How to Get Started With Affiliate Marketing Using Social Proof
How to Get Started With Affiliate Marketing Using Social Proof
Product reviews are a critical component of an online retail store’s branding and promotion. They typically describe exactly what makes your products stand out from the competition, and help to build loyalty and trust with potential customers. The immediate advantage of such reviews is that they will make your existing customers feel much more confident about ordering from you. The more frequently you’re reviewed, the more likely others will pick up on the positive attributes that you offer. If your business has a strong reputation, you may find that prospective customers will be more inclined to do business with you than with your nearest competitor.
A second advantage of providing product reviews is that it helps build trust with other potential customers. Negative reviews published online can tarnish your image. On the other hand, if you receive only positive feedback, other customers will be more likely to do business with you because they don’t see you as having a lot of negative feedback to overcome. By providing a review of your own product or service, you allow your customers to form their own opinion about you, which can only help your reputation. Many customers also like to read about a problem they have encountered so that they know more about you and how you will best resolve it.
One of the benefits of providing product reviews, aside from built trust with current customers, is that it can help increase sales. When consumers read online reviews, they’re more likely to trust the opinions presented. They may think to themselves that those who write bad reviews must not really have used the product or know anything at all about it. Conversely, they might feel just as strongly about good reviews. That’s why if you want to increase sales, writing good reviews is important.
Yet another benefit is that negative reviews can backfire against you. If your company has poor reviews on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, you might get customers who believe you’re less than stellar. That impression could lead to negative feedback and that can have a very real impact on your bottom line. Even though you might not get customers who are completely mad about your business, you can still lose some ground to competitors who have more finely tuned reviews.
Product reviews have long since been used by companies as a way to foster customer loyalty. According to marketing expert Mark Johnston, “When companies first start out, they go into great detail about everything that’s going on… They explain the plans and the strategies, the training and the benefits, the goals and the strategy. Then they describe in detail what the product is capable of doing and how well it will meet those goals. After all that, they tell the customers what’s in it for them… that there are no hidden costs, that this is a great opportunity for employees and that the work is going to be challenging but enjoyable.” This kind of information, he notes, is attractive to both customers and employees. “It’s good copywriting and customer psychology.”
You may have heard the old saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” but that certainly applies to promotional products. One important aspect of customer loyalty is positive reviews, especially when it comes to products of value that people need and want. One way to ensure your product returns the favor of previous customers is to distribute a review reminder, which includes all of the positive reviews for customers who’ve already bought your product or services. In other words, a review reminder is not only an eye-catching email sent to customers at regular intervals, but a second set of positive reviews that remind customers that you care about them. It also helps you stay on top of competitors who might be busily touting their own positive reviews of your product or service.
There are several different ways to disseminate such information, but one of the most popular ways today is through social proof. Social proof is simply the use of online reviews and customer feedback from other websites to gauge how popular a particular product is. For example, sites like Amazon use user ratings to determine how many positive reviews a product has and whether it’s considered a hot seller. Similarly, customer feedback sites like Yelp use both actual customers and ratings by other visitors to help determine the most popular and highly reviewed destinations around the world.
Social proof of a product’s worth is nothing new, but it’s often been used with great success in online marketing campaigns. The trick is to make sure that the information you’re using is both trustworthy and opinionated. If you’re relying solely on Amazon and its user ratings for positive reviews, then you’ll have a hard time getting past the fact that some customers will post a negative rating even if they were completely pleased with the product. Conversely, if you use Yelp and other review websites to build your brand, then you can be confident that those who post bad experiences won’t deter future customers from booking reservations or buying your goods. Using social proof to get started is a great way to get the ball rolling toward making your marketing campaign successful.