Last week Vinay Bhagat, Founder & CEO of TrustRadius, talked with Thomas Been, CMO of Druva, about how Druva has rapidly evolved its marketing strategy in the wake of the global pandemic.  There are TONS of great marketing and industry tibits in our masterclass (which you can watch here). Here are Thomas Been’s  top 10 actionable tips for Adapting Quickly to Market Change with Customer Voice:  

Brand Awareness

3 things you can do now to elevate your brand awareness with reviews.

#1 Embrace the conversation around your strengths, and your weaknesses

When looking at your review program, your overall approach has to be intellectually honest – what are your organization’s strengths and weaknesses? You can’t fake reviews, so you’ve got to play to your strengths and ensure that you’re asking the right questions in your reviews. If you ask the right questions, you’ll get relevant answers, and be able to effectively differentiate.

#2 Use the voice of the customer everywhere

Currently Druva uses customer quotes across all their marketing – from their home page, to digital ads, and email signatures. It’s hard to find an example of Druva marketing without customer validation. That  consistency is important when you’re building awareness and want people to remember your brand. Also, ensuring that you’re adapting your messaging based on your audience or even current events. Relevant messaging with customer prooft results in high conversions.

#3 Think beyond the score to play on your strengths

When a new review comes in for your product, it’s hard to not immediately look at the score the reviewer has given you. However, the score is just one part of the review. If a reviewer gives you a low score—look at why. Look at how it can be fixed. Also look at the context of the review. A low-scored review can still have some wonderful use case scenarios and quotes to share. When you ask the right questions in your reviews, invest the time to guide the discussion, it will have a huge impact on the quality of the content you get from your users. 

Demand Generation

4 tips to supercharge demand generation with reviews

#1 Leverage reviews to build confidence for your audience 

Third party validation is the gold standard of trust in marketing these days. Using customer quotes in your marketing materials/website will help build trust with buyers. Confident buyers are more likely to engage and move forward with your company, even in times of economic uncertainty. Syndicating quotes from a review site will make buyers more likely to click, fill out a form, download a trial version, or act on any other CTA.

#2 Consider using reviews for personalization 

Once you  have a big enough pool of reviews, use that content to target specific verticals or segments. Provide that extra level of relevance to your buyers. For example, if you are a marketing executive in the software security industry, you’ll want to read reviews written by other users in the software security industry. Personalized content is even more likely to get your buyers to take action right away.

#3 Leverage your review traffic

Not all intent data is created equal. If you leverage your review traffic – you’ll be engaging an audience that has a very strong intent to buy. Set up Category Audience Targeting to optimize ad spend,  and focus prospecting on accounts you know have been doing their research. 

#4 Add customer voice to your nurture program

Reviews are chock full of tips, advice, and use cases that are relevant to your buyers. Adding that content to your nurture emails will help validate your offering. It’s not just about putting review quotes on your website and landing pages– it’s about integrating it across channels. Do a nurture audit and think about where 3^rd party customer voice can help increase conversion or engagement.

Sales Enablement

3 ways to help sales win deals with reviews

#1 Partner with Sales 

Partnering with Sales early on in your customer review program will help them understand the importance of customer voice. You want your sales team to be confident in the content, so they can understand it and love it. You can start by asking your sales team for a list of FAQs they get from buyers. Are there any features or use cases they need more support for? That info will help you customize your review questions, and invite the right customer cohorts to review you.

#2 Enable Sales

Show your sales team how to access your customer voice information, provide them quotes, case studies – give them what they need to share your story through the eyes of your users. At TrustRadius we’ve created a review Chrome extension, that enables you to easily access, share, and use customer quotes. Your sales team can easily grab the relevant quote they need for a sale right from their browser.

#3 Keep your content current 

Having a consistent flow of fresh and relevant content will help you continue to drive engagement and improve conversion. Plus, recent reviews are a requirement to appear on TrustMaps and qualify for awards like Top Rated or certifications like TRUE that salespeople can use as humblebrags in their email signatures.

B2B tech marketing (and all industries) have been shaken by current events. We are all working together to do the best that we can. We hope that these tips and insights can help make adapting your marketing program a little easier. If you’d like to watch the whole Masterclass, get it on demand here.

More Free Resources

ROI of Reviews eBook

The value of reviews can feel hard to quantify, especially when multiple stakeholders and functions are involved.

Use this simple framework to communicate the value of TrustRadius reviews for your Marketing department – and across your business. Read now!