While programming my Spring Break trip to California, I realized how important the reviews are today. In my experience they were very influential if not determinant of my choices of hotels and car rental companies.
As we all know, the Internet has become a key information source for researching products. According to Nielsen Online when making purchase decisions, North American Internet users trust recommendations from people they know and opinions posted by unknown consumers online more than advertisements on television, on the radio, in magazines and newspapers, or in other traditional media.
People read reviews because they try to get the most out of what they pay for and they want to know all the “secrets” about the product before they make a purchase. If the product page by itself does not make customers want to make a purchase, they will certainly look for more information before they go ahead and make the final decision.
Customers are looking for an honest opinion from someone they trust because money is tighter than it has ever been for many people and consequently, they want to make an informed decision. Reading reviews online can help strengthening a customer’s trust and belief on the product or brand.
So, it’s definitely very important for companies to pay attention to that and not to be afraid of the negative reviews. In fact, the majority word of mouth is positive. As said by BazzaarVoice, across all of Bazaarvoice US clients, 80% of product ratings are 4 or 5 stars out of 5. And across all of Bazaarvoice UK clients, 88% of product ratings are 4 or 5 stars out of 5.
While it is truth that people reading good reviews tend to sway towards the product because of the established trust other people have on that particular product or service, customers are also looking for negative reviews.
Negative and sincere reviews establish credibility. Customers know that if there aren't dissenting opinions about a product, then the opinions aren't real. If all they see are five-star reviews, they're reading testimonials, not authentic, credible customer reviews to help make a purchase decision.
As I said, reading customers’ reviews made a huge difference on the purchase decisions for my trip to California and it helped me to be more confident about my choices. So, as a customer and as a marketer I truly believe that reviews can help retailers to improve conversion rates, drive sales and increase customer satisfaction, since customer will know what to expect of the product or service they are about to purchase.
Showing posts with label Customers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Customers. Show all posts
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Some thoughts about Twitter
Despite the belief that brands use Twitter only as a channel to support customer service and PR activities, some brands are actually making money using Twitter.
After Dell reveling last year that they have generated a total of $6.5 million in revenue from their Twitter presence, now Sony announced that they made over £1m in sales through Twitter.
It’s good to observe this examples and what’s the strategy that companies are adopting for Twitter. Unfortunately, many companies don’t actually have a strategy. They have a Twitter or Facebook account because someone thought it was nice to have a presence on social media sites or they just felt the pressure to get involved and hoped something would come from it.
But this lack of strategy can be very dangerous as the channel is open and the impact can be extremely negative if the company doesn’t have a structure to respond to customers that contact them through Twitter, for example. We have seen recently cases of customer complaints that became public because of social media, damaging companies’ reputations and costing them a lot of money.
I believe that if the company is not willing to have a team dedicated to social media and take it seriously, it’s better to be out of it.
After Dell reveling last year that they have generated a total of $6.5 million in revenue from their Twitter presence, now Sony announced that they made over £1m in sales through Twitter.
It’s good to observe this examples and what’s the strategy that companies are adopting for Twitter. Unfortunately, many companies don’t actually have a strategy. They have a Twitter or Facebook account because someone thought it was nice to have a presence on social media sites or they just felt the pressure to get involved and hoped something would come from it.
But this lack of strategy can be very dangerous as the channel is open and the impact can be extremely negative if the company doesn’t have a structure to respond to customers that contact them through Twitter, for example. We have seen recently cases of customer complaints that became public because of social media, damaging companies’ reputations and costing them a lot of money.
I believe that if the company is not willing to have a team dedicated to social media and take it seriously, it’s better to be out of it.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Listening in Social Media
Listening is with no doubt one of the most important strategies that companies can use to obtain advantage from Social Media. But, what does listening means?
Listening in social media means observing your customers in their “natural territory”, where they are interacting with each other, your company and competitors. Your customers and prospects are leaving hints about their opinion, positive or negative, and are discussing your brand and products on their communities, with or without you, and it’s all out there for you and for the entire world to see.
According to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, on the book Groundswell, there are two basic listening strategies that companies should follow:
1. Set up your own private community: A private community is like a continuously running, huge, engaged focus group – a natural interaction in a setting where you can listen in.
2. Begin brand monitoring: Hire a company to listen to the internet – blogs, discussions, forums, YouTube, and everything else – on your behalf. Then have it deliver to your neat summary report about what’s happening to push the results out to departments, like customer service, that can address pressing customer issues.
While it can be true that hiring a vendor will help you to obtain more detailed and structured information, you can start now by searching what people are saying about your brand on blogs (e.g. Google Blog Search, IceRocket, Technorati), forums (e.g Boardreader) or on Twitter (Twitter Search). I am certain that you will find out that listening is an important way for you to understand what consumers care about, and get insights to what they think about you.
Listening in social media means observing your customers in their “natural territory”, where they are interacting with each other, your company and competitors. Your customers and prospects are leaving hints about their opinion, positive or negative, and are discussing your brand and products on their communities, with or without you, and it’s all out there for you and for the entire world to see.
According to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, on the book Groundswell, there are two basic listening strategies that companies should follow:
1. Set up your own private community: A private community is like a continuously running, huge, engaged focus group – a natural interaction in a setting where you can listen in.
2. Begin brand monitoring: Hire a company to listen to the internet – blogs, discussions, forums, YouTube, and everything else – on your behalf. Then have it deliver to your neat summary report about what’s happening to push the results out to departments, like customer service, that can address pressing customer issues.
While it can be true that hiring a vendor will help you to obtain more detailed and structured information, you can start now by searching what people are saying about your brand on blogs (e.g. Google Blog Search, IceRocket, Technorati), forums (e.g Boardreader) or on Twitter (Twitter Search). I am certain that you will find out that listening is an important way for you to understand what consumers care about, and get insights to what they think about you.
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