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Online reviews are a goldmine for marketers, and luckily for you, that gold keeps growing.
Just four years ago, the number of online reviews increased by 87% compared to the previous year, according to a study by McKinsey. Although growth has slowed, it has not stopped and is likely to increase.
And all of this online feedback is linked to sales. McKinsey found that even small improvements in a product's star rating can lead to higher sales.
For marketers, however, these reviews can contain gold of a very different kind: They offer the opportunity to identify potential needs and improvements for their messages and products.
Gautam Kanumuru, CEO and co-founder of Yogi, discusses several brands that have gained glory through customer reviews in his presentation at the Marketing Analytics & Data Science (MADS) conference.
Reviews act as digital focus groups
Think of ratings and reviews as unfiltered focus groups with tens of thousands of users. Reviews, Gautam says, provide detailed metrics of consumer preferences to help answer questions like these:
- Which marketing messages resonate with my customers?
- How can we compare ourselves with the competition and leverage our competitors’ consumer data?
- What are the most common complaints within a category?
By analyzing reviews to answer these questions, you can improve your marketing statements and optimize product detail pages and campaigns immediately. By analyzing your competitors' reviews, you can develop updates and new iterations of your products in the likely 12-18 month cycle. Evaluating common complaints in the category could open your brand's eyes to developing new products in a similar timeframe.
Example: Tylenol updates product label in response to reviews
Tylenol sells acetaminophen in soluble packets – the product can be put directly into the consumer's mouth, where it dissolves on the tongue. But what do many consumers do when they open a packet of powder? They pour it into a glass of water, where it sits on top and doesn't dissolve.
Tylenol discovered consumer confusion after reading product reviews. Customers left comments like, “This product doesn't work. No matter how much water I pour on it, no matter how much I shake, nothing happens.”
Although the original packaging said “No water needed,” the font was small and consumers didn't pay attention. So Tylenol updated the message to show a crossed-out water bottle with the words “Fast and effective pain relief. No water needed.”
Gautam says this change eliminated complaints about the product's lack of resolution. It also led to an increase in the product's average star rating, which leads to more impressions, higher conversion rates, and more sales.
Example: Rating data gives Estée Lauder guidance on how to react to formula changes
Gautam collected review data for night care products. He evaluated more than 86,000 reviews from six sources, including Sephora, ULTA and Nordstrom, for similar products from Estée Lauder and Clarins. The analysis found a decline in ratings for Estée Lauder when the company changed the product formula, falling from a high of 4.8 out of 5 stars in the second quarter of 2022 to a low of 4.2 stars a year later, while Clarins remained relatively stable at around 4.4 stars.
The cosmetics industry relies on consumers who buy infrequently purchased products, such as night creams, over and over again. “If someone who normally buys this product has a negative experience, [with the new formulation]they will buy something else next time,” he says.
Now Estée Lauder knows how consumers reacted to the change in formula and can assess whether and what product changes should be made in the future.
Example: Scünci, manufacturer of hair ties, analyzes marketing claim
Hair accessories brand Scünci makes marketing claims that focus on the durability of their hair ties – that they last longer than those of other brands. Gautam analyzed the reviews that mentioned durability and calculated their average ratings. Scünci's durability-related ratings averaged 3.26 out of 5, while reviews that mentioned durability for all comparable manufacturers averaged 3.81.
These findings led Gautam to say that Scünci's marketing claim on shelf life may need to be adjusted. If consumers buy the product for its shelf life and it doesn't meet the requirements, their negative experience may result in a poor online review.
“So maybe you need to refocus your focus, what you say you do best, or secondly, this is a priority that needs to be escalated to the product team to make improvements and understand what's happening, or probably a combination of both,” says Gautam.
How to start analyzing reviews
Although analyzing online reviews is very valuable, McKinsey says that few companies have programs specifically dedicated to this purpose. Even if you don't have the resources to dedicate a full-time employee or team to analyzing customer reviews, you should take some time to reap the benefits.
A team member with analytics experience could manually review the data to answer simple questions like, “Have our ratings improved since we changed our formula last quarter?” and “What keyword appears most frequently in our 1-star reviews?” To make manual scoring more manageable, use a smaller data set.
If you have more resources to devote, licensing or developing an AI-powered tool can help you gain insights faster, drill down, use filters, and create competitive data sets. Example questions to ask include: “Are we focusing on the right things on our product description pages and in marketing?” and “How does the time of year affect consumers' opinions of our product's sugar content?”
Collect B2B consumer data
Gautam's examples focused on B2C brands, but the process works similarly for B2B brands as well. I once helped set up a ratings and reviews program for a B2B software company. Here's how to get started:
- Allow customers to leave ratings and reviews on your website (e.g. product pages). Helpful tools include Trustpilot and TrustRadius.
- Publish your average ratings and customer reviews on your website.
- Request your product listings on review sites like G2, Capterra, and Gartner Peer Insights.
- Work with internal teams (e.g. sales, customer success, customer support) to invite customers to leave ratings and reviews on your website and external review sites.
- Monitor and review ratings and reviews. Escalate any issues you observe to the appropriate team or manager.
- Share product feedback from reviews with product teams.
Get the gold
Whether B2C or B2B, ratings and reviews are a goldmine of data. Use Gautam's insights to start your ratings/reviews program or take an existing program to the next level. It can be a great opportunity to increase the value of the marketing team across your entire organization. Let me know how it goes and maybe I'll give you a 5-star review.
All tools mentioned in this article are suggested by the author. If you have a tool to suggest, share the article with a comment on social media.
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Cover photo by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
