When thinking about reviews and the relevance of reviews, many businesses think about B2C businesses. If they’re a B2B business, they may find themselves wondering if there’s any/much value in them bothering to pursue a review strategy at all. However, as ‘The Anatomy of Reviews’ (a recent article on all things reviews) points out, “92% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase after reading a trusted review”.
If, after reading that amazing statistic, you need any further convincing, please read our blog, “Should my Business Collect Reviews?”.
That 92% statistic certainly backs up our experience of seeing how B2B businesses are quickly realising that online reviews are as important for them as their B2C counterparts, but why?
Well, at a fundamental level it appears that nearly every facet of our purchasing decisions are, to some degree, based on seeking out feedback before making a final purchasing decision. Indeed, in last week’s blog, we mentioned that 91% of 18 to 34-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
That’s powerful in and of itself, but particularly so when you also know that 63% of people don’t trust advertisements, and 71% don’t trust sponsored ads on social platforms. So, if people don’t trust ads and sponsored content, what do they trust?
For Potential Clients/Customers
- They trust reviews because they see them as transparent and authentic feedback directly from your previous customers, and it delivers an understanding of their experience of your service or product.
- The star rating system enables your prospective customers to feel that they’re getting candid feedback which helps them to make a confident buying decision.
For B2B Businesses
- Good reviews reduce risk and for typically larger purchases, clients/customers are all about reducing risk! They’ll go where the good reviews lead them.
- Reviews are an integral part of your overall marketing strategy and can be used as the trusted assets that they are for campaigns. They can also help you to position yourself far more competitively and confidently.
- Reviews enable you to listen to your consumers and gain their feedback which, in turn, you can use to improve your client service and/or product even further.
- Asking for reviews provides B2B businesses with the opportunity to speak to consumers again (always good), establishing deeper relationships and helping to avoid churn.
- When speaking to potential new clients/customers you have a powerful arsenal of trusted reviews to demonstrate just how good your business and product/service really is.
- B2B businesses who are keeping a close eye on their reviews are also, by default, keeping a very close eye on their online reputation and in today’s day and age, that’s absolutely key.
- B2B businesses who proactively build up positive reviews will enjoy many benefits including a great online reputation, consumer trust, more goodwill and far wider exposure than those who don’t.
How to Collect Your Reviews
Two things are absolutely key to a proactive review strategy:
- Appoint one person to hold responsibility for ensuring that your agreed review strategy is put in place, actioned and reported on
- Ensure that they proactively ask for reviews. We know! It sounds obvious but when people get busy things get forgotten and there are few things worse than outdated, old reviews that aren’t regularly updated. When’s the best time to ask for a review? You can read our thoughts on that exact subject in our blog “When’s the Best Time for a Review?
And where does Trustist come into this whole review piece? Well here at Trustist, we can help B2B and B2C businesses with their review collection and aggregation across various platforms.