This epoch has reached the edge of information blast, the reason being the progression of the internet and social platforms. These days your potential buyers can promptly evaluate your product/service, based on the related content present online. Among that content, the customer reviews hold some vital importance.
Online reviews and testimonials have an undeniable influence on a buyer’s journey, particularly in the B2B industry. That’s the very reason for which you should force your customers to post reviews regarding your products/services.
Whenever any potential customer considers online reviews before making a purchase, the source of the review wouldn’t bother him a lot. All he needs is proof to trust your product. It wouldn’t make much of a difference if he gets that proof from a stranger or from a known person.
Customer reviews help the buyers in all the three stages of their buying journey. The stages being:
- Awareness stage: (Customer realizes the need for the product/service)
- Consideration stage (Customer starts thorough research about your brand)
- Decision Stage (Customer makes the final decision)
For your ease, we have compiled a great piece of information for you to know the importance of customer reviews in a B2B buyer’s journey.
1. Blog Posts
It’s essential to write blogs regarding your product/service, as it helps your customers in the awareness stage. Here you can enlighten them with all the product related information that they need to know. It’s like answering the unanswered questions. Provided you come up with interesting blog topics that inspire the customers to share their thoughts.
For example, you wrote a blog on the following topic:
How our product will help your business grow?
Now such a topic will inspire your customers to share their experience with your product, in the form of reviews. However, in the long run, these reviews will help your potential customers trust and know your product in a better way.
2. Social Media
These days it’s essential for you to utilize your customer testimonials on various social media platforms, as to earn trust and in a later stage the sales. We all are aware of the fact that the use of social media is tremendous these days. It’s actually a gold mine if you utilize it for brand awareness.
In short posting customer reviews and testimonials on such platforms will help your customers a lot in the awareness stage.
3. Your Web Pages
It would be a plus to include customer reviews on your website. The benefit being, building the trust. As soon as the reader goes through the product information, bombard him with supportive customer reviews. This will again help him in the awareness stage of his buying journey.
4. Webinars
Another way to utilize customer reviews is by discussing them during your webinars. Webinars hold more importance, as here you use a face to represent your product/service. So, when an influencer personally mentions some good reviews in the webinar, the guest tends to listen to those reviews even more attentively.
5. Review Sites
Review sites are the platforms where most of the serious buyers visit when collecting product information. Here, you can answer general queries regarding your product/service while embedding customer reviews in your answer in a subtle way. This activity is most suitable to attract customers when they are in the consideration stage of their buying journey.
6. Via Emails
Emails help the customers a lot in the consideration stage. Once your customer fills in the inquiry form, send him a decent email with a testimonial that ideally fits with his requirements and needs.
Did you know this tactic of using customer reviews?
7. Customer Case Studies
Finally, we have the decision stage. Here you can provide your customers with comprehensive case studies, which include the whole story of you addressing your customer’s pain points and how they felt afterward (customer reviews).
8. Ebooks
It is very common for today’s customers to do massive research before they actually make the purchase decision. Ebooks, in this case, are very valuable. They usually contain detailed insights into a trend, issue, or even a whole industry. Ebooks allow customers to make informed decisions, by providing them pro-tips from the industry experts and thought leaders.
So, it would be a good idea to incorporate your customers’ testimonials regarding how you helped them solve a big problem.
If you want to stay ahead in the corporate race, learn how to leverage customer reviews in every step of your customer journey. However, if you are not willing to do any of that, just know that your smart competitors are already at it.
Also, don’t forget to check out our recent blog to learn “4 Ways to Collect More Truthful Customer Feedback“.