As someone who works with the Gartner Peer Insights review site almost daily, I’m always excited to attend their bi-annual vendor webinar, get a roundup of all the developments, and hear about future innovations.
If you aren’t already familiar with it, Gartner Peer Insights is a rating and end-user review platform for IT solutions and services. For a tech buyer, it’s like reading Amazon reviews but for a purchase that’s a lot more in-depth. The platform is where enterprises and IT users procuring software, services, and hardware can read unbiased peer reviews and compare products. For a vendor, it’s an ongoing open event!
According to Gartner, 83% of tech buyers use their peers for information and ask their friends and associates about their technology experiences. They want well-informed, end-user feedback on their intended purchase, so your profile needs to reflect your best you.
The bi-annual Gartner Peer Insights vendor event presents all the latest review site updates and innovations for the year ahead.
Image courtesy of Gartner Peer Insights.
Summer’s Here!
This summer’s webinar was hosted by Shannon Wedding, VP of Vendor Value, overseeing vendor products and success, along with her colleagues, Dylan D’Orazio, and Cristina La Penna.
The webinar was recorded, and all attendees receive a link to the recording after the event. Attendees also receive the slide deck and a document containing the Q&A session from the end of the webinar. One great thing is that even though there is never time to answer all the questions during the session, the Gartner team follows this up and presents you with a complete Q&A document.
If you didn’t attend or just can’t wait to see a summary of the key points and highlights, here’s a roundup of what’s new with Gartner Peer Insights.
1H 2023 – Encouraging Review Capture and Customer Ambassadors
The year’s first half saw vendor experience improvements, new sourcing options, and a complimentary review capture service introduction. Thankfully, most of the improvements and innovations come from listening to what their customers want: and that’s the vendors!
Vendor Experience Improvements:
In the vendor dashboard, improvements have been made in the resources section. Not only are there 140+ helpful articles, but Gartner Peer Insights also launched a Get Started section, which is like a quick in-app platform refresh for those familiar with the site. If you are just beginning your Gartner Peer Insights journey, a what is, how to operate, and a chat function is there to help you on the site as well.
New Sourcing Options:
1. Multi-currencies and Tango Reward Link Gift Card
As customers are global, in January, Gartner introduced a multi-currency gift card so that everyone, everywhere, can enjoy their reward. They also launched the Reward Link Gift Card, which now makes up 40% of all incentives (see image).
Image courtesy of Gartner Peer Insights.
2. Gartner Funded Gift Card Promotion
The April Gift Card Promotion provided up to 50 Gartner-funded $25 USD gift cards in each eligible market. You had to sign up for each market to collect a special link created by Gartner to use between April 1-30. Gartner Peer Sights covered the cost of up to 50 reviews submitted using these links. This is a great promotion to plan your campaigns around! So great in fact, that they are running it again. Look out for a request form emailed from Gartner Peer Insights in August, and join the September free gift card promo.
Complimentary review collection:
Gartner claims an 82% approval rate on submitted reviews using their complimentary review collection service. In contrast, vendor-run campaigns are subject to a 35-40% rejection rate by the Gartner moderation teams – which conversely translates to a 60-65% approval rate. It will be interesting to see how this statistic changes over time.
Review Snippets:
Gartner Peer Insights also offers Review Snippets, which help with content marketing needs. This raises Gartner’s service up to a level with their younger rival product, G2, especially since the launch of their complimentary review collection.
However, they have the usual Gartner strictness in place, and rightly so. Maintaining their strict standards is why they carry such authority in the industry. There are two Gartner-led designs that you can just plug your content into without getting further approval from Gartner. The actual snippets themselves have been pulled out and pre-approved for use by Gartner.
Image courtesy of Gartner Peer Insights.
As soon as you get review content worthy of sharing – you can produce something to shout about within a few minutes! There is no better validation than one from a customer. Download, or share via email, or on LinkedIn.
Generative AI Content:
Regarding strictness, Gartner was sure to insert their stance on Generative AIWhat is AI? Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence processes by computers in an aim to mimic or exceed human cognitive abilities across a range of domains.... More Content (see below image), and they won’t be accepting AI-generated reviews.
Image courtesy of Gartner Peer Insights.
2H 2023
After maintaining that content will remain original and unbiased, the Gartner team presented what will come in the year’s second half, continuing with upcoming innovations, site updates, and vendor enhancements around user experience and vendor experience. These are:
Customer Experience Reports highlighted with the platform:
Gartner is confident that this feature will increase client exposure, as the Voice of the Customer and Peer Lessons Learned reports will be placed directly where end-users explore reviews. These reports synthesize reviews into valuable insights for the tech buyer. Gartner will provide more details of this in a blog in Q3.
Enhanced Vendor Experience:
Gartner Peer Insights promises easier approvals and updates in the coming year, and I can’t wait for this process to be streamlined! They also mentioned the auto-creation of vendor profiles for the second half of 2023, and improvements in the vendor portal by displaying new key metrics, a dedicated voice of the customer status, and a task progress list. We’ll be able to see how this has progressed at the next event (usually in January).
Image courtesy of Gartner Peer Insights.
So much to do, too little time?
When your day is filled with so many tasks, generating a good reputation for your brand through review sites and review capture is maybe the last thing on your mind. But, should it be? Gartner says there is a 65% increase in average time spent on a page when your review site profile is completed. It’s critical to nurture tech buyer impressions by having a strong presence on tech review sitesWhat Are Tech Review Sites?Tech review sites are specialized online venues that evaluate and provide insights about various technological products, services, and innovations. These sites serve as crucial resources for... More. Those potential customers are there looking for your product! Also having a good customer advocacy strategy in place shows care and appreciation for your existing customers, as well as providing the opportunity to gather feedback that can help with innovation and product development. If you would like to see immediate results and know more about how Bora can help you with this greenspace revenue, please contact us.
