Marketing AnalyticsMarketing Attribution
How to Measure the Impact and ROI of B2B Software Reviews
Joe Kevens3/28/2023
This is how you evaluate the influence of online reviews on your software business
Table of contents
- To use reviews for your company, you should follow these four steps:
- Bazaarvoice
- The problem with this approach is that it downplays the full impact of the reviews. After all, not all customers take the direct path to purchase via review sites. Instead, many users read online reviews, then Google the provider separately, for example, and contact them directly. In other words: The contact is usually delayed and takes place in a different way.
- Of course, this doesn't always work. Depending on your target audience, your customers may not have a clear answer to this question. Or they simply don't remember. Or they're just not bothered to answer. However, this method is a useful addition to tracking. Above all, you can combine the results with those of other measures and gain insights.
- Method 1: The CRM report
- And what is not even considered here are the positive effects on online visibility and reach from being listed on platforms like OMR Reviews. Plus, the trust factor through authentic user reviews and awards from review platforms, although hard to measure, enjoys a potent branding effect. If that's not enough reasons to start with review marketing.
From a company's perspective, good reviews from users are a blessing. After all, many buyers now research reviews before purchasing a particular product or service. However, measuring the return on investment (ROI) of customer reviews for your SaaS company is a major challenge, as software reviews offer value in many ways. Our guest author Joe Kevens from B2B SaaS Reviews explains how you can still achieve measurable results.How do you collect reviews in the first place?First of all: There is no perfect method to measure the full value of reviews. However, you have several options for how ROI measurement can still work for you.
To use reviews for your company, you should follow these four steps:
Decide which websites and platforms you want to collect reviews from.
Think about how you ask for reviews.
- Use reviews, e.g. in the form of testimonials, to generate more customer contacts.
- Measure the impact of the reviews on your company growth.
- A challenge is that reviews do not only have an impact on one part of your company. TrustRadius found that the average software provider uses B2B review sites for seven different use cases. From demand generation to customer and product marketing to sales and customer success:
- Source: TrustRadius
Admittedly, these are many use cases that need to be consolidated for a holistic picture. Therefore, we focus on the main cases and explain to you why it is worthwhile to invest time and effort in such analyses.
How reviews help your company grow faster
More reviews lead to more revenue. That's what
Bazaarvoice
has found:Source: BazaarvoiceEven if you're not in e-commerce, you can assume that the impacts in the B2B SaaS segment are similar. After all, most buyers nowadays rely on online reviews - and not just for online shopping.
The diagram also shows that the law of diminishing marginal utility applies to reviews: The first ten reviews can lead to a ten percent increase in revenue. If you've already generated 100 reviews and add ten more, this could lead to a revenue increase of only one percent.
Still, it's vital to keep reviews up to date: According to a study from BrightLocal (2022), reviews that are more than three months old are irrelevant to 85 percent of buyers. So, you need to constantly collect new reviews for your products.
For
B2B marketing
, Gartner Digital Markets has similar insights about the significant boost from the first reviews. The company found out that software products with ten or more reviews receive three times as much traffic (to their profile pages) as products with zero reviews. According to G2, a product needs 50 or more reviews to generate extraordinary traffic growth on the product page. There is another significant jump at 100 reviews. After reaching these early milestones in the number of reviews, many vendors improve their ranking in their software category and become leaders.How reviews contribute to lead generationDirect leads generated through a review platform are easiest to measure and communicate to outsiders. If you say "We received 100 leads from platform XYZ, which led to ten new customers.", this is probably understandable for most decision makers.
The problem with this approach is that it downplays the full impact of the reviews. After all, not all customers take the direct path to purchase via review sites. Instead, many users read online reviews, then Google the provider separately, for example, and contact them directly. In other words: The contact is usually delayed and takes place in a different way.
Review platforms are mainly used in the early phase of the customer journey and later to validate decisions made. This is also confirmed by a study by
Forrester
: The company found that average B2B buyers experience 27 interactions on their customer journey, many of which do not take place directly with the vendor. Instead, they talk to coworkers, for example, to get recommendations.The solution, therefore, is to go beyond measuring direct lead contacts. For example, by getting your buyers to directly tell you if the reviews helped them find your company.Asking costs nothing
Technology and tools alone - e.g., in the form of CRM, marketing automation, analytics tools, etc. - do not provide you with all the data to check how reviews contribute to your company's growth. What can help? Simply ask. For example, in forms before downloading demo versions: "How did you hear about us?" And your customers will reveal how they found you.
Of course, this doesn't always work. Depending on your target audience, your customers may not have a clear answer to this question. Or they simply don't remember. Or they're just not bothered to answer. However, this method is a useful addition to tracking. Above all, you can combine the results with those of other measures and gain insights.
Source: blog.hubspot
How to measure the impact of reviews - three methods
Many leads that are marked as "organic" or "direct" actually come from review sites, even though the CTA button was not clicked. But it is important to be able to accurately assign the traffic and leads generated via a profile on a review site. And indeed, some options exist for measuring the influence of reviews. Even when the connection to review sites is not immediately apparent. We present three of these options here:
Method 1: The CRM report
The CRM report is probably the most efficient method to measure the impact of reviews. Review platforms provide you with Buyer Intent Reports, whose data you can transfer directly into your CRM. The following next steps are then recommended: If a new account has been registered, you should open a new deal to start account-based marketing or lead research activities. If it's an existing account, it could be a warm lead. Then it makes sense to check if there is already a point of contact. Such insights can help to arrange meetings with potential new customers.
Method 2: Manual attribution
A word of caution upfront: This method requires manual work. But it reliably provides data about whether your buyers were influenced by review pages. At its core, manual attribution aims to prove how much your customers use review sites in their purchasing process.
The three simple but time-consuming steps are:
Get a list of your new customer accounts (i.e., recently closed opportunities, e.g., in the last month)
Check the Buyer Intent Reports from review platforms (e.g., from
- OMR Reviews
- ) of the last six to twelve monthsLook for new customer accounts in your buyer intent data to demonstrate that review platforms have influenced the customer journey.After analyzing 50 of its newest customers, software vendor PartnerStack found that 58 percent of mid-market buyers were active on review platforms. But only six percent were directly brokered through the platforms. Nevertheless, it could be demonstrated that review platforms were an important touchpoint in the customer journey.
- Method 3: The attribution tool
The third option for you: Use
attribution tools
, to measure the performance of review sites. If you have the appropriate tools, this approach is certainly the best practice for your measurement. Because: This approach goes beyond a first-touch or last-touch attribution model and instead uses a multi-touch attribution model. And here's how it works: Each touchpoint is assigned a percentage and a euro value. By assigning touchpoints throughout the entire customer journey, the true value of a review site like OMR Reviews can be measured. The disadvantage of this method: Not always is the budget available for a buyer intent subscription or the attribution software.Summary
On the way to measuring an ROI of review sites, the rule is: Choose the methods that are best suited for you and your company. With the measures mentioned above, it should definitely be possible for you to measure successes and prove the relevance of review platforms.
And what is not even considered here are the positive effects on online visibility and reach from being listed on platforms like OMR Reviews. Plus, the trust factor through authentic user reviews and awards from review platforms, although hard to measure, enjoys a potent branding effect. If that's not enough reasons to start with review marketing.
Auf dem Weg zur Messung eines ROI von Bewertungsseiten lautet die Devise: Wähle die Methoden, die für dich und dein Unternehmen am besten geeignet sind. Mit den oben genannten Maßnahmen sollte es dir in jedem Fall gelingen, Erfolge zu messen und die Relevanz von Bewertungsplattformen nachzuweisen.
Und was hier noch gar nicht berücksichtigt ist, sind die positiven Auswirkungen auf Online-Sichtbarkeit und Reichweite durch Listung auf Plattformen wie OMR Reviews. Außerdem ist der Trust-Faktor durch authentische User-Bewertungen und Auszeichnungen der Bewertungsplattformen zwar schwer messbar, genießt aber einen wirkungsvollen Branding-Effekt. Wenn das nicht genug Gründe sind, mit Bewertungsmarketing zu starten.
Und was hier noch gar nicht berücksichtigt ist, sind die positiven Auswirkungen auf Online-Sichtbarkeit und Reichweite durch Listung auf Plattformen wie OMR Reviews. Außerdem ist der Trust-Faktor durch authentische User-Bewertungen und Auszeichnungen der Bewertungsplattformen zwar schwer messbar, genießt aber einen wirkungsvollen Branding-Effekt. Wenn das nicht genug Gründe sind, mit Bewertungsmarketing zu starten.
Author
Joe Kevens
Joe Kevens ist Gründer und Chefredakteur von B2B SaaS Reviews und Director of Demand Generation bei PartnerStack. Davor arbeitete er für Unternehmen wie Influitive (Advocate Marketing), LevelJump (Sales Enablement) und Eloqua (Marketing Automation). Auf seinem Blog b2bsaasreviews.com erfährst du mehr über Nutzerbewertungen im Bereich B2B-SaaS.