Customer reviews: bop or flop?
Season 7, Issue 2: An interview with Chris Perrine from G2!
Hola Mehketeers!
First interview of the season is upon us! I met Chris Perrine very briefly when he spoke at the Generate x G2 event (go here to sign up to the Generate Slack group, run by Axel Sukianto who also posts marketing jobs every Monday on LinkedIn - seriously the best marketing group I’ve ever been in) about the importance of customer interviews.
He’s the Vice President and Managing Director of G2 for APAC, so as soon as he got on stage my brain started writing the interview questions.
Without further ado, and keeping in the spirit of the highly requested issue summaries, keep reading to see the answers to….
What's your view on reviews as a marketing channel and "earned" media?
How do you get more people to leave you reviews? It’s common to ask someone, they agree to do it, and then forget.
Where in the sales/marketing funnel do reviews have the biggest impact and what are some creative ways you've seen people highlight reviews and testimonials?
More broadly, how can reviews be amplified across marketing assets?
If someone's not really focused on their G2 profile, what's something that might surprise them? Whether it's an outcome or a functionality that G2 offers.
And a bonus question at the end!
An interview with Chris Perrine
Kayla: What's your view on reviews as a marketing channel and "earned" media?
Chris: Reviews can be a very efficient marketing channel because you can use them to build your brand, grow your pipeline, and increase your conversion rates. Most vendors look at reviews as “just reviews”, but by looking at them across these three areas you can see an exponential impact.
The brand building comes from the great customer stories reviews can provide. This is the original use case for reviews - scaling the voice of your customers. Buyers want to hear from their peers and other organizations who look like them - same size, same industry, same country, etc. Reviews are a scalable way to help show the success your customers are having with you and help validate your product and overall build trust with potential customers.
Many times these buyers will discover a vendor on G2 and then immediately transition to their website and take action (become a lead, start trial, or even make a purchase). This is where the pipeline building comes in by providing a flow of high intent potential buyers who transition from G2 to a vendor's website. From our research, we see these vendors convert 3-8x higher than the standard inbound traffic to a vendor’s website.
The one which surprises people is the increase in sales conversions. Sales can use these great customer stories as specific references, along with having 3rd party data to show how they compare with their direct competitors. We’ve seen vendors who have reviews and are using G2 in their sales cycles experience 5-10 percentage point increases in conversion rates and 21% higher prices from buyers researching them on G2.
K: How do you get more people to leave you reviews? It’s common to ask someone, they agree to do it, and then forget.
C: The heart and soul of G2 is the reviews and we have a number of strategies to help vendors build their reviews on our platform. We have three key strategies we can utilize, and they are not mutually exclusive.
G2 Run Review Campaigns:
This is where we do the heavy lifting and we reach out to a vendor’s customers to ask them for a review. The benefit here is that G2 is viewed as a neutral, research focused party, so we tend to have a higher conversion rate. We’ll reach out with three emails which we’ve extensively tested asking for the review. These reviews tend to be incentivized, using local gift cards to compensate the reviewer for their time spent leaving the review. We also follow up on the review anniversary to ask for an update of the review along with following up with reviews started, but not yet finished.
Vendor Run Review Campaigns:
We can also support vendors doing their own outreach to their customers, either through email campaigns or their customer success team asking. In this case, we help build landing pages, help with tracking, and handle the entire gift card incentivization process.
Passive Review Campaigns:
Passive reviews are my favorite because we use technology to do all of the work. We use tools like G2’s In-App Review feature, existing customer chatbots, building a prompt in their app, or using our Review Us button. We’ve seen great results with this, especially with Asia Pacific vendors, where the marketing team is focused on using the reviews, not collecting them. Some vendors are seeing 30-40 reviews a month consistently hitting their profile, which really helps their G2 ranking and position on the G2 Grid.
K: Where in the sales/marketing funnel do reviews have the biggest impact and what are some creative ways you've seen people highlight reviews and testimonials?
C: From our buyer behavior studies, we’ve seen that buyers use reviews across the entire funnel and buyer journey, but the use of G2 is different in each stage.
At the top of the funnel, we see buyers doing initial research and working to identify potential vendors who can help with the problem they are trying to solve. In this stage, buyers are using tools like the G2 Grid or our Stack Rankings, or using our Monty AI Analyst to identify vendors. Here, it’s more about building out a short list of vendors for further research and engagement.
As they move into the middle of the funnel, this is where the in-depth research into each vendor takes place, more in-depth reading of reviews, using G2’s research reports, and doing competitive comparisons takes place.
By the end of the journey, buyers will often come back to G2 to research their final 1-2 choices to confirm they are making the right decision, or using this information to help justify their decision with their managers.
But to make a call on where G2 is used the most - I would say middle of the funnel, that’s where buyers would spend the most time on G2 and where we deliver the most influence.
Note from Kayla: What I’m taking from this is that highlighting reviews in your MoFU content or email nurtures could be something to look into if you’re seeing low funnel conversion rates here!
K: More broadly, how can reviews be amplified across marketing assets?
C: We are big believers of getting your G2 content off of G2 and using it across different channels. Probably the best example of this is using your G2 Badges and Reviews on your website. Using a G2 Badge on your homepage helps bring the trust and validation from G2 to all of the buyers visiting your homepage who might not have researched you on G2. A G2 Badge is a great social asset and very visual - it’s proof you have successful customers.
You can also use a review or G2 Badge on your conversion and landing pages. We’ve seen that by using these assets, you can see your lead conversion rates increase 42-84% - it’s all about building that trust to get buyers to take action. You can also pull your G2 content into your email signatures.
The key is to find where having the voice of your customers or social proof can provide a benefit in your marketing and sales efforts and use G2 content in these places. It’s one of the easiest tactics to execute and we’ve seen some amazing results from this.
K: If someone's not really focused on their G2 profile, what's something that might surprise them? Whether it's an outcome or a functionality that G2 offers.
C: The biggest surprise SaaS vendors have regarding their profile is how much more engagement they will get when they have reviews. When a profile has reviews, it builds trust and it helps create the conversation between the buyer and the vendor. Some stats we’ve seen across our sites and from studies with our customers:
Branded G2 profiles with reviews see 20x more traffic and buyers spend 600% more time on these profiles.
18-33% of buyers researching a branded profile with reviews will then visit the website of the vendor.
Traffic from G2 to a vendor’s website converts at a 3-8x higher rate than their standard website traffic.
Buyers researching a vendor’s profile on G2 convert at 5 to 10 percentage points higher than those not researching on G2.
Buyers researching on G2 transact at a 21% higher price point than those who do not research on G2.
K: What do marketers need to know when it comes to reviews on other platforms, like Facebook pages or Google?
C: It's quite hard to answer as it's very dependent on what you are selling. Google and Facebook would typically be more B2C focused - they get some B2B reviews, but they are not strong there. Reviews are still relatively new in B2B. Software has been the leading area, but we are starting to see it pop up in other industries. There is a former colleague from G2 who started reviews for the commercial logistics industry for example - like a G2 for logistics providers. So it's starting to move more in B2B, but the bulk is still in B2C right now.
A side note on Google
While G2 supports incentivising reviews, Google advises against this and could take down your reviews if they decide you’ve done something you don’t like, so be careful with that.
One thing I’ve always struggled with when asking for reviews is getting the person to actual submit it after they’ve said they will. Other than giving out cold hard cash, you can also do your best to remove friction from the process. G2 captures reviews with landing pages, and with Google you can generate review links from within your My Business login.
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Hope you enjoyed this first “full” issue, see you next week!
Kayla