When it comes to purchasing or marketing products and services online, the two most commonly used tools are customer reviews and influencer marketing. Each has its pros and cons plus the application mainly depends on the type of business as well. In this blog, we are going to discuss how online customer reviews backed up by an online review management strategy compete with influencer marketing.

Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are honest opinions about products and services. It offers potential customers an in-depth view and detail of the products or services they are about to purchase. Since reviews are from customers who have already purchased and used the products or services, potential customers can read about the pros and cons before making their decision.

The Issue Of Fake Reviews

However, the thing with customer reviews is that while on one hand, they play a huge role in attracting customer traffic, on the other hand, some businesses tend to post fake reviews. Not only is this unprofessional but unethical as well. Deceiving customers to buy your products and services is going to cost you big time in the long run.

Brands Can Easily Request For Reviews

From a business perspective, brands can request their customers to leave an honest review after they have used their products or services. However, the brand should not force the customers to write a review.

On the other hand, from a customer perspective, an individual should only post an authentic and genuine review. It is important for the reviews to be well-balanced. Overly exaggerated opinions have little to no impact on potential customers.

Valuable Information For Improving Products Or Services

Perhaps the biggest advantage of customer reviews is that it allows businesses to understand the market gaps. Customers tend to mention how a particular brand could improve its services and quality. This is an excellent opportunity for businesses to understand the needs and preferences of the customers, without having to spend extra money.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing has been on the rise especially for the last decade. Back in the day, it was typical for famous artists to join social media platforms but not for businesses. However, things have changed drastically over the years. Today, social media platforms have become the biggest source of marketing for brands and companies.

Better Audience Targeting

It has made marketing relatively easier for brands and businesses in terms of expansion and identifying the target market. There was a time when businesses had to conduct detailed studies only to identify and determine where their target market exists. Today, it is comparatively a lot easier by observing the behavior of influencer followers.

Influencer marketing is a technique that involves popular personalities or social media stars promoting products and services. Brands approach such individuals and ask them to market their products to their followers. As a result, the products or services of a brand reach millions of potential customers around the world within seconds. In simple words, influencer marketing allows businesses to target a variety of customer segments with a click of a button.

The Issue Of Misinformation

However, influencer marketing is a go-to method for many businesses, it can easily break a business as well if the influencer or the brand promotes inflated facts and figures. There have been many cases where influencers have faced a severe backlash upon promoting inappropriate products and services. In such cases, both the brand and influencer bear significant damage to their reputation and there is nothing much that could be done to gain the confidence and trust of the audience anytime soon.

To avoid such situations, influencers are expected to only promote products after they have personally tried and tested them. Professional influencers thoroughly go through the details before promoting products and services to their followers. The reason being that there is no point in losing thousands of followers for a product or service that the brand will somehow continue selling with or without you.

Final Word

Concluding, both customer reviews and influencer marketing are excellent marketing tools for businesses if used wisely. While customers are expected to leave genuine reviews, influencers are expected to promote tried and tested products and services. Moreover, if you have a good budget, you can try both. Ask for reviews and manage them with a review management system while striking a deal with popular influencers for a better digital marketing strategy.