Reviews and Champagne - what have they in common?

We all know how hard champagne producers fight to protect their appellation. Here we strike the first blow on behalf of 'reviews'. Why? because consumers need to know the difference between bona-fide reviews and what are commonly known as 'testimonials'. 

 

No confusion over the contents of that bottle!

It benefits no-one (except, questionably, the individual business) if someone is misled into buying a bottle of cava or spumante (or English sparkling) in the belief that they are buying champagne. In the same way, no-one benefits from being confused by the terms 'testimonial' and 'review'. 

So, to kick off the debate, here we will attempt to define (and therefore differentiate) between the two:

Testimonials:

Testimonial marketing has been around as long as the written word. We're sure businesses were using testimonials in Pompeii before the eruption of Vesuvius, and for very good reason: for thousands of years testimonials have been the next best thing to personal recommendation. Let's look at what defines a testimonial, it:

• is a written reference of (and for) the business in question
• purports* to be written by a genuine customer of that business
• is published by that business: by being physically shown, reproduced in the company's literature or advertising or posted on the company's website
• may or may not be written in return for reward (financial or otherwise - discounted products and services)
• is, by definition, the opinion of that individual customer about their own individual experience of the business in question

*'purports': really high-quality testimonials include both the name and contact details of the person (or corporation) who has given the testimonial. This enables consumers to have maximum confidence in the testimonial in question. Less high-value testimonials commonly fail to identify the author (Mrs P of Wimbledon).

But then: along came the world wide web. At last there emerged a better, more reliable alternative...

Reviews:

• are posted on, or through, a body* independent of the business being reviewed
• may be positive or negative in nature and content
• should be posted by a verified customer of that business
• may be invited by the business, but should allow uninvited (but verifiable) customers of that business to post as well

*if that body has any financial relationship with the business under review it should be made clear to consumers

In Summary:

When did you last see a negative testimonial? Absolutely! The killer benefit of reviews is credibility: the business cannot decide which customer opinions to show. And that's a massive benefit for the consumer - and it's also a massive benefit for great businesses, because it becomes a major differentiating factor. Businesses that are 'brave' enough to invite and publish reviews (as opposed to testimonials) are, by definition, sure enough of their levels of service to adopt the reviews route.

And, by-the-way, that doesn't mean those businesses are perfect. As we all know there is no such thing as a perfect business; it simply means that the business in question is high-grade enough to know that positive reviews will hugely outweigh negatives and their customer relations are such that they will respond to the occasional negative in such a way that any reasonable customer will be impressed. 

At HelpHound:

We were pioneers in the online reviews space. In nearly ten years in the business, we have come to really understand the world of reviews and reviewers. We have designed Dialogue to be (as one of our clients described it) the Gold Standard in review management. If you have Dialogue working for you, you can rest assured that you have the very best review management system available today. If you are moving up from testimonial marketing Dialogue is the way ahead for your business. 

And if you currently host testimonials on your website? Remember the champagne/cava analogy we began with: please don't call them reviews until they really are!

Stop using Testimonials. Now.

to read Dave Linabury's full post click here

We make no apologies for the age of this blog post - because it couldn't be more current. In fact it's more current now then it was when it was first posted.

Why? Because consumer behaviour has moved on:

• They've become more 'review savvy' - they can tell a testimonial from a genuine review at a glance
• Their thirst for reviews has increased
• Google are now delivering reviews top and centre for every business search

Dialogue delivers those reviews: to your own website and to Google*. Job done.

*OK, if you're in hospitality, we'll get them to Google and TripAdvisor

Reviews are the 21st century's testimonials

Arbitrage is the practice of exploiting financial anomalies between markets, for profit. There's no exactly equivalent term in marketing; but it is possible for marketing anomalies to occur as well - and to profit from them. It's the art of learning from other industries to get a lead on your competition.

An example:

The Mac "that saved Apple"

Apple started selling computers in the late seventies. They made good computers, but so did a multitude of other companies. Then, in 1998, Jonathan Ive (now Sir Jonathan) designed the iMac. 

What was learned from other industries? The key here was Jony Ive's background - he was a designer, not a techie. It was the revolutionary design of the first iMac, not it's technical wizardry, that drove sales into the stratosphere; the genius at Apple was to effectively arbitrage between two different disciplines. It seems so simple and so obvious now, but it hadn't occurred to IBM or Dell in 1998.

So what's this got to do with reviews?

As most of our clients know, we cover the whole business spectrum, so we're able to take the lessons learned and proved in one sector and apply them to another. Here we're going to examine what other businesses can learn from the hospitality industry.

Hospitality - at the forefront of the review revolution

Up until the turn of the millennium hotels did their own marketing - they advertised, and they used testimonials; sometimes from celebrities, often just plain comments from 'Mr and Mrs P'. These testimonials were displayed on their websites.

Then, in January 2000, Steve Kaufer founded a consumer review site called TripAdvisor. User-generated content was the new buzzword (sometimes called 'Web 2.0' for short). He invited guests to comment on their experience with hotels.

At first hotels ignored TripAdvisor, but soon guests started referring to it. The hospitality industry continued to dismiss TripAdvisor as an irrelevance, until it was too late. TripAdvisor swiftly established a monopoly on guest comment. Testimonial marketing in the hospitality industry began to wither and die.

You will search far and wide to find 'Mr and Mrs P' type testimonials on a hotel website these days, for one simple reason: those in hospitality marketing recognise that, given the alternative, consumers will always opt for 'real' consumer reviews. 

The massive downside for the hospitality industry in not taking independent reviews seriously at the start of the Web 2.0 'revolution' is evidenced by the stranglehold that Tripadvisor and review driven online travel agencies now have on their market. Hotels have little option but to pay commissions to these agencies because they didn't seek out an alternative offering for their customers, they sat back and allowed TripAdvisor to fill the consumer demand. 

So what lessons are there here for other businesses? Is there any potential for 'marketing arbitrage'?

The key is to embrace the lesson learned by the hospitality industry: that testimonial marketing is over. Consumers want reviews they can trust. They want them to be verified and credible (TripAdvisor is weak here, but they are so firmly entrenched as the 'go to' travel site it doesn't really seem to matter to them). They don't want 'Mr and Mrs P' any more. And they certainly don't want to be spoon-fed testimonials by businesses.

And businesses won't want to find themselves in the same financial headlock with review sites that hotels now find themselves in with TripAdvisor.

Learn the lessons of the hospitality industry before you're being charged 15% commission for every new customer!

So: businesses should act now, before they walk into the office one day and find the smaller 'TripAdvisors*' in their marketplaces have a similar monopoly on consumer opinion. 

*Potential 'TripAdvisors' in other sectors? Time will tell, but you can be sure of one thing: the inexhaustible consumer appetite for reviews will drive them: estate agency - AllAgents? - medical - WebMD? - financial services - moneysavingexpert? - lawyers - LegallyBetter? - trades - RatedTradespeople? And then there are the big daddies: Google Local and Yelp