in

Amazon Ads: The Importance of Product Reviews and How to Get Them Without Breaching Any of Amazon’s Policies

If there’s one thing that most marketers, advertisers and businesses agree on, it’s the power and influence of genuine user reviews. It’s the reason more and more companies – both large and small – are putting user reviews and testimonials of their products up front in visible locations.

In fact, 97-percent of consumers – according to a Fan & Fuel Study – said that reviews from other customers had an impact on whether they buy or not. Add to this the fact that 64-percent said Amazon had the most helpful customer reviews, and it should start to become clear as to why Amazon product reviews are vital for sustained retail success on the platform.

Because the modern consumer is a savvy individual, they prize reviews from their fellow shoppers more than the best product descriptions and copy alone. When customers see a raft of detailed, positive reviews, they feel they are gaining genuine insight into the product’s performance beyond the selling points advertised by the retailer. 

Getting the initial flow of reviews going isn’t always an easy task, however. It’s something that many sellers on the Amazon platform struggle with, and that means they’re missing out on a host of benefits. With this in mind, we’ll also show you some proven, honest strategies for accumulating reviews that won’t put you in danger of breaching Amazon’s guidelines and rules.

The Importance of Amazon Product Reviews

They Affect the Ranking of Your Products

When you’re first starting out with Amazon marketing – or introduce a new product, for that matter – the number one thing you’re probably thinking about is how to get what you sell in front of the biggest possible audience. While this is always a great goal, it’s also important to put your products in front of a motivated, interested audience.

Happily, Amazon product reviews can be a huge help in achieving both of these aims. The number of reviews you have – and their quality – can swiftly push you up the search results on Amazon, ensuring that your products appear to both a wider, casual audience perusing the site and those seeking the specific product you sell.

Because Amazon has so many sellers often offering the same or very similar products, differentiating yourself from the competition is often a difficult task to master. The best way to do this, and show yourself to be a trusted, quality vendor, is via good reviews. There’s no better way to show the superior quality and approach of your business over others than with real, customer-generated feedback.

Reviews Make for Smarter Marketing

In any business, it’s of the utmost importance to understand your audience before you start marketing a product. By looking at what competitors get right, what they get wrong and how they position their product, you can gain a tremendous amount of insight into how to proceed with the best chance of success. The Amazon platform is no different in this regard.

By looking at and studying reviews for similar or the same product offered by a competitor, you can see precisely what consumers think: what the product does for them, what they don’t like about it, what features they wish it had and more. By using an online platform like ReviewMeta, you can quickly access reviews by simply pasting in an Amazon product URL. From there, you can see just what customers are saying, leveraging their feedback into actionable insight when you launch your product offering.

Users Trust Amazon Reviews

As we mentioned above, customers like to see real reviews from people like themselves. But it’s not just this that makes people put a great deal of stock in the veracity of Amazon reviews – the platform itself takes a proactive approach when it comes to ensuring reviews are genuine and not false, paid efforts designed to boost the seller’s overall ranking.

Amazon is so serious about making sure the reviews on their platform reflect real feedback that they will ban any seller found using fake reviews outright. In real terms, this means users of Amazon have an inherent trust in the reviews they see and that, in turn, means they will believe the positive reviews you gain.

Reviews Help You Find Your Strengths

When it comes to product reviews on the Amazon platform, we’ve seen that they’re just as crucial for informing your approach as they are for enticing customers.

A big part of selling on Amazon with success is defining and refining your offerings until you find the best range of products that perform on a consistent basis. Reviews are enormously helpful in this regard, giving you real, unfiltered opinion from real consumers. If a product routinely receives poor reviews, then that’s something you can action by dropping it from your listings. Conversely, a product that always garners a high volume of positive reviews is something you’ll probably want to focus on with more intensity and increase your inventory levels.

How to Get Real, Honest Amazon Reviews

Use the Amazon Feedback System

Most people on earth at this point have probably bought something from Amazon, and so you’re aware that you always get those automated feedback emails from the platform post-purchase. But what many sellers fail to do is take advantage of the customisation aspect of these emails.

Rather than let Amazon’s rote email do the talking, encourage the customer to leave feedback on the product they purchased. Now, it’s important not to ask overtly for good or positive reviews. Instead, consider asking something like, ‘Would you consider leaving us some honest feedback?’ or something along those lines. You’re not soliciting a good review here – a big no-no from Amazon’s point of view – instead you’re only asking for feedback, whatever form it takes.

Showcase Benefits Over Features

You need to make sure that the way you describe your products tells the buyer the benefits of their potential purchase. Too many sellers focus solely on the features of a product, forgetting that people buy with their emotions and imagination, rather than by coldly assessing the features of a product. Show the potential buyer the difference the product will make, and the pain points it solves, and they’re much more likely to become a conversion.

Product photos are also an essential part of the process, so you need to ensure you include at least three high-quality images showcasing the overall product and any special features that warrant a more detailed view. Be sure to take your product photos on plain, white backgrounds and always check the quality before uploading.

Post-Purchase Care

If you think back to businesses you may have reviewed – a restaurant, for example – what was it about the place that made you leave a great review? Perhaps the food was good, yes, but no doubt the service and your experience as a customer played a significant role in the glowing feedback you left.

The same principle applies to building up good Amazon product reviews. In short, the customer at-hand needs to feel like you care. A great way to show this post-purchase care is by adding a customised touch with inserts in the packages you ship.

A well-worded, well-designed insert can do wonders for encouraging customers to leave a review, and you can also include additional, valuable information like your returns policy and other salient information they need to know. And there’s nothing wrong with encouraging a review here – as long as you abide by the rules of not asking for explicitly positive feedback.

What Amazon Wants to See

Regarding content, length and the type of reviews present, the Amazon platform has some specific preferences that will determine how much these determine the ranking of your product.

For example, Amazon affords verified purchase reviews more importance when it comes to formulating the overall level of a product review. As you might have guessed, these reviews come from people who have actually bought the product and have subsequently left feedback. Rather than coming from another, perhaps unscrupulous source, verified purchase reviews are something Amazon can look at and assess as a genuine review generated from activity on the platform. That’s why they put so much positive weight on these types of customer feedback.

In terms of review length, Amazon wants to see long, in-depth reviews of products that talk about the real benefits and outcomes of the purchase. Amazon will consider these reviews as carrying more authority than a rating or short review. This is because Amazon is all about the customer experience and they will reward products with extensive, detailed reviews with improved rankings.

Similarly, when users provide photos or videos as part of their review Amazon will weigh these instances more heavily than text or star reviews. Part of the reason why is because these are perhaps the purest insight a customer can provide regarding feedback, and it shows they’ve taken the time to leave a positive, multimedia review because they like the product so much. These reviews are also great for you as a seller – and Amazon as a platform – because they show other buyers the benefits of a specific product. It’s the type of organic marketing that every business desires, and it can have a real impact on others weighing up the same purchase, with the ultimate results being more sales for you and, by association, more profits for Amazon.

Written by CrazyLeaf Editorial

Follow us on Twitter @crazyleaf , Facebook , Pinterest

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Loading…

Graphic designer using digital tablet and computer at home office

6 Must-Have Design Elements When Building Logos for Business

Web developer

How to Get Your E-commerce Site Ready for 2019