Why you should use reviews in your marketing

Last year Trustpilot saw their TrustBox widgets surpass one billion impressions. The value and benefits in openly and honestly displaying reviews on your website is clear.

There are a number of studies, data sources and experiences from multiple industries that makes the case for utilising customer voices and reviews within your marketing. Below we have highlighted just a few and how these can benefit the members of the UKAA.

Trust

Consumer reviews are nearly 12 times more trusted than descriptions that come from your marketing team. Ultimately, your existing residents are your best advocates and sharing their enthusiastic reviews is the best way to build trust with new customers.

Reviews are also a great way of communicating your brand values and emphasising them through the words of your residents. An overwhelming 90% of Millennials say brand authenticity is important, proving that younger consumers prefer ‘real and organic’ over ‘perfect and packaged’. Most aren’t looking for picture perfect ads – they want the authentic and trusted content that their friends, family and peers are sharing on social media every day.

“Our core values are trust and transparency. We feel by inviting all our customers to leave feedback and displaying our TrustScore we can successfully portray our message across. After all, our customers are the best form of advertising.” – Ben Mills, Digital Marketing Manager, Fords of Winsford Ltd, source Trustpilot

Storytelling

When marketeers talk about what a brand stands for they recommend telling a story, painting a picture to your customers of what your mission and brand really means to them. Having met with many Build to Rent operators this summer a consistent message we heard was how the experience of BTR is so different from what a typical renter will have experienced before. From providing a ‘New way to rent’ to ‘Changing the way people live and rent’ to ‘Reinventing renting’ to ‘taking the lord out of landlord’ – storytelling through the voices of your residents allows your marketing team to bring your vision to life with tangible experiences.

“By utilizing TrustPilot reviews we have an opportunity to let our customers tell others their story to not just friends and family, but the country. These stories validate the customer experience…MailMyPrescriptions.com has reinvented the pharmacy experience, and we are using Trustpilot to reinvent storytelling.” – Santo J. Leo, Founder, CEO & President, MailMyPrescriptions source Trustpilot

Converting sales

It is now well documented that user generated content actively drives people to make new purchases. Online shoppers are 105 percent more likely to buy while on a site if they interact with reviews and customer Q&A’s and reviews produce an average 18 percent uplift in sales. For millennials putting your reviews and resident images on your social channels can have a big impact – over half have made travel plans because of consumer-created content they saw on social media.

“Engagement rate is significantly higher when we use reviews compared to a lot of what we share online. Big, happy faces accompanied by a real customer review seems to resonate well with people scrolling through their news feed. Being an online business, our excellent team behind the scenes rarely gets the public recognition it deserves. Our service is far and away the best in the surety industry. It’s easy for us (and our competitors) to make such claims, so we rely on reviews from our customers to drive that fact home to new prospects doing research.” – Michael Henderson, Digital Marketing Director, Surety Bonds. source Trustpilot

HomeViews

We have created a number of widgets to help you promote your reviews on your marketing channels. There are also a number of opportunities to ensure your business is featured or promoted on www.homeviews.com.

“We have always been entirely open about what our tenants think about us – HomeViews can endorse the credibility of our results by showing that they are at arm’s length.” – Harry Downes, Managing Director of Fizzy Living

Next step – ensure you have contacted us to claim your development and can start responding to your reviews. We will then send you our widgets and information on how you might qualify for our awards.

If you have any further questions about using HomeViews branding assets to optimize your marketing campaigns, reach out to Hannah@homeviews.com and we’ll help you make the most impact with your reviews.