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With online shopping and social commerce, today’s consumers are orienting their purchase decisions around the collective advice of thousands of digital sources. From large publishers and niche product review sites to individual creators talking about a product on social media, people are doing a digital deep dive into brands and their products before they buy. In the world of affiliate marketing, review and comparison sites play a pivotal role in helping brands establish trust with a new audience. People want to hear other consumer’s opinions and experience with the product before they make their final decision, but a positive review can push them over the last barrier and create a new customer. From an affiliate management perspective, brands sometimes look past review sites. We want to persuade you to think twice and bolster your online reputation by partnering with credible review sites to build out your brand testimonials to effectively drive conversions in an efficient manner.
Focus on authentic and trustworthy publishers
Figuring out how to tell a credible review site from a shady scammer site is life or death for working with these affiliates. Partnering with an untrustworthy review site is just begging for negative returns. Targeting review sites with a strong community of readers will help you penetrate a receptive audience that has an open ear to learn about your product.
Personal stories sell
You can give the affiliate some guidance about certain value propositions and product benefits to talk about in their review, but their own unique experience with the product is what will resonate with consumers and drive sales. Give the publisher flexibility to give their opinion on the product in their own authentic way, this will come across as more honest to their audience.
Ask your customers to participate
User generated content, has become popular over the past few years with the rise of social media and the influence of social proof. Encouraging current customers to engage with the brand by sharing their opinions and reposting them on the brand’s social media can leverage your current audience to attract and reach new audiences of like minded people.
Long story short: reviews from third-party users hold a tremendous amount of power over consumers’ purchasing decisions in the digital age where research on products and brands is so easy. We naturally want to justify our decision to invest in a product by making sure other people see its value and are happy with their purchase. By partnering with credible review sites and using user reviews to your own advantage, you can significantly impact your sales by giving your customers tools and context to make an informed decision. With the right approach, product reviews can become a compelling tool to establish a sense of trust between your brand and an expanded audience and ultimately boost your affiliate marketing success.
