Review Marketing – How to Build Customer Trust
Review marketing, especially in ecommerce, is an undervalued part of the mix. Brand authenticity is all about being real and staying true to your values, both as a business and in how you treat your customers. It’s about being transparent, having a clear purpose, and standing by your promises. When customers feel like they can trust you and your message is consistent, that’s when authenticity shines.
Starting with Stats
Proving authenticity online can be challenging, but it’s crucial for growing your brand. In fact, *86% of consumers say that being real is a key factor when choosing which brands they like and trust.
It might not come as a surprise that these trends have remained consistent over time. In 2022, 66% of US consumers said in a Trustpilot report that online reviews were the most influential factor in their buying decisions – even more impactful than search engines, eCommerce platforms like Amazon, or social media.
A 2023 Statista survey of over 10,000 US consumers revealed that 34% turn to online reviews when researching potential purchases, ranking them as the second most popular source of information, following search engines at 53%.
88% of consumers would use a business that replies to all of its reviews, compared to just 47% who would use a business that doesn’t respond to reviews at all according to a recent BrightLocal Survey.
Review Your Site Differently
Before any purchase happens in your webstore or review lands on your review profiles, users typically spend a significant amount of time on your website. A proper heatmap solution is essential because, to make your site more user-friendly, you sometimes have to spend hours watching the different sessions users engage with on your pages.
Microsoft Clarity is a great tool for this, as it not only provides the essential heatmap toolkit but also makes your life easier by offering features like “skip inactivity”, which skips the waiting time between two clicks in a session, and “smart events”, which collect only those sessions that ended with an add-to-cart or purchase event.
For several clients, we use Clarity and have significantly improved their conversion rates and soft metrics.
Review Marketing in Ecommerce
As you can see from the statistics above, customer reviews in ecommerce play a crucial role, and they can boost your conversion rate by single digits. However, getting good reviews is not easy. A structured effort and consistent follow-up communication are needed to build a solid review portfolio on not just one, but several trusted review sites.
To maximize the impact of review marketing, it’s important to pay attention to the following aspects.
1. Actively Engage with Customers Post-Purchase
Inexperienced lifestyle brand owners and marketers often focus solely on the pre-purchase steps in their marketing. By not paying enough attention to the post-purchase experience of your customers, you risk missing out on social proof, upsell opportunities, and maximizing lifetime value.?
2. Encourage Honest Feedback
There are studies and reports that show an all 5-star review profile seems suspicious to people. If something is too good to be true, it’s probably not true. So reviews with honest feedback, including 3-4 stars alongside 5 stars, increase your chances of appearing trustworthy. Eventually, you will gain more trust and more customers.
3. Respond to Both Positive and Negative Reviews
Asking for reviews is only half the job, the other half is responding to all of them. Tackling negative reviews is, on one hand, courageous, and on the other hand, smart, because people typically check both the best and worst reviews. In fact, these reviews are often the most informative for potential customers. Having your response and explanation under one-star reviews can be very helpful.
Negative reviews can happen for several reasons. For example, at Evolut, we also have some one-star reviews. Why? One was due to a misunderstanding of a random person, another was the result of a competitor trying to lower our ratings, and one came from a difficult client who looked at us as an inferior partner, so we sent them away.
We all know these situations where sharing your side of the story can change how a new customer views things. So, make sure to share your part of the story, it helps a lot.
4. Incentivize Reviews
If you just send out a post-purchase email flow requesting a review, that’s great, but probably not enough. If you really want to do a great job, you need to incentivize the review process by offering something your customer actually wants.
Small things can be enough, like a free gift, a discount on the next purchase, or a digitally downloadable piece of value (e.g., for a skincare brand, it could be a skincare routine, or for a supplement brand, a fitting diet plan – you get the idea).
Or, if you already have a loyalty program, offering some extra loyalty points can also do the trick.
Advanced Review Marketing Strategies
Let’s take a look at the two most important platforms where a lifestyle brand receives reviews: the brand’s own ecommerce store (likely using an app or plugin) and Trustpilot. We’ll explore some advanced tactics and features that you can easily apply to your own digital marketing strategy.
Customer Reviews on Your Own Webshop
Either you have a Shopify or Woocommerce store, or maybe a custom store, you’ve already chosen an app you use to highlight (in a better scenario) real reviews from your customers.
Fake Review Alert: In the US, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission)’s new 2024 ruling on fake reviews is a major warning for businesses. It strictly prohibits creating, buying, or incentivizing fake reviews, and punishing customers for leaving negative feedback. Violating these rules can lead to hefty fines.
Top apps in Shopify
Top plugins in Woocommerce
You have several options to choose from, such as showcasing only star ratings, stars with comments, or comments with photos. If you really want to take your review marketing to the next level, you can feature before-and-after photos along with detailed reviews and comments.
Customer Reviews on Your Trustpilot Profile
Trustpilot has been with us for a while, and in recent years they’ve introduced many innovations in review marketing. They’ve led the way in making the review process not only easy but, more importantly, trustworthy. Trustpilot is part of the “Coalition of Trust”, which includes major online players like Amazon, Booking.com, Expedia Group, Glassdoor, Tripadvisor, and, of course, Trustpilot.?
I had the opportunity to speak with Jean-Baptiste Gehringer Trustpilot’s Head of Marketing (France and Spain) at Paris Retail Week, who shared the following:
At Trustpilot we’re very clear what we offer businesses – we help them build trust, grow and improve their services to their customers. Showcasing reviews based on a genuine experience is a key part of that drive, and features like Profile Page customization and the Review Spotlight help them to highlight genuine feedback through reviews.
Coupled with market insights and AI driven tools, these innovations provide businesses with invaluable intelligence they need to refine and structure their future customer engagement strategies.
Must-Know New Trustpilot Features to Boost Your Brand
Profile Page customization feature allows businesses to personalize their profile by adding custom logos, cover images, and company descriptions to align with their brand identity. This feature also enables you to showcase customer reviews prominently, which can improve trust and engagement. Businesses can further enhance their credibility by embedding Trustpilot widgets and badges on their websites or marketing materials, showcasing their overall ratings.
Review Spotlight feature allows businesses to highlight their best customer reviews across multiple platforms, boosting credibility and trust. By integrating real-time reviews into your website, marketing materials, or even ads, you can show potential customers genuine feedback. The feature updates automatically, ensuring the freshest reviews are displayed.?
Market Insights feature provides businesses with valuable data about their market position compared to competitors. It analyzes customer reviews across your industry, helping you identify trends, strengths, and areas for improvement. By accessing these insights, you can refine your products, services, and customer experience to meet market demands. The tool also highlights customer sentiment and key performance metrics, enabling more informed decisions.
Review Insights helps businesses dive deeper into customer feedback by analyzing patterns and trends in reviews. It highlights key themes, both positive and negative, to give a clear understanding of what customers love and what needs improvement. This data-driven tool allows companies to spot recurring issues, improve products or services, and make smarter business decisions based on real customer experiences.
Using Reviews for Testimonial Organic, Paid and Email Content
From these customer reviews, you can easily create testimonial-style content. Whether it’s a written testimonial post, a text and image carousel, or a UGC video recorded by a customer at home, the key is to integrate them into your content strategy. Our Omnipresence Content Strategy article also highlights various content pillars for lifestyle branding.
Three effective ways to distribute testimonials are through paid media, organic social posts, and email campaigns. Most content used for paid media can also be shared on social platforms. Additionally, repurpose testimonial content across different platforms, sizes, and use cases for maximum impact.
Paid Media Visual
Social Media Visual
Email Campaign Visual
What’s next in Review Marketing?
The future of review marketing will see even greater reliance on AI and machine learning to analyze and respond to feedback in real time, ensuring businesses can quickly act on customer sentiment, which refers to how customers feel about a brand based on reviews and interactions.?
Authenticity will remain key, with platforms like Trustpilot and Google cracking down on fake reviews. Video testimonials and interactive reviews will likely rise, as customers value visual, immersive experiences. Finally, integrating reviews across omnichannel marketing strategies will be essential to building trust and enhancing customer journeys across every touchpoint.