Back in May, I wrote about how B2B firms have avoided ratings and reviews and challenged you to take part in a survey about the subject. Christian Carlsson has graciously offered to share the results in this month’s newsletter. But before we get to that, I would like to thank everyone for their best wishes in light of my announcement yesterday. It’s a big change for me, but I intend to be writing this same old blog for a long time.
Let’s dig into ratings and reviews for the B2B marketers—Christian sure did. He’s kindly made available a presentation that summarizes research he performed for his dissertation. If you’ve got the time, check out Christian’s research on “Ratings and reviews for the business user.” I’ll summarize what I thought were the major points below.
You can sometimes go wrong reading too much into some kinds of research, and counting on the opinions of 75 people (in this case) might not seem prudent to you. After all, who knows whether those folks are representative of the larger population of all B2B buyers? But I think that some of the results of this survey are so overwhelming that they are persuasive.
I’d like to highlight a few of those findings that persuaded me of their veracity. First, if you look at chart 12, it reveals exactly what we thought to be the case, that ratings and reviews are used far less for B2B products than for B2C products. For example, 40% of respondents have used them more than 10 times as consumers, but barely 10% of the same people have done so as B2B customers. Similarly less than 5% have never used consumer reviews but almost 40% have never used B2B reviews even once.
So, one possibility is that people would not be persuaded by B2B reviews, but chart 14 shows that buyers find them among the most persuasive information available, and chart 18 shows that 58% have removed a company from consideration because of bad reviews. And chart 24 shows that 60% have used reviews to influence a B2B purchasing decision. To me, the most compelling chart in the deck is number 25, which shows that 93% of business buyers find ratings and reviews to be valuable.
Again, it is possible that these 75 responses are not enough to persuade you beyond a shadow of a doubt (if doubts in fact cast shadows). But 93% of almost any population tells B2B marketers that ratings and reviews are worth considering for your site. After all, if I told you that changing your ad copy would persuade even half of your target market, you’d do it in a blink. So, if even half of your customers (much less 93%) are waiting to be persuaded by ratings and reviews, why aren’t you offering them?
Before I go, I just wanted to remind you that I’ve still got a free ticket to the Internet Strategy Forum Summit in Portland July 17. (And I can offer 15% off the registration if you don’t win the free ticket.) Check out both offers—I hope to see you in Oregon this month.
