Happy customers are one of the best marketing assets in your business. Even if they're strangers, 90% of people are much more likely to trust a recommended brand than an advertised brand.
Word-of-mouth marketing, buyer reviews, and other types of user-generated content not only build trust between yourself and future customers, but reinforces your relationship with your current buyers as well.
Trustpilot, a digital review platform designed to improve customer trust, has been helping business owners do just that since 2007. With Trustpilot's platform, users now have access to transparent reviews uncontrolled by the brand; increasing brand loyalty with current customers and trust with future customers.
Trust is an essential foundation for any long-lasting relationship, and transparency makes trust possible. When a brand builds good customer relationships, it can build loyalty with its customers. According to Label Insights, 94% of shoppers will stay loyal to a transparent brand.
Regardless of your marketing objectives, be it conversions, awareness, lead generation, or something else - buyer reviews will get the job done every time!
Why Are Buyer Reviews So Important for Shoppers?
The reason buyer reviews are trusted 12x more than other marketing materials can be narrowed down to one sentence: reviews show your potential customers they won’t regret making a purchase.
Increasing your customer trust is only one of the many benefits of utilizing marketing reviews, though. Here are a couple more reasons social proof helps boost sales:
Better descriptions: Examine your customer review language to see how they describe product or service features in straightforward terms. It’s easy to make the wrong assumptions, so incorporating customer reviews into your product descriptions can help future buyers understand it more clearly.
UGC: UGC, otherwise known as User-Generated-Content, is the original content of your brand, product, or service created by your user. Users often share their experiences, opinions, or ideas, giving your brand opportunities to improve.
When it comes to building trust, including Trustpilot branding in conjunction with your buyer reviews can help as well. According to one London Research study, US consumers are almost three-and-a-half times more likely to click a Trustpilot co-branded ad.
5 Ways to Improve Your Marketing Results Using Reviews
Let’s face it, you’d never buy anything from a brand if you thought you would regret your purchase, right? Most users are the same way. Marketing strategies only work when you can do one thing: Convince a user that you’re trustworthy.
Since the average person now needs 10 touchpoints before purchasing, weaving buyer reviews and other trust signals into your marketing efforts could be the key difference between a successful campaign and a not-so-successful one.
Place Reviews on Key Website Pages
All website visitors have the possibility to convert and become a customer. After all, they clicked on your website for a reason, whether it’s to learn more information or consider a purchase.
Our number one suggestion is placing trust signals on key website pages, such as your homepage, service/product pages, blog, and other high-traffic areas. These pages are often the ones that convert your leads into customers, so including buyer reviews and other social proof will help that user be certain about their buying decision. Using customer reviews in marketing can prove to be extremely persuasive.
Here’s a list of recommended pages to place buyer reviews on your website:
Your homepage
About Us
A dedicated Trustpilot reviews page
At the bottom of blog posts
Sales and landing pages
Contact Us
Case Studies
Include Them In Your Email Drips
“Like every marketing channel, email performs better when it proves the business is trusted by consumers. With the power of your existing customers’ voices, you can get closer to consumers, and win new customers.” - Trustpilot
Your current customers are always going to be your best advertising tool. According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers around the world said they trust recommendations from strangers, friends, or family above all other forms of marketing.
Since buyer reviews are unfiltered, unpaid opinions on your brand or offering, potential customers feel more at ease when they know others have had a positive experience.
One of the best places to include reviews is going to be in your welcome or introductory email. This will serve as the first point of contact from you to your user and should include trust-building indicators, such as social proof, video testimonials, UGC (user-generated content), and other forms of reviews.
Another type of email you can include buyer reviews would be sales emails. These could be abandoned cart emails, discount or sales notices, reminders, cold outreach, or any other type of email considered a tool for conversions.
Include Reviews In Your Social Advertisements
Over half of all buying experiences start on social media. Whether it’s to research a brand, find customer testimonials, or other information before making a purchase, users continue to flock to social media to figure out what type of product or service would best fit their needs.
Due to the rise of online shopping and the amount of time people spend on social media, social media now greatly impacts consumer buying decisions. After all, users can now see an ad, click on it, and instantly make a purchase. If your ad contains signals of trust, such as buyer reviews or user-generated content, you’re more likely to convince a user to turn into a customer.
Research shows that user-generated content-based ads get four times higher click-through rates and a 50% drop in cost-per-click than average. With those proof points, it’s easy to see how trust signals like star ratings, reviews, and testimonials impact buyer decisions.
Incorporate User-Generated Content into Your Efforts
As we’ve mentioned a few times in this article, UGC, otherwise known as user-generated content, is one of the best tools you could have in your marketing arsenal.
According to Trustpilot, here are three main benefits to using UGC in your marketing efforts:
UGC is excellent for SEO: This increases your credibility in search because it gives Google more context for what the page contains and helps it decide which search queries make the most sense to lead to your site. This text is also being constantly refreshed, so Google can see that your pages are still up to date and relevant.
UGC improves your engagement and retention: Engagement and retention are both areas where you can never have too much. Fortunately, user-generated content is effective in improving both of them. Websites with UGC can see a 20% increase in return visitors and up to a 90% increase in time spent on site. And if you’re looking for engagement on social, UGC posts see a 28% higher engagement rate than your brand posts.
UGC saves you time and money: In addition to being more trustworthy, it’s also a lot more cost-effective. If your happy customers are talking about your brand and engaging with it, that's free(or free-ish) advertising you can now use in your marketing.
Click here to learn three more ways UGC benefits your marketing efforts.
Highlight Your Trustpilot Score
“Because of the credibility factor, a Trustpilot review brandmark is becoming a household name for transparent and trustworthy reviews. In addition, building out a reputation on Trustpilot can get a brand seen in search better than before. This happens because our Domain Authority puts us in the top 1% of websites visited worldwide. Any businesses listed with automatically be more visible and more trustworthy to search engines.” - Tom Balanda of Trustpilot
If users are looking for ways to trust a brand before purchase, Trustpilot is the best way to do it. Your Trustpilot score can be placed on advertisements, packaging, website pages, proposals, emails, and any other marketing avenue for your business.
But not only does it help create trust with your users, but it helps create trust between yourself and Google as well.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of optimizting your website to show Google that you are a reputable source of information. Google’s main reason for existing is to give its users the exact answer to whatever they may search for. Because of this, their crawlers thoroughly check every website they index to ensure it’s going to give its audience exactly what they need.
When your website can be linked to a Trustpilot webpage, Google will start to notice your business as one that can be trusted. Over time, that trust can help boost your search engine rankings and improve your website traffic.
How Can Trustpilot Help Increase Buyer Spending?
There's a good chance you clicked on this blog because Trustpilot was being featured, correct? One of the biggest reasons we partner with Trustpilot is the automatic credibility factor associated with their brand. Our co-branding partnership helps us streamline our review process, improve our customer service, and increase our search engine visibility.
"Retail for example: only look for reviews as product reviews, but a lot of work goes into other aspects of your business. Returns, customer service, subscription cancelations, etc. These brand things are often the most researched by our customers before buying from a certain brand.” - Tom Balanda
When users can see that their purchase won’t result in a return, or that the business they are potentially going to support is customer-approved, it’s easier for them to justify making a purchase.
Partnering with Trustpilot also creates unique opportunities to improve your brand awareness and recognition as well. By engaging and including Trustpilot branding in your social media, ads, or other customer-facing marketing efforts, your business credibility is automatically boosted. These extra boosts give users an extra reason to stop and take a look at your brand.
Key Takeaways
Improving marketing results is something every business owner wants to do. One of the best ways to do this is by utilizing customer reviews and other types of social proof in your efforts. By partnering with companies like Trustpilot, you’re able to elevate your brand and gain customer trust faster than before.
When customers or potential shoppers trust you, it’s easier for them to make a purchase. If you’re interested in becoming a Trustpilot Partner and want to learn more about how it can improve your business results, click the link here to speak with someone.