5 reasons to go get more reviews

The first step towards understanding your users

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In last week’s post, we talked about how to create a framework for your product marketing strategy. And the end result was a plan consisting of ‘always-on’ work streams that themselves contain an array of tactics.

Today, we’re digging into your first work stream… 

Understanding your user

When I start at a new company, my very first question will always be: Who is our user? 

What do they love about us? What are they frustrated about? And how could we be evolving our product to better fit their needs?

So I’m going to give you one of my absolute top tips for getting to the bottom of these questions. And the answer is a simple one. 

Reviews

Yep, that’s the tip. Nothing groundbreaking. Just go out there and get yourself a ton of reviews. 

It can be on G2 or Trustpilot. The Play Store or the App Store. Or perhaps even a specialist industry comparison platform that better serves your product. Whatever you use, accumulating reviews is one of the most valuable things a product marketer can do. 

Here’s why…

1. They make you look great

As soon as you’ve gathered a few reviews, you’ll have a star rating that you can slap on your homepage to show new visitors that you have customers who use and (hopefully) love you.

Some companies, like G2, also run quarterly awards programs where they dish out medals and badges and other brilliant assets that you can use to go shout about your product from the rooftops. 

2. Social proof

What’s more, you can pull in quotes from your best reviews and feature them on your homepage, or use them in your social posts, sales collateral, and paid ad campaigns for lead generation or acquisition. 

Potential customers will expect to see testimonials and quotes on your website, so for any product marketer just getting started - or short for time - review sites are the perfect place to pull these from. 

3. Messaging made easy

Sometimes, our customers say it better than us product marketers ever could. You’ll often find amazing quotes or phrases within reviews that you wouldn’t have thought of yourself, which you can use to influence your messaging and copy 

And if you’re lucky, a customer quote from a review site will change the way you think about your own product.

One stand out example of this for me was last year when a user discussing Whereby wrote ‘It just works.’ This helped shape my own thinking about our positioning, and got me to realise that people had to see Whereby to understand its value (more on that in a few weeks…)

4. Feedback on tap

There’s no better way of finding out what your users are loving about your product, as well as what they’re frustrated by, than going deep down the rabbit hole of reviews on your page. 

Tally up the biggest pain points and take them back to your Product team. And use the positives to inform how you determine your USP (or Reason to Buy, or whatever phrase you like to use). It’ll help you avoid a common disconnect between what a company thinks its strongest selling point is and what the customer’s perception of it actually is. 

5. Shape the product roadmap

Finally, reviews are also a great way of spotting the missing features that users are asking for. Collate the requests you’re seeing across your various review sites, and take these to your Product team, who will no doubt love you for it. 

The value of Product Marketing can sometimes be challenged at fast-moving tech companies, but if you’re always bringing insights to the table - especially impactful ones that can shape the product roadmap - those challenges will quickly disappear.

So, do we now understand who our user is?

I’m afraid not. This is just one piece of the puzzle. We’ll need to pull a few more tricks out of our sleeves to get to the bottom of who our user is, but gathering reviews is a great place to start.

Next week, we’ll dig into another tactic for better understanding your user. Until then, good luck bringing in those reviews!

Cheers,

Rory