious process of garnering backlinks for websites have left marketers tired on their toes. As many a medium to small-sized businesses have already found out, getting good, solid, high-value websites to post links to your content is a mammoth, multi-pronged marketing endeavor that need big outlays of time and money – without guarantees or assurance of satisfactory results. But a good SEO structure demanded backlinking, and so everybody made a half-hearted attempt, and quite predictably, failed to make much headway.
In today’s marketplace, customer reviews are playing the same role as backlinking in Google SEO rulebook. What’s more, Google can even evaluate the strength of a review based on actions and history of the person that wrote the testimonial!
SEARCH ENGINES RELY ON SOCIAL PROOF
• Here’s a fabulous, real-world example of just how powerful an impact social proof has on consumers (and by extension, search engines).
A research study posed 4 `signs’ in order to persuade customers to use fans instead of air-conditioning during summer:
Sign #1: Customers were told they could save $54 per month on their utility bill.
Sign #2: They were told they could save 262 pounds of greenhouse gasses every month.
Sign #3: They were told that saving energy was a socially responsible thing to do.
Sign #4: They were told that 77% of their neighbors were already using fans instead of AC to save energy.
So which was the most effective sign? You would think – and I certainly did – that it would be the first sign. We all know that saving money is one of strongest human impulses that affect purchase decisions.
But it wasn’t! The most effective sign was #4. People reacted and took most action because their neighbors were doing the same!
Persuasive, isn’t it, to reframe and re-evaluate your marketing strategy to garner a whole lot more positive customer reviews? It could be making all the difference between a sale and a bounce. Make sure to take the time to send surveys to your customers. Ask their opinion. The value of customer reviews is one of the most advantageous ways to advertise in our market today.
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