This blog post is written by Brooklin Nash from Trust Radius.
What if I told you spiffy landing pages and drip campaigns were not the only important parts of effective marketing? There’s an important element missing from these branded marketing efforts.
Check out how one marketing leader differentiates between content provided by the brand and insight provided directly by customers:
“It’s one thing for us to serve up a reference or a case study, but buyers intuitively know that those are all coming from specific satisfied customers, versus the wisdom of their collective peers.”
~ Julie Perino, Senior Director of Customer Marketing at Marketo
As Julie points out, some of the most effective advocates of your brand can be your customers. All you need to do is learn how to use their voice to power content that converts new customers. When used the right way, customer reviews can be a powerful way to connect with your target audience. Keeping that in mind, let’s dive into how to use it.
First Things First: Why Use Your Customer’s Voice for Content Marketing?
If you recognize the limitations of branded content, you already know the answer. In simple terms, your target audience is likely to place more weight on customer reviews than almost any other form of content your brand can offer.
The B2B Buying Disconnect report from TrustRadius shows that user reviews are the second most used information sources from B2B buyers, trumped only by product demos. Free trials, sales reps and even personal recommendations all fall below user reviews in popularity.
This chart makes it clear that user reviews hold a prominent place in your content marketing strategy. Reviews can help the credibility of your brand and give you content to work with in pulling together content marketing resources.
Tips for Using Your Customer’s Voice to Create Powerful Content That Converts
So your target audience sees customer reviews as important. How can you go about incorporating this resource into your content strategy? Here are a few tips to get you started:
#1: Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket. It can be tempting to cherry pick only the most positive reviews from consistent customers. Don’t give in! Your target audience will be looking for reviews from a variety of profiles (and most likely looking for someone with a role similar to their own).
#2: Integrate Reviews Into Your Messaging & Content. For starters, focus on what your customers are focusing on. If user reviews point out pricing, start highlighting your competitive rates. If customer service is a highlight, point to success in this area in your email campaigns and landing pages.
You should also start using customer reviews, verbatim, within your content. Feature quotes on your landing pages, highlight customers on your social media, and headline your drip campaigns with customer insight. Keep in mind that using customer quotes in all forms of marketing collateral will likely require permission from the review site or reviewer.
#3: Engage In the Process. Using customer reviews in your marketing efforts is not a one-off event, it’s a process. Start by following up with personal thank yous to positive reviews and specific (public) responses to negative reviews. You can also engage in social listening to hear your customer’s voice across multiple channels.
You don’t have to know everything to use your customer’s voice - start listening to user reviews and your content is sure to become more powerful!
Brooklin Nash writes about the latest tools and small business trends for TrustRadius. When he’s not writing, you can find him reading YA dystopian fiction (with guilty pleasure) and cooking.
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