Ultimate Product Review Guide (That Finally Makes Sense)

Why are reviews critical?

Ask yourself, how do you find the restaurant you ate in? Or the last place you visited? Or something new, you tried? Or watched a new movie or binge-watched a TV Show? Or even the previous job you landed? It all boils down to one thing – Reviews!

In this era, we don’t do anything without someone recommending the same. If you want to succeed in your business, you definitely need to focus more on reviews!

Reviews are also known as recommendations, success stories, testimonials, case studies, client stories, and other similar meaning words.

There are multiple types of reviews; the following is the explanation of all:

1. Social Media – Reviews that your brand achieves on social media such as twitter, facebook, etc.
2. Video – Any review in the form of a video that helps the audience understand the product better.
3. Influencer – When some influencer tries the product and vouches for it in their audience or even shares the video/photo of using the product.
4. Media – Media coverage that your brand gains with online blogs, magazines, books, newspapers, etc.
5. Niche Blog – Niche blogs are detailed blogs that have particular audiences that help to make a better decision according to:- User Needs, By Comparison, Product Testing, and similar more strategies. Word count in these niche blogs is approximately 2000 words or more.
6. Case Study – Case Studies are detailed client reviews documented by the company on their customers to showcase the capability of the company in terms of reliability, product benefits, and other benefits.
7. Customer Reviews – Honest reviews given by customers after trying the product.
8. Interview with the creator – Interviewing the creator of the product helps it’s the audience to understand the vision and use the case of the product in a detailed manner.
9. Competitor Reviews – A review that has an unbiased comparison chart comparing the same or similar result-focused product of one or more competitors.
10. Discussion Forums – Discussion forums are groups, communities, platforms like Reddit, Quora to gain more attraction to your brand.
11. Unboxing – Many people judge a book by its cover; appealing packaging can help your brand to stand out.

Guidelines for a brand before asking a customer for a review:

1. Brand Reviews – Ask for reviews that revolve around your brand rather than a product, even if you remove the specific product in the future, a brand review would still make sense.
2. Details Matter – Ask your customer to keep their review as detailed as possible covering the specifics (Many times, the audience relates to the problem & will make the purchase)
3. Brand’s Details – Cover something that your customer really liked apart from the product; could be packaging, customer service, or some other thing(s).
4. Be honest – No one likes fake / false reviews, always ask for a review from the people who have tried your product. Getting fake recommendations could lead to a bad spot on the reviewer’s image as well as the brand. 
5. Proofread Before Submitting – Many times, there are typing errors, wrong sentence formations, grammatical issues that result in losing the interest of your reader.

Ultimate Outline for reviews

You can send the following exact same points to your customers without drafting a new copy

1. Problem Statement – Start your review by detailing out what problems you were facing, go as detailed as possible, try explaining it with the help of a story.
2. Problem Time Frame – The second step is about focusing on how long did the problem haunt you. 
3. Finding Solution – The third step comprises of what all solutions did you try but couldn’t get satisfactory results.
4. Discovering Solution – The fourth step revolves around how did you discover the solution you want to review? Here you could mention how did you find the product.
5. Comparative Happy Ending – The fifth & final step focuses on what difference did the product make? How was it different from all the other solutions? What will you expect in future developments from the product and the company?

Guideline for video review:

1. Proper Lighting – Don’t record in a dark environment or environment having no light.
2. Background Noise – Avoid any background noises.
3. High-Quality Video – Phone cameras have a high-quality video recording capability, don’t record pixelated video.
4. Clear Audio – Make sure the voice is loud & clear enough to understand. 
5. Don’t overthink – Many times, people overthink before doing it, leading to no implementation of the same. Don’t overthink; just do it.

We prefer taking a video review. Most of your competitors won’t be doing it as it takes the most time & effort; video review can be converted to a photo or text-based review and used for multiple marketing activities. Don’t forget to take your customer’s approval before doing the same.

What do you prefer? Did we miss anything?

Let us know in the comments section down below.