How customer voice
drives business

Google Analytics is hands-down the most utilized website analytics platform available today. This granddaddy of web analytics solutions accounts for 60% of the market share. When companies need to know how their site is performing, Google Analytics is one of the first places they turn to. Despite this, many marketers do not use this solution at full capacity. By integrating Google Analytics (GA) with marketing software, marketers can gather more advanced insights to drive brand management and engagement. This allows professionals to better understand their customers, create better goals, and effectively drive growth. How to boost brand engagement with digital marketing and analysis Marketers know the importance of brand engagement. Brand engagement sounds like a great idea but lacks a clear, technical definition. Without a clear definition, marketers can get lost in pursuing a goal they don’t fully understand or agree upon. Brand engagement has to do with consumer connection with a brand – emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally. Some refer to this concept as a purely emotional connection and commitment one has with a brand, whereas others believe this concept has more to do with what actions a consumer takes in regard to a company. Still, others believe that it […]

Reviews are a driving force for your brand’s reputation. Your reputation is what creates conversion. Do you need reviews for your company but don’t know where to start? We are going to take a dive into why reviews are important, where your reviews should live online, and 10 ways for you to ask for the reviews your business needs. Why Reviews Are a Big Deal Customers are relying more and more on word of mouth and online reviews to make an informed purchase. 95% of customers read online reviews before buying a product. Customers are doing independent research more than ever. A product with zero reviews is 270% less likely to be purchased than a product with only five reviews. Reviews help future customers become aware of products. They also allow customers to narrow in on their final decision by giving them realistic and honest expectations of the product. Additionally, reviews enable customers to ask better questions of sales representatives. Lastly, they supplement marketing materials with real-life experiences. Even negative reviews are better than no reviews. 85% of buyers look for negative reviews before buying a product. Bad reviews build the trust and credibility of a collection of customer responses. […]

Being a great Project Manager means wearing a number of hats. Not only do you have to ensure a project executes on time, in the budget, and within scope, you will also serve multiple roles: negotiator, decision maker, team-builder, mentor, schedule-maker, risk-evaluator, budgeter, and task manager. Each of these roles requires skill and practice. Below, in no particular order, are seven skills you want to master when as a project manager. 1. Leadership Arguably the bread and butter of project management, leadership is a skill you wouldn’t want to miss in a project manager. There are a number of smaller skills that go into being a good leader, some of which you may have already. What they essentially boil down to is being a cheerleader, coach, and referee to your team and being able to balance these three roles. Good teams are made up of people that are motivated, skilled, and accountable to themselves and others. A good leader creates an environment where this can happen. Leaders that cheer their team on and provide  “feel good” vibes will have happier teams. Not only do happier employees make the workplace a more enjoyable place to be they’re also beneficial for the […]

Where there’s a rule, there’s a loophole. Where there’s a security feature, there’s someone to hack it. Where there’s a system, there’s someone figuring out how to game it. So, once online reviews revolutionized how we buy stuff—allowing us to use the real experiences of others to decide which vacuum cleaner to buy, which hotel to stay at, which doctor to consult, which cruise to take, which book to read—that system got gamed too. Amazon is the quintessential example, where a slew of fake review schemes have led to a system where even legitimate sellers feel they need to buy fake reviews to stay competitive. And the latest news—that the Elon Musk-based AI nonprofit OpenAI has created an AI tool that can generate fake text—doesn’t bode well for the consumer online review industry (though it’s not releasing the code for fear of misuse). What about business software reviews? Our process ensures that they don’t get published, but we see (and reject!) our share of fake reviews submitted to TrustRadius too. (And I feel confident our review readers would spot an AI-generated review off the bat.) But the motivation is different. In the consumer world, it’s the sellers buying fake reviews to […]

Yesterday we announced our 2019 “Most Loved” winners! We were really feeling the love this Valentine’s Day and wanted have a little fun with our Valentine’s Day cards! Here are the Top 10 “Most Loved” tools on TrustRadius, and what you can learn from them!

Here at TrustRadius, love is in the air every time we look around at our growing community of business software users. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, we compiled the first ever TrustRadius Love Report, which analyzed every review we have collected to date word by word. We looked at a total of 168,000+ reviews of 4,185 products across 421 categories, and determined which products were the most beloved by TrustRadians by comparing mentions of “love” in all its (grammatical) forms to the total number of reviews we’ve received of each product. After much consideration, fifty products emerged as the winners of TrustRadius’s first-ever Most Loved Award, with the highest ratio of “love” per review across our entire site. The award winners span many categories and are most loved by their customers for a multitude of reasons, but there were some things that charmed and beguiled reviewers across the board. Here’s the full list of the 50 “Most Loved” Award winners, as well as an in-depth look at what we learned from the top 10 products about how to tell you’re head over heels in love (with a software product): Workable The one you love doesn’t try to change you. […]

At the heart of sales is the ability to understand and connect with buyers. It is only after this connection that salespeople will hold any influence on their sales. Trust is what that connection needs. Yet only 3% of consumers trust salespeople. At that rate, it is difficult to connect with leads and close sales. Identifying the roadblocks that are slowing you down is the first step to improving your numbers. Here are 5 things that might be getting in your way, and some of the trends and technology that can help you push through. Top 5 Roadblocks For B2B Salespeople #1 Pursuing the wrong leads Let’s start at the top of the funnel, with prospects. Or, if you are a flywheel fan, the “attract” section of the wheel. 28% of salespeople say that identifying good leads is more difficult than it was a few years ago. The same study says that 37% of reps struggle most with prospecting. Cold calls and cold emails are simply ineffective. Shane Snow, the author of Smartcuts, sent 1,000 cold emails to executives as an experiment and received very little feedback. Only 1.7% of those who received emails responded. This often-cited experiment was insightful […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search engine optimization (SEO) tools help users grow organic traffic on their website, social profiles, or mobile application by increasing the site’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). A few ways SEO teams can boost the ranking of specific webpages or mobile apps is to (1) feature original, relevant, and interesting content, (2) adjust site architecture to make it more intuitive and easy for search engine crawlers to find, and (3) increase external links (or backlinks) to their site. SEO tools help users track and measure SEO performance with features such as keyword analysis, backlink management, technical site audits, site ranking tracking, and traffic analytics and reports. Some products offer the ability to measure additional metrics such as share of voice […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Web Conferencing Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Web Conferencing Software Web conferencing software enables users not in the same physical office, such as remote employees, clients, prospects, business partners, or members of other office branches to participate in online meetings. This software is used in many scenarios: one-to-many presenter style meetings, group meetings, virtual face-to-face client or remote employee meetings, online presentations, conference calls, webinars, online learning, product demos, and live trainings or tutorials. Many vendors offer features such as audience polling, live chat, Q&A, and file sharing along with standard video conferencing, dial-in, and screen sharing capabilities. Evaluating web conferencing software and finding one that has the level of quality, reliability, security, and scalability that fits your business best can be tough to navigate. Feedback from users who have already been through this process […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Survey & Forms Building Tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Survey & Forms Building Tools Survey & forms building tools help users design and distribute surveys, collect responses, and analyze online survey results. Some products may focus more on survey design and include a range of survey question types and logic, while other tools may focus more on reporting and offer advanced statistical results analysis. These tools have a wide application and are used across industries for things like customer satisfaction surveys, employee feedback surveys, and market / academic research. Common survey & forms building tools features include various survey formats (e.g. online, print, or phone), survey templates and layouts, response collection, question types to choose from (e.g. multiple choice, single select, sliding scale, matrix questions, open-text), question logic options (e.g. conditional, branching, random), and results […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Marketing Automation Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Marketing Automation Software The ultimate goal of every marketing team is to find high-quality leads, nurture them with personalized and relevant content, and pass them along to the sales team to be turned into happy (and hopefully repeat) customers. Marketing automation software helps marketers achieve this by automating and scaling the more repetitive tasks that would otherwise take hours of manual labor. Products include features such as implementing marketing campaign sequences across a variety of channels (e.g. email, social, mobile, landing pages, etc), landing page customization, lead list segmentation, lead nurturing and scoring, and analyzing marketing campaign performance to see what works and what doesn’t. Many marketing automation products integrate with third-party tools and platforms (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Salesforce, etc). There are many things to consider when purchasing […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for A/B Testing Tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. A/B Testing Tools A/B testing tools enable users to optimize their website, webpages, or mobile applications in order to positively impact desired outcomes such as increased conversion rates and decreased page bounce rate. They allow businesses to divide site traffic across different websites or web page versions to test which variant performs best. Basic A/B testing tools will be able to implement A/B and Split URL tests, calculate conversion rates, and provide the statistical likelihood of one site version outperforming other variations. Some products may also include other analysis tools such as heatmaps and scrollmaps, site surveys, and visitor recordings. While some A/B testing tools require knowledge of HTML or CSS in order to create tests, many of these tools have a WYSIWYG interface that enable users without […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Sales Email Tracking Tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Sales Email Tracking Tools Sales email tracking tools tend to include a core set of email tracking metrics along with other capabilities that allow users to create, test, and monitor sales email campaigns. These tools help salespeople view overall email engagement by tracking metrics such as open rate, click through rate, and how far down an email prospects are reading. Sales email tracking tools are typically very easy to use and integrate with the user’s email application to provide email engagement information from inside the user’s inbox. They also don’t require any action either from the email sender or recipient in order to track an email and thus run ‘noiselessly’ in the background. Common sales email tracking tool features include email engagement metrics tracking, email templates, automated […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Web Analytics Tools. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Web Analytics Tools Web analytics tools enable businesses to track user activity and engagement on their website, and in some cases on social platforms and mobile applications as well. These tools track metrics such as number of active users, number of pageviews over a specified time period, conversion rates, number of onsite link clicks, how far users travel down the page, and average time on page. Some tools may specialize in one area of web analytics such as heatmaps and scroll maps, visitor recordings, A/B and split URL testing , and audience segmentation and personalization. There are also larger web analytics platforms that provide marketing, SEO, product, and sales teams with an overall view of user activity and engagement metrics. All of these tools aim to help businesses […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Content Management Systems. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Content Mangement Systems (CMS) Content Management Systems (CMS) allow users to create, publish, and manage digital content, typically on a website. However, more advanced CMS and/or Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) enable users to manage content across digital channels. Some popular CMS use cases are on content-heavy websites such as blogs, news sites, eCommerce sites, corporate sites, and intranets. While different types of CMS may have different areas they focus on, most include these capabilities; a WYSIWYG editor, content creation tools, content indexing, document format management, content versioning and archiving, and content publishing with templates or a wizard. More advanced CMSs may include other features such as the ability to create personalization rules based on site visitor activity or demographics that control which users see specific content. Here are […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Email Marketing Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Email Marketing Software Email marketing software helps businesses stay connected to their customer base, reach out to prospects, and, ultimately, drive sales. These products increase efficiency by enabling marketers to send out large batches of emails at once (e.g. promotional emails or newsletters), also referred to as ‘blast emails’, instead of requiring an individual to manually send each email. Email marketing tools also allow marketers to create segmented email lists, keep track of email subscribers, send out triggered emails, and set up email marketing campaigns sequences. Some products also include personalization capabilities that allow marketers to customize messages based on subscriber demographics or behavior. Other common email marketing software features include a drag and drop or HTML email editor, email templates, email A/B testing, email drip campaigns, CRM […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Ad Serving & Retargeting Platforms. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Ad Serving & Retargeting Platforms Ad serving & retargeting software is designed to help marketing teams expose customers and prospects to promotional content both on their own digital channels and on other sites. While ad serving solutions typically focus on displaying rich ad content to all site visitors, retargeting software uses visitor behavioral and intent data, collected onsite and offsite, to focus on more specific audience segments. Some ad serving & retargeting products allow marketers to use targeted promotional content on multiple different channels (e.g. websites, social media platforms, blogs, news sites, etc). Common ad serving & retargeting software features include ad campaign creation and deployment, multiple formats to display ads, sequenced ad targeting, integrations with ad exchanges, ad analytics and reporting, ad conversion tracking, ad […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Sales Intelligence Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Sales Intelligence Sales intelligence software is used by sales and marketing teams to collect and analyze information on new and already established leads. These tools help to strategically build the pipeline with in-depth information on prospects, track and record customer and prospect interactions, create lead lists, conduct lead scoring, provide context for lead nurturing, and determine when leads are ready for a conversation with a salesperson. Most sales intelligence tools either feed contact data into the user’s CRM, or serve as a data repository for collecting prospect contact, demographic, firmographic, and technographic information. As with any database, the quality and freshness of the data is a paramount concern, and is a key consideration when purchasing sales intelligence software. Another factor to consider is the size of the contact […]

Picture a situation we’ve all found ourselves in before: You’re itching to watch a movie, but the streaming experience has momentarily lost its luster. Maybe your recent binges have drained your queue so that only the sketchy dregs are left. Or maybe you’ve logged so many hours on the couch that you need to be surgically removed from the cushions and you long to see the sky once more. Whatever the reason, you’re craving the theatergoing experience, so you turn to Rotten Tomatoes for the standard information-gathering ritual. But not so fast! Rotten Tomatoes is a massive clearinghouse. It aggregates lots of reviews from lots of different sources. If all that data is going to help you decide what movie to see, you’ve got to figure out what bits of information are relevant to your situation. That means making judgement calls: deciding how much weight to give reviews from critics as opposed to those from other audience members; whether to give more weight to written reviews or to numerical scores; whether a given reviewer shares your personal tastes; and so on. And it’s not just about running down a checklist. Your gut feeling plays a big role, too. We’ve all […]

The podcasting boom is well and truly underway. According to recent figures, iTunes is now home to more than 525,000 active podcasts, with a total of 18.5 million episodes available to stream or download. Furthermore, podcast audiences have consistently grown 10 to 20% year over year, a trend which seems highly likely to continue. This growing popularity represents a big opportunity. Podcasts are a great marketing tool as they enable companies to share subject-specific expertise in a novel and engaging way. This helps build brand recognition, trust, and authority among consumers. Indeed many businesses have already taken the leap and begun recording and distributing their own podcasts. In this post, we’ll explore why that is and how you can do the same. The growing popularity of podcasting The growth of podcasting corresponds with the slow decline of traditional media such as TV and radio. Audiences are now increasingly seeking out niche online content that caters to their own interests and hobbies. This is part of the appeal of podcasts. Whatever you’re into, from banking to cartoons, there’s a podcast out there for you. This level of variety simply can’t be matched by traditional media.   Another key factor contributing to […]