7 Easy Ways to Leverage Customer Reviews in Your Marketing Efforts

Customer-centric stories make for compelling content. Are you making the most them?

While not surprising to most, it may be disheartening to some marketers to realize a brand’s voice is no longer owned by the professional, but by the customer.

It’s true, consumers feel better when they can hear a real-life, peer-vetted story detailing your product or service in action. As a result, brands who engage with customers online, encourage feedback and communicate with their audience transparently can more easily earn the trust of shoppers.

This is what makes reviews such a powerful marketing tool.

So, what are some of the easiest ways to include a strong customer voice in your marketing strategy? Let’s go over a few!

Feature in newsletters and email marketing.

Showcase some of your best and most helpful customer reviews in your email marketing to help give a nudge to those engaged-but-on-the-fence customers.

Including a full, lengthy review isn’t necessary, just a strong pull-quote highlighting a “wow moment” or the overall sentiment of your customers is more than enough to catch a potential customer’s eye and leave them wanting to know more about your brand and products. Social proof at its best.

Share on social media.

Don’t wait until a problem occurs to interact with your customers on social media. Communicate with users in a fun and positive way by highlighting their comments and engaging them in conversations about your brand for others to discover online.

Embed reviews on product pages.

Take control of your bounce rate. Give visitors less of a reason to look elsewhere by including reviews and star-ratings for your products directly on your shopping interface.

Don’t forget about print materials.

In an Internet-driven world, taking the conversation offline may not be your first thought, but including customer quotes in print materials like brochures and direct mail pieces can be a powerful way to grab a reader’s attention and may even encourage them to do further research and find other reviews for your product online.

PPC ads

Many marketers today allocate the largest portion of their budget toward PPC ads through Google AdWords and other channels. Ads like these feature a limited character count to capture your audience’s attention. Consider A/B testing your ads by including your star-rating, messaging about your overall customer sentiment or even a quote from a customer in your copy.

Broadcast ads.

Featuring customer testimonials, star-ratings, or accreditation badges on television commercials can help a brand more easily assert their trustworthiness and even drive a traditionally less engaged audience to action by encouraging them to look up the product and research what users are really saying.

Develop a case study.

Don’t forget about the power of longer-form content! We’re so used to competing for attention, communicating in 140-characters-or-less, that we don’t always take full advantage of all that our customers’ stories really have to offer. The higher the investment (whether that’s a monetary or emotional investment) a customer is making, the more research they tend to do. This is where longer-form content like case studies can help engage a researching consumer and put them at ease by being able to see the experience they’re getting ready to have through someone else’s eyes.