Graeme Crossley

Online customer reviews are a trusted source of product information for consumers — and a valuable marketing tool that can be used to build brand trust. Building and implementing a review site strategy is an inexpensive but powerful way of growing market share and the role of the Internet is vital in inspiring and confirming purchases both online and offline.

Reviews are an important consumer touch point; over 81% of all UK adult internet users conduct research online prior to making a purchase. Consumers are already talking about you.

Plus reviews do not just influence purchases online. Reviews also have significant influence for higher value purchases made offline. Reviews also provide brand owners with real-time feedback which can drive sales, increase market share and build trust in brands.

Consider the statistics*
• 87% of internet users go online to source information and 67% of shoppers spend more money online after recommendations
• 84% of consumers said they were more likely to check online for reviews prior to making a purchase compared to twelve months ago
• Consumer reviews are significantly more trusted – nearly 12 times more – than descriptions that come from manufacturers
• 63% of consumers state they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews
• 81% of consumers consider the availability of customer reviews to be “very important”
• According to a survey of 2,445 online consumers, 82% considered user-generated reviews “extremely valuable or valuable”
• 54% of UK consumers agree that “customer ratings/reviews help me decide whether or not to purchase a product/service”
• 41% of Europeans claim to have changed their mind about what brand to buy as a result of researching choices online
• In a study by ForeSee Results customer satisfaction was 11% higher among visitors who said they had seen customer reviews on a site.

Consumers want to know more about your products and services before they decide to buy. Consumers trust each other more than they trust your brand and what you say about it.

Of course the most valuable customer isn’t necessarily someone who buys a lot – it can be the one who is most vocal that is influencing the silent majority: some consumers are more equal than others.

This post is a summary of a white paper we have written on this subject. Please contact us to receive a copy of the whole paper.

Graeme

If you would like to add me on Google+ then you can find my profile here and you can follow me on Twitter here.

*Information sources
Statistics quoted in this document originate from:
The Office for National Statistics
eMarketer
The European Commission
eConsultancy
Mediascope
iPerceptions
Forrester
Brand Reputation

I haven’t been using Google+ for very long but I like it and I think it has a lot of potential. Here are my initial thoughts:

Functionality

Circles: lets you segment your connections in to different groups and filter what you share with each circle. So not everyone in your network sees everything and you choose who sees what. For me this is the biggest functional advantage over Facebook.

Sparks: Allows you to select topics you are interested in and surfaces links on that subject to you. It would be good if you could add RSS feeds to Sparks.

Hangouts: I have yet to use this but I think as the network gets to scale it will become a useful feature for collaboration and private group chat.

What I would like to see

• An iPhone app (there is only an Android app at this stage)
• The ability to add further boxes to profile (as you can with Linkedin)
• An easier way import of email addresses to add contacts (this will probably happen when Google+ moves from a closed Beta to being open to everyone).
• An easier way to block people from adding you to one of their circles (such as psycho ex- girlfriends).
• A way to import Twitter and blog feeds (as you can with Linkedin)
• Public groups
• The ability to personalise of profile appearance through CSS (I have never understood why Facebook doesn’t do this – MySpace has been offering this for years).
• Personalised URLs (to get one you have to use a third party such as gplus.to at the moment)
• An integrated YouTube channel

Despite not having any of these (yet) the convenience of Circles alone makes the network work for me.

What it could possibly do in future

I guess there are all sorts of possibilities however an obvious one would be to integrate Google+ with search results. It would be easy to review a product in Google+ and for Google to aggregate these reviews in search results for products and services.

The marketing opportunities

Of course we are yet to see what the opportunities for brands will be and how will this differ to the opportunities offered by Facebook.

What interests me is that I am already seeing friends on Facebook post that they are looking forward to abandoning Facebook once Google+ gets to a greater scale. The main reasons for this seem to be functionality (mainly Circles) and people being huge fans of Google overall.

Brands will obviously monitor this and their participation (when allowed by Google) will partly depend on how Google+ will stay ahead as Facebook inevitably adds similar functionality to that offered by +.

In summary

I am going to persevere – I have a feeling that Google+ will succeed where Buzz and Wave failed

My current status reads “Good here isn’t it?” – I think in time (and with at least some of the additional functionality I have listed above) that a lot of people will agree.

Graeme – Brand Reputation.

If you would like to add me on Google+ then you can find my profile here and you can follow me on Twitter here.

We are undertaking a study in to ten challenges we believe brands are struggling with and would like your help. Please answer yes or no to ten questions here.

The study will be complete by the end of May and you will be sent a copy in return for participating. Read More »

I cannot prove this but I suspect that Twitters growth (measured by new user acquisition) is lower in the UK than in other countries.

Why? I have previously written about the polarity of views about Twitter and I think this accounts for some lack of interest. Read More »

We’ve published our latest paper “Harnessing the power of consumer reviews”. The objective of the paper is to provide consumer branded companies with recommendations of how to ensure that their brand is in the consideration set for consumers, by harnessing the power of consumer reviews of products and services to build brand trust.

You can download the paper here. Questions? Then please contact us.

Despite only recently becoming an expectant father I have some previous familiarity with Mumsnet from the influencer marketing work my agency has undertaken for Britax, Maxi-Cosi and Quinny.

My hatred stems from some annoyances, but more importantly from uninformed consumer generated content that appears to be either not (or only lightly) moderated. I also really dislike that companies are not easily (if at all) given any right to reply to anything said about their products or services. Read More »

Why do so few agency people move client-side and vice versa?

Perhaps I am missing something but I really cannot understand why there is so little transition from one to the other and back again. Read More »

We have produced the first of our 2011 papers “How to get people to say what you want about your brand” and would really appreciate your views and feedback. You can access the paper here

Regretting how much spent on Christmas. Dreading the credit card statement. Food prices are up. Petrol is costing more than ever before. Didn’t want to go back to work. Feel have little money to spend. Trying to diet (and stick to other New Year resolutions). Worried about job security. Possibly worrying about finding the money for tuition fees. Not getting much interest on savings. Not planning a holiday this year (but may get something at the last minute) and the weather is miserable. Read More »

On Saturday Charlotte Metcalf, a columnist for the Daily Mail, wrote an article entitled “Merry Christmas? Along with millions of other middle class mothers, I can’t afford one”

She wrote “Five years ago, I earned £1,200 a week from my work as a TV and film producer and would have thought nothing of spending £45 on a pot of gold-lidded lusciously scented body cream as a Christmas present for a distant cousin… Now, I live in a two-bedroom rented flat in West London and my cousins will have to make do with little ¬trinkets for their children only… These days, I am lucky if I earn £500 a week as a writer”. Read More »