Question: When you find a product you're thinking about buying on Amazon or a similar site, what is the first thing you read (besides the price)?
Is it:
a) The Manufacturer's
b) The Technical Specifications (Voltage Requirements, etc.) or
c) The Reviews from Customers Who Already Bought One
If you answered "C", you are in the great majority. The customer reviews are often the first and only thing I read before clicking on "Add to Cart". If you're nodding your head in agreement, I have another question for you: What have you done to facilitate getting your customers to write reviews of your product or service?
Your stunned silence is very reassuring...
In exchange for filling out the survey, they entered me in a monthly drawing for a free seven-day cruise for two! After diligently completing the survey, I clicked through to the contest rules just to see how the monthly drawing works. Apparently, Carnival holds a drawing on the fifth of every month and gives away one free cruise for two people every month in exchange for completing a survey.
That is smart marketing folks! If you own a business, you should know that getting real-life feedback from real-life customers is the nectar of the marketing gods, and you should be seeking it out,
(Note: It doesn't have to be a seven day Carribbean Cruise! We offer our Florida beach wedding business clients a free 8 x 10 print of one of their wedding pictures, and that seems to work just fine!).
Of course, once you have the feedback, you want to use it and act on it to improve your business.
You also want to share it with your potential new customers. One of the easiest ways to do this is to collect the reviews in a place that is visible to both your existing customers and potential new ones (remember those Amazon reviews we talked about?).
Luckily, of all the problems that businesses have, this is one of the easiest to solve. Depending on what industry you're in, there are lots of easy (and free) places to aggregate customer feedback:
- Google Places has a "Write a Review" feature that will work for just about anyone.
- Yelp! is a popular review platform for restaurants, shopping, nightlife, and entertainment.
- Angie's List is a popular subscription-based review service for home service contractors.
- OneWed and WeddingWire are popular for wedding vendors and photographers.
As they say, failing to plan is planning to fail, and that certainly holds true for getting customer feedback. So go out there and 1) find an appropriate platform for collecting and sharing customer feedback, and 2) send your customers an email after they complete a sale asking them to review your product or service, provide specific instructions on how to do so, and offer them a reward for completing the task.
Over time, you will collect an assortment of reviews that paint a picture of the quality of your product or service and speak for themselves!
One final tip - when planning your customer feedback strategy, try not to discrimate against the Canadians! As I was reading through the aforementioned contest rules for Carnival's monthly cruise drawing, I came across this paragraph, cut and pasted verbatim:
Drawing and Skill-Testing Question for Canadian Residents: If selected entrant is a Canadian resident, in order to win the Prize, the selected entrant must first correctly answer unaided a time-limited, mathematical skill-testing question by telephone at a predetermined mutually agreeable time. In the event that the selected entrant is unable to correctly answer the skill-testing question, the Sponsor shall have the right to randomly draw another eligible entrant, and the Sponsor shall be fully and completely released and discharged from any liability or responsibility in this regard.
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| What is the square root of 237? |
Kinda strange, ay? If anyone can explain this to me, or even if you just have a good theory please drop me a line - I'm stumped!
Till next time,
Jeff Copeland
Tampa Bay Search
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