Advocacy Marketing for the Cybersecurity Industry

Why use Business Review Sites?

Purchasing decisions are made using peer feedback

A cybersecurity customer review platform for companies, products, and services is not a new concept. However, advocacy marketing is an aspect of content marketing strategy that is widely underused, despite positive effects on the revenue funnel. This brings to mind two important questions:  Why should your business use business review sites, and if a review site adds value, how can your business use it to help validate your brand, influence buyers, and capture more demand?

When it comes to business purchases, we now devour the experiences of others with our prospective purchases. Nobody wants to make the wrong choice, so finding the right fit for these large purchases is critical. This craving for recent and relevant unbiased peer feedback in the form of reviews is not slowing down and appears to keep trending upward annually. The basic fact is that we trust third-party review sites, and rightfully so, as they seem to be closely moderated.

But how and why do review sites add value to a cybersecurity marketing strategy? The main reason is that tech buyers make their purchasing decisions using peer feedback, and a rating and end-user review site for tech solutions and services provides unique content and data about aspects of technology products that industry analysis does not cover. With a desire for something like your product or service, curious shoppers will go to these sites looking for you. This makes it clear that this type of advocacy marketing is a wise investment.

Free online real estate highlights your value

According to the popular tech review platform Gartner Peer Insights, 83% of buyers sought information from their peers and asked friends and associates about their technology experiences. It is clear that purchasers are seeking well-informed, end-user feedback about their intended purchase. 97% of buyers also reported to Gartner that they regard peer recommendations and testimonials as reliable.

Review sites aggregate all this information in a simple and digestible way, so buyers tend to use these sites to find what they need. The reviews provide insight into tech buyer purchasing decisions. They contain critical demographics, detailed ratings, and qualitative comments that help buyers understand the product from a similar role or company size perspective. The reviews also include all-important end-user experiences, including setup and implementation feedback. The review material is collated on dedicated vendor-specific landing pages. These landing pages are provided at no cost to the vendor, and there is no charge for the reader to access and view them.

Taking advantage of these free landing pages can help you highlight your company’s value, services, or products to potential customers. Gartner Peer Insights boasts content from 350 markets, and over 2 million product comparisons are performed yearly. The competing site, G2, has over 70 million annual visitors and is currently hosting more than 1.8 million reviews. With these statistics in mind, peer review sourcing is an aspect of your customer advocacy program that should not be ignored.

By consistently sourcing peer reviews, you could soon access the benefits of using the review sites, including access to readership analytics, content marketing material, and possible entry into the industry reports and market guides like the Magic Quadrant, and Google-ranking “best of” articles.

How do Business Review Sites Improve Company Visibility?

Boost Google ranking and domain authority

Improved company visibility is a huge responsibility, as everyone seeks to boost their voice. Online reviews are valuable assets that help develop a company’s reputation, informing and influencing in-market tech buyer decisions. But how does a business review site help to amplify awareness of your presence?

High numbers of reviews = Increased domain authority

First, positive reviews can boost your company’s visibility on search engines like Google. The more Google “trusts” you, the more customers you’ll attract through this increased trust rating. Google interprets reviews as brand signals. Considering this, the search engine now has the confidence to send users to your site. Businesses that consistently receive a high number of high-star ratings and reviews are more likely to be considered by the popular search engine, thus increasing the company’s domain authority.

High credibility value of reviews = Increased search engine ranking

Second, if you and your customers demonstrate a high level of “mutual trust” based on review ratings – for example, a rating of 4.5 or higher indicates customer trust in a particular brand – Google recognizes this as a badge of credibility, and your company will rank higher.

Rich snippet search results = increased CTR

Third, Google will display your review platform star rating on the search results page, a more attractive search result known as a rich snippet that is known to increase click-through rates.

According to Capterra, “Software products with 10+ reviews get three times the traffic”, so complete your review site profile and begin sourcing reviews.

Get in front of in-market buyers

Aside from review sourcing, completing a review platform profile increases company visibility. Think of these landing pages as a free extension to your website. Completed profiles help build an in-market buyer’s knowledge about your company by providing them with your company details and information about your services and products. Basic vendor listings are free; you can upload company descriptions, product descriptions, pricing descriptions, and other assets like videos and screenshots. According to Gartner, completed platform review profiles receive up to 80% more views, so this is well worth your time.

Buyers go to review sites looking for you

Cybersecurity customer review platforms capture buyer interest because buyers trust other tech buyers. They use review sites to learn about and compare current products on the market from their peers as they are looking for the best-fit provider. If your profile is complete on the platform, those tech buyers will have access to the details you have provided and the reviews containing the particular peer information they seek. These valuable details can ultimately influence their decisions. When you think about it, we all enjoy market comparisons and positive opinions that help to simplify our buying processes.

G2 research says, “7 out of 10 buyers reference reviews in the consideration phase”, and “9 out of 10 buyers are more likely to purchase a product after reading a positive review”. Despite this, “only 1 in 5 companies are considering adding reviews to their marketing mix”. This should serve as a prime opportunity to take advantage of this competitive edge and foster your brand advocates. Take the leap by adding review sourcing to your marketing mix and jump on this uncrowded train.

Checklist for Getting Started with Business Review Sites

So, where do you start?

Begin with the most popular cybersecurity customer review platforms for companies, products, and services. To get you started, here’s a handy list of some of the best technology review platforms available in 2023. These are G2, Gartner Peer Insights, Get App, Capterra, Expert Insights, Trust Radius, SourceForge, Crozdeck, and B2B Stack.

After you’ve decided which platforms to target, go over the checklist below:

Example of a landing page:

Example of a features tab on a landing page:

• NB: Some new accounts are eligible for free incentive gift cards for your reviewers.

How do I source Tech Business Reviews?

Internal resources and outreach campaigns

Good customer advocacyCustomer advocacy is a form of customer service in which organizations use customers as spokespeople. Customer advocacy is a focused approach to customer service, supported by marketing techniques. Engaging the... is a company-wide endeavor – employees should be your brand ambassadors, as well as your customers. Once your company, services, or product pages are claimed and complete, there are many ways to source reviews by using in-company resources and setting up an external outreach program. You have a designated vendor portal or dashboard at each review site for help and to create the links there that you will need. There, you can also view any review submission progress. If you have already completed the checklist above, you will now need the following:

Collaborate with your Social Media Manager to create social buzz:

Internal Promotions

By performing some in-house tasks at existing customer touchpoints, review sourcing can become extremely easy. You may have to work with other departments to get these items expedited, but here are some of the opportunities that are not to be missed:

Page Login:

If your company has a user login page, you can use this advantage to request a review. However, be smart about it. By following the advice below and designing your request to filter the user response, you can maintain or improve your score on the review site platform.

• By adding a “share feedback” button on the login page of your platform, users will never miss it.
• If the site visitor selects the “satisfied” option, redirect them to an incentivized review site page.
• If the visitor indicates they are “unsatisfied, ” redirect them to a custom form to gather feedback.

Email Signature:

• Ask your colleagues to add a link or a banner to their email signatures. The call-to-action can be as simple as asking whether the client is happy with the product/service. Once you have the code or hyperlink prepared, the addition to your colleagues’ emails will only take a few moments once, but can produce effective results.

Chatbot workflow:

One recent business trend has been to add a chatbot to a company website to provide 24-hour service to direct a user to the correct information, reducing wasted employee time. This asset can also be taken advantage of to aid the review sourcing aspect of customer advocacy by:

• Adding a review ask at the end of each workflow.
• Using incentivized links for higher conversion rates.

Other internally-led email sourcing ideas:

• Invite via your website via a blog, community post, or NPS
• Include in support tickets
• Social posts (non-incentivized links)
• Email Newsletter
• Pre-event emails
• Support team workflow
• In-app push and pop-up notifications
• Non-monetary incentives – offer users additional features or extended free trials if they complete a review

External Promotions

If you have good company data, email campaigning is the most effective way to source reviews. According to Project Manager Amy Bock, “ROI on email marketing is higher than any other channel. It beats SEO, social, and affiliate marketing, with an average return of $36 for every dollar spent.”

Email Sourcing:

• Run a consistent, dedicated email review sourcing campaign over the year.
• Ask your Sales Team and DISTIS to outreach and directly reach out to their customers.
• CXO level executives can reach out for reviews as a personal request.

Events:

• Ask for reviews at events, even when they are virtual!

Review Source Cadency, and Use of Review Content?

Consistency is the key to success

You can’t just initiate reviewing sourcing for a short time until you get the desired result and leave it at that. Buyers expect new reviews constantly. According to G2, “85% ignore reviews older than 3 months”.

By initiating a consistent peer review sourcing program, your reviews remain relevant, and you could soon access other review site benefits, including access to readership analytics, marketing material, and possible entry into the industry reports and market guides like Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and Google-ranking “best of” articles.

Gaining a presence in the market guides and quadrants is a considerable benefit of devoting time to these platforms. These reports drill down into company reviews and greatly assist buyers in comparing technology providers’ strengths and weaknesses to their specific requirements. Each review site has different variables for entry into these documents and reports. Still, most require a certain number of consistently sourced reviews, so don’t be afraid to ask your customers for feedback.

Set up awarded badges like these on your website to quickly and easily direct visitors to the review sites to leave reviews:

What Next?

Gather feedback, and leverage that content for marketing; what better source of insight and recommendation than peer insight and recommendation? Reviews, aggregated review data, badges, and reports can all be converted into marketing and sales content for use on third-party platforms and your website.

Yotpo claims that sharing your reviews on social media sites has attractive conversion rates, proving that social commerce is effective for boosting your sales. As you can see from the image below, the world’s largest internet-based professional network, LinkedIn, boasts a 2.49% conversion rate.

Reviews play an important role in assisting customers in feeling confident in their purchasing decisions, with many of them believing in them as much as personal recommendations. Include these review quotes in your emails, blogs, landing pages, social cards, slide-shares, and email signatures to promote your current reputation and pique potential customers’ interest. Be creative and produce some video content around the review quotes.

Don’t be afraid to freely share when your company gets customer praise – you will never find a better brand advocate than a customer advocate.

How Can Bora Help with Review Sites?

Suppose you value customer advocacy and want to reach a more valuable audience on review sites but lack the necessary time and knowledge to carry it out. In that case, Bora, specializing in all aspects of cybersecurity, currently works with other successful cybersecurity companies in this capacity. We offer a flexible A-Z package of review site management, making this aspect of your customer advocacy easy. 

We can assist at all stages and can step in at any time to create or update your company, product, or service profiles, leverage review content for assets, or drive reviews. We can produce the profile copy, liaise with the review site, source reviews, create assets from review and report content, and report back to you.

If you are interested in building a current and visible marketplace for prospective customers using a cybersecurity customer review platform, learn more about the value of review platforms and why you should embrace them here.

Want to talk to someone?

Go directly to our contact us page: https://welcometobora.com/contact-us/.