After recently reading a post by a fellow blogger and apartment marketeer, Mike Brewer, about Trust Marketing I thought back to a post I did back in June about testimonials. I like what Mike says in his post about gaining customers trust. We are in a world where our friends, family, acquaintences, and online sources are the driving forces for what we buy. While clever advertising is still fun to watch on TV, it seems to me that more and more people are just entertained by the ads but not influenced by them. There are a few exceptions to the rule, but this is the trend and is reviewed thoroughly by Seth Godin in his most recent book Meatball Sundae. To me, people buy from people and brands they trust.
So, as I said, I reflected back on my "Testimonials - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" post from June and I was curious how many of you are helping to control the online conversation about You? How are you helping to build trust for your brand online? As we read on blogs, Amazon.com, apartmentratings.com, yelp.com, and many others, customers are writing reviews. Unfortunately for your company, brand, community, etc. the majority of people that typically write these reviews are ones that are not happy. All this said, I'm writing this follow-up post today to pose three questions that I would love your responses to.
1. What are you doing already to control the online conversation about your brand?
2. Does getting involved in the online conversation about your brand help to build "trust" in your brand or should you just let the cards fall as they may?
3. Is it ethical to solicit feedback from your customers (survey them) and then post that information online while filtering out the bad (as most likely that bad is already being posted)?
Showing posts with label testimonials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label testimonials. Show all posts
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Testimonials - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
What's the power of a testimonial? Does it depend on the product? Does it depend on who it comes from? Does it depend on where you find it? Does it depend on how it is delivered? These are all things I have been pondering as we decide to solicit testimonials from our residents. The testimonials we use need to be as powerful as possible and must be genuine.
In the apartment business the largest forum of testimonials is www.apartmentratings.com. At this website anyone can create a post that rates a particular community in different categories and then allows for an open essay to praise or bash the property. After surveying our residents about what websites they use as resources when searching for a new apartment home, apartmentratings.com was one that seemed to pop up frequently as a write in for the "Other" option. After seeing that I dove back into apartmentratings.com to see what all the fuss is about. What I found is that people have a lot of passion about where they live. Whether they love it or hate it, they want to write about it, defend it, slam it, or just be heard. The only concern I have with this site is how honest and genuine it really is. It's easy to see when a property manager or leasing associate tries to post something positive or as a defense post against someone that has slammed the property. From the other side, I also can see how negative posts can be taken way out of context and can be exaggerated to the point where they are not very credible either. While many of the resident's surveyed indicated this website was a resource they used, my next question for them would be how much weight they gave to what they found.
This being said, I think what we are seeing on Amazon.com and many other online stores is that customers are sharing their opinion about products and this will continue to be the trend. People have a lot of passion about the products they own/rent and we can't ignore it. The way I see it, is that it's the responsibility of the marketers to insure there are more positive posts and testimonials out there than negatives. It's also our responsibility to make sure that our customers are more likely to find positive posts. Things can turn very ugly online if you make mistakes and don't make an effort to fix them. Before the Internet it was much easier to ignore bad word of mouth, but now that bad review lasts a lifetime. What are you doing to insure your product, brand, etc. has a positive position online?
In the apartment business the largest forum of testimonials is www.apartmentratings.com. At this website anyone can create a post that rates a particular community in different categories and then allows for an open essay to praise or bash the property. After surveying our residents about what websites they use as resources when searching for a new apartment home, apartmentratings.com was one that seemed to pop up frequently as a write in for the "Other" option. After seeing that I dove back into apartmentratings.com to see what all the fuss is about. What I found is that people have a lot of passion about where they live. Whether they love it or hate it, they want to write about it, defend it, slam it, or just be heard. The only concern I have with this site is how honest and genuine it really is. It's easy to see when a property manager or leasing associate tries to post something positive or as a defense post against someone that has slammed the property. From the other side, I also can see how negative posts can be taken way out of context and can be exaggerated to the point where they are not very credible either. While many of the resident's surveyed indicated this website was a resource they used, my next question for them would be how much weight they gave to what they found.
This being said, I think what we are seeing on Amazon.com and many other online stores is that customers are sharing their opinion about products and this will continue to be the trend. People have a lot of passion about the products they own/rent and we can't ignore it. The way I see it, is that it's the responsibility of the marketers to insure there are more positive posts and testimonials out there than negatives. It's also our responsibility to make sure that our customers are more likely to find positive posts. Things can turn very ugly online if you make mistakes and don't make an effort to fix them. Before the Internet it was much easier to ignore bad word of mouth, but now that bad review lasts a lifetime. What are you doing to insure your product, brand, etc. has a positive position online?
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