You're Sitting on a Gold Mine. They're Called User Reviews.

Madeleine Work
September 28, 2022
min to read

Email preview: “I know you’re busy so I’ll make this short…”

Me:

You're Sitting on a Gold Mine. They're Called User Reviews.

Madeleine Work
September 28, 2022
min to read

Email preview: “I know you’re busy so I’ll make this short…”

Me:

And now for some hard truths: Nobody is going to buy your product just because a salesperson knows you’re busy and is going to make this short.

They probably won’t buy your product even if a salesperson makes a killer pitch (at least not right away).

They’re going to look at review sites. Check-in with their colleagues. Ask their LinkedIn network or Slack community.

Because 92% of people say they trust word-of-mouth or recommendations above all other forms of advertising. 

So, yeah, user reviews are important. 

They’re so important that setting up a profile on G2 and calling it a day isn’t going to cut it anymore. You have to get creative. 

“As much as we believe in our product, buyer decisions will almost always be influenced by user reviews (as they should be). G2 is a trusted and well-known source — so the third-party validation we get from G2 allows us to back our claims”
-Anna Nørager Deigaard, Senior Campaign Executive at Reachdesk

We talked to some of the smartest companies out there to see how they’re using reviews — so you can take their ideas and shamelessly implement them into your own sales and marketing tactics. 

Let’s do this.

1. Create a one-stop-shop for all the love

Don’t make your prospects dig for testimonials from happy customers.

Put them all in one convenient location, so there’s no question about how much people love you.

Chili Piper's Wall of Love: What our customers and fans around the world are saying about us

Here at Chili Piper, we recently implemented a Wall of Love, where we show all the wonderful things people are saying about us.

If you want to see how you can create your own wall of love, check out testimonial.to

“Testimonials are the most effective form of advertising. When your customers learn about you for the first time, they want something real — and real feedback from real customers is about as real as it gets.”
-Damon Chen, Founder of Testimonial.to 

2. Use G2 to drive inbound leads

If you’re in the tech business, you know that your prospects are going to check you out on G2 before they make a decision. 

Remember: People don’t trust brands anymore. They trust their peers

“You can hand-pick all the positive testimonials you want for your website, but people are still going to do their due diligence and check out review sites for unbiased reviews.”
-Tara Robertson, Sr Demand Generation Manager at Chili Piper

And as soon as your customers click that beautiful “schedule demo” button on G2, they’re ready to chat with sales ASAP. 

Instead of making them wait 24-48 hours before one of your reps reaches out, let them schedule time directly on your reps’ calendar right then and there.

Gif of G2-Chili Piper Integration: Let your prospects schedule time with your sales reps from your G2 page

Learn more about how the G2-Chili Piper integration works.

3. Lean into the data 

If you’re using G2 to collect user reviews, you already know that they rank you against your competitors. 

Take that data, and use it to tell a story. 

Do you have the highest satisfaction score? 

Do enterprise customers love you? 

Tell people about it.

4. Perfect your positioning 

If you want to do positioning right, there are a few rules you should follow. 

One of those is understanding how your raving fans think about your product.

“Your best-fit customers hold the key to understanding what your product is”
-April Dunford in Obviously Awesome

Scour your reviews to see how people are talking about you… and shamelessly copy them.

3 simple ways to write better product copy: Survey customers, read reviews, and listen to Gong calls

5. Curate review pages by industry, company size… or anything, really

Instead of sending prospects to your G2 homepage, you can send them to a custom page that only shows reviews relevant to them.

Talking to an enterprise company in the technology industry? Send them to a review page full of positive testimonials from other enterprise companies in the technology industry. 

G2 Reference Page

This little-known G2 feature is called a “Reference Page”. And it’s pretty slick. 

“Companies we see using user reviews most successfully make their sales outreach hyper-specific to the person they’re getting in touch with. That way prospects are seeing content and reviews that are super relevant to them.”
Katlin Hess, Director of Customer Marketing at G2

6. Make improvements to products

Use reviews to make improvements to your products and better meet the needs of your customers. 

Reviews provide valuable insights into how your customers use your products, and what their needs and expectations are. 

So use them to make improvements to your products — improvements that real customers actually care about. 

“At Instrumentl, we recently released new product features for improved grant deadline tracking, Salesforce integration, and an easy-to-read calendar view — all of which are because of feedback we’ve gotten from user reviews.”
-Will Yang, Head of Growth at Instrumentl

7. Stay focused on what matters most to your customers

Maybe your VP of Finance thinks you’re spending too much on customer onboarding and wants to outsource to a third-party vendor. 

But when you look through user reviews, you see that everyone is raving about how amazing your Customer Success team is and how much they loved the onboarding process. 

User reviews are a great place to get insights about the things that actually matter to your customers — so you can retain the customers you already have and find even more customers that love you just as much. 

“User reviews help us better understand customer expectations. For example, if someone writes, ‘This customer is always on time with deliveries, I know delivery speed is something my team needs to pay attention to.”
-Gauri Manglik, CEO and Co-Founder of Instrumentl

8. Use the data you’re given

We’re talking about intent data.

If you’re a G2 customer, you’ll have access to data that shows you who’s looking at your product, your category, and your competitors. 

At Chili Piper, we use that data in two key ways: 

  1. Build retargeting lists for our paid social ads. We actually automate this process using the G2-Metadata integration, since we run all our paid ads through Metadata
  2. Alert SDRs if an account they’re working on takes an action on G2. Things like visiting our company profile, a competitor's profile, etc.

PartnerStack takes it a step further with an app called Rattle that integrates G2 buyer intent with Salesforce and Slack, so they can automatically provide Slack updates — like this one.

Next Steps

You know user reviews are important. 

Now it’s time to do something about it.

For even more learning, check out B2B SaaS Review’s super thorough article with ideas for generating, leveraging, and measuring reviews.

And then schedule a demo to see how the Chili Piper-G2 integration can turn user reviews into booked meetings.

And now for some hard truths: Nobody is going to buy your product just because a salesperson knows you’re busy and is going to make this short.

They probably won’t buy your product even if a salesperson makes a killer pitch (at least not right away).

They’re going to look at review sites. Check-in with their colleagues. Ask their LinkedIn network or Slack community.

Because 92% of people say they trust word-of-mouth or recommendations above all other forms of advertising. 

So, yeah, user reviews are important. 

They’re so important that setting up a profile on G2 and calling it a day isn’t going to cut it anymore. You have to get creative. 

“As much as we believe in our product, buyer decisions will almost always be influenced by user reviews (as they should be). G2 is a trusted and well-known source — so the third-party validation we get from G2 allows us to back our claims”
-Anna Nørager Deigaard, Senior Campaign Executive at Reachdesk

We talked to some of the smartest companies out there to see how they’re using reviews — so you can take their ideas and shamelessly implement them into your own sales and marketing tactics. 

Let’s do this.

1. Create a one-stop-shop for all the love

Don’t make your prospects dig for testimonials from happy customers.

Put them all in one convenient location, so there’s no question about how much people love you.

Chili Piper's Wall of Love: What our customers and fans around the world are saying about us

Here at Chili Piper, we recently implemented a Wall of Love, where we show all the wonderful things people are saying about us.

If you want to see how you can create your own wall of love, check out testimonial.to

“Testimonials are the most effective form of advertising. When your customers learn about you for the first time, they want something real — and real feedback from real customers is about as real as it gets.”
-Damon Chen, Founder of Testimonial.to 

2. Use G2 to drive inbound leads

If you’re in the tech business, you know that your prospects are going to check you out on G2 before they make a decision. 

Remember: People don’t trust brands anymore. They trust their peers

“You can hand-pick all the positive testimonials you want for your website, but people are still going to do their due diligence and check out review sites for unbiased reviews.”
-Tara Robertson, Sr Demand Generation Manager at Chili Piper

And as soon as your customers click that beautiful “schedule demo” button on G2, they’re ready to chat with sales ASAP. 

Instead of making them wait 24-48 hours before one of your reps reaches out, let them schedule time directly on your reps’ calendar right then and there.

Gif of G2-Chili Piper Integration: Let your prospects schedule time with your sales reps from your G2 page

Learn more about how the G2-Chili Piper integration works.

3. Lean into the data 

If you’re using G2 to collect user reviews, you already know that they rank you against your competitors. 

Take that data, and use it to tell a story. 

Do you have the highest satisfaction score? 

Do enterprise customers love you? 

Tell people about it.

4. Perfect your positioning 

If you want to do positioning right, there are a few rules you should follow. 

One of those is understanding how your raving fans think about your product.

“Your best-fit customers hold the key to understanding what your product is”
-April Dunford in Obviously Awesome

Scour your reviews to see how people are talking about you… and shamelessly copy them.

3 simple ways to write better product copy: Survey customers, read reviews, and listen to Gong calls

5. Curate review pages by industry, company size… or anything, really

Instead of sending prospects to your G2 homepage, you can send them to a custom page that only shows reviews relevant to them.

Talking to an enterprise company in the technology industry? Send them to a review page full of positive testimonials from other enterprise companies in the technology industry. 

G2 Reference Page

This little-known G2 feature is called a “Reference Page”. And it’s pretty slick. 

“Companies we see using user reviews most successfully make their sales outreach hyper-specific to the person they’re getting in touch with. That way prospects are seeing content and reviews that are super relevant to them.”
Katlin Hess, Director of Customer Marketing at G2

6. Make improvements to products

Use reviews to make improvements to your products and better meet the needs of your customers. 

Reviews provide valuable insights into how your customers use your products, and what their needs and expectations are. 

So use them to make improvements to your products — improvements that real customers actually care about. 

“At Instrumentl, we recently released new product features for improved grant deadline tracking, Salesforce integration, and an easy-to-read calendar view — all of which are because of feedback we’ve gotten from user reviews.”
-Will Yang, Head of Growth at Instrumentl

7. Stay focused on what matters most to your customers

Maybe your VP of Finance thinks you’re spending too much on customer onboarding and wants to outsource to a third-party vendor. 

But when you look through user reviews, you see that everyone is raving about how amazing your Customer Success team is and how much they loved the onboarding process. 

User reviews are a great place to get insights about the things that actually matter to your customers — so you can retain the customers you already have and find even more customers that love you just as much. 

“User reviews help us better understand customer expectations. For example, if someone writes, ‘This customer is always on time with deliveries, I know delivery speed is something my team needs to pay attention to.”
-Gauri Manglik, CEO and Co-Founder of Instrumentl

8. Use the data you’re given

We’re talking about intent data.

If you’re a G2 customer, you’ll have access to data that shows you who’s looking at your product, your category, and your competitors. 

At Chili Piper, we use that data in two key ways: 

  1. Build retargeting lists for our paid social ads. We actually automate this process using the G2-Metadata integration, since we run all our paid ads through Metadata
  2. Alert SDRs if an account they’re working on takes an action on G2. Things like visiting our company profile, a competitor's profile, etc.

PartnerStack takes it a step further with an app called Rattle that integrates G2 buyer intent with Salesforce and Slack, so they can automatically provide Slack updates — like this one.

Next Steps

You know user reviews are important. 

Now it’s time to do something about it.

For even more learning, check out B2B SaaS Review’s super thorough article with ideas for generating, leveraging, and measuring reviews.

And then schedule a demo to see how the Chili Piper-G2 integration can turn user reviews into booked meetings.

Madeleine Work

Madeleine Work is Product Marketing Manager at Chili Piper. She loves bringing people together, learning new things, and making hilarious jokes. When she's not typing away at her laptop, you'll probably find her running, hiking, or hanging out with her baby. Follow Madeleine for laughs and product marketing tips on LinkedIn.

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