Article: “Forget Twitter; Your Best Marketing Tool Is the Humble Product Review”
Source: AdvertisingAge
Marketers are learning to listen, not only through Facebook and Twitter, but also the product review and figuring out how they can benefit from this information in relation to their sales.
The advantage of product reviews is that there’s not much noise and specific to the product.
The article mentions Samsung, which uses product review information for four purposes:
* to listen and keep its ear to the ground,
* to enhance the shopping experience for consumers who are increasingly seeking more information,
* to build community among consumers and let them talk to each other and to improve customer service and
* to support by helping them be aware early of issues that may arise.
This information could also be extracted from communities, I do agree that it is more centralized and structured in product review sections and on sites.
And that’s exactly the big difference between product reviews and other social media expressions, where I don’t agree with the analogy of the Bazaarvoice’s CMO: “a room where everyone is there to talk about your product vs. a room where they are there to talk about anything.”
Product reviews are often statements and not complete interactions between customers.
A more ‘generic’ setting as communities (be it vertical/niche or horizontal networks) do facilitate better the interaction between the members and possibilities to express them in a broader way.
Products are bought to solve a problem, to satisfy a need. Communities facilitate conversations relating to this problem or need, if products position well and are recommended by members, the impact is just as effective as a product review.
The reach, the influence and the place it takes within the buying cycle is not better or worse, but different.
Both conversations and reviews can complement and trigger each other, make use of both tactics’ uniquenesses!
How are you making use of the intelligence product reviews give?
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