B2B Marketers Benefit from Customer Reviews

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Myron Berg, the FMP partner who heads our online marketing strategy, wrote a great article titled Driving More B2B Leads with Help from Customer Testimonials and Online Reviews, about how to use customer reviews to drive new business. The entire article is worth reading and you can access it here.

The main theme of the article is that B2B buyers look for independent and unbiased confirmation about the company they are considering doing business with, just like B2C buyers do for consumer purchases. They want to know if you have a reputation for quality and customer support. Preferably, they want to hear this information from a company and individual similar to themselves, either in terms of size, industry or title. If your competition has good customer reviews and you do not, they will have an edge in the selling process.

One of the best ways to supply your prospects with reassurance is with customer product reviews or service reviews. Here are five ways to identify and ask satisfied customers for a review.

  1. Customer Support – At the conclusion of a customer support engagement, ask a satisfied customer for a review. This can be at the end of call/chat session or via a “thank you” email following the call. Provide them the direct link via follow-up email. Work with the customer support team to build a repeatable process for requesting this feedback.
  2. Emails to Existing Customers – Add a review request at the bottom of email marketing messages. Customers could either directly fill out an online review (preferred) or contact someone at your company for further information.
  3. Survey Existing Customers – Send out a satisfaction survey to existing customers. Follow up with a special note to those that provided positive remarks, asking them to either participate in a case study or fill out an online review as appropriate. For those with concerns or issues, it might also be good for customer support to follow up with them.
  4. Follow up with New Customers – When a new customer signs up for service, follow up within 10 days with a customer satisfaction survey. It can even be the sales rep performing the survey. For those that are highly satisfied with your product, ask if they would provide a review and email a review link.
  5. Educate Existing Customers – Provide a webinar for existing customers on how to get the most out of your product. At the end of the event, ask participants to provide an online review. This is also a good way to get customer feedback about the product.

Hope these suggestions work for you like they have for our clients. An important point to keep in mind: if you don’t ask for a review, you won’t receive one. There are exceptions, but in the B2B world, typically customers won’t come to you – they must be asked. Smart B2B marketers ask and ask again. And if you can’t get a product review from a particular customer because they are unsatisfied, this is your chance to fix the issue and turn an unhappy customer into a satisfied customer.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Christopher Ryan
Christopher Ryan is CEO of Fusion Marketing Partners, a B2B marketing consulting firm and interim/fractional CMO. He blogs at Great B2B Marketing and you can follow him at Google+. Chris has 25 years of marketing, technology, and senior management experience. As a marketing executive and services provider, Chris has created and executed numerous programs that build market awareness, drive lead generation and increase revenue.

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