The Importance of Third Party Reviews In Branding

I find myself relying on Angie’s List more and more when choosing home contractors. Consumer’s Reports helps me decide on what appliances to purchase.  When I am approached by a not-for-profit organization for a donation, I research the organization on Charity Navigator first. When choosing lodging, I rely on Trip Advisor. And when choosing restaurants, I consult Urbanspoon, TripAdvisor and to a lesser extent OpenTable. Amazon.com has numerous reviews of books and other merchandise.  Goodreads also has book reviews. I go to CellarTracker to decide on which wine to buy.  Add Epinions and CNET to the list of frequented review sites. Now I am researching sailboats.  BoatU.S. helps with its reviews. And I find that I not only go to these websites to research brands and products, but I also contribute to these websites with my own detailed reviews. One can go to LinkedIn to read testimonials on individuals’ skill sets and professional strengths.  On a business-to-business level, it is important what industry analysts say about a company. What does Gartner or Forrester Research say about your company?

The Internet has made the world and its brands, products and services much more transparent. Can these reviews be seeded? Yes. Can they be manipulated? To some degree they can. However, a brand can’t easily erase a bad review. And it is even more difficult to erase or overcome multiple bad reviews. The consumer is increasingly in control of brand reputations. Which means the brand experience itself has to be consistently outstanding for a brand to succeed in the long run. Good marketing copy is not going to compensate for bad customer reviews.

I am a huge advocate of these websites and the transparency that they engender.  It leads to a quicker sorting of the “wheat from the chaff” and encourages continuous improvement of product attributes, customer service and the total brand experience. I tip my hat to these third party review sites. They hold all of us more accountable for what we actually deliver.

Branding and Social Media

Social media is another way to reach out to brand fans. It helps your brand remain top-of-mind, creates a dialog with customers, provides useful feedback, and can be the source of brand information and special promotions. At a minimum, you need to be familiar with the following social media sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube.

According to Millward Brown, a brand’s social media fans outspend non fans four to one. Furthermore, Millward Brown indicates that the following are the top four most valued fan page benefits: 1) latest news about the brand, 2) new product information, 3) contests and giveaways, and 4) sales, discounts, coupons, and special offers.

Social media is a useful source of brand feedback. Listen to people where they are most likely to be talking about your brand and its competitors. Among the popular product/service/brand review sites to monitor:

• Epinions.com
• CNET.com
• ConsumerSearch.com
• AngiesList.com
• ConsumerReports.com
• TripAdvisor.com
• Amazon.com
• UrbanSpoon.com

And the following are just a sampling of current social media monitoring tools:

• Google Alerts
• Socialbakers.com for Facebook
• Followerwonk.com for Twitter
• HootSuite.com for Twitter
• SproutSocial.com
• UnifiedSocial.com

Social media marketing tools include:

• Buddy Media (SalesForceMarketingCloud.com)
• Involver.com and Vitrue (both now a part of Oracle social relationship management)
• Shoutlet.com

Social media is also a useful customer input and feedback mechanism for major product and service decisions. In fact, many brands are now using social media to co-create the brand's products, services and programs with its customers. Whether it is a simple question, a short survey, or a longer focus group, marketers are using social media for marketing research. And the questions and answers can be interactive synchronously or asynchronously. 

And social media takes customer relationship management (CRM) to the next level. It allows the brand to have conversations with specific customers over time, not only providing for better understanding and documentation of individual customer needs but also as a way to build an emotional connection with the customer.

The best websites integrate social media into the site and blogs have social media widgets so that their information can be easily spread through social media.

If you are responsible for building your brand's equity and sales, don't neglect social media as a tool for achieving that end.

(c) 2014 by Brad VanAuken, excerpted from Brand Aid, second edition, now available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.