Reviews Are Changing The B2B Buying Process

 

B2B buyers are doing more research and are more risk adverse than ever before. The purchase cycle is taking longer as buyers are evaluating more alternatives for each purchase. They are afraid of wasting money, wasting valuable time and losing credibility by making poor purchasing decisions. Can you blame them if you look at the repercussions?

 

Wasting time and money is the best outcome from selecting an under performing vendor. It only gets worse. Major projects can be cancelled if they fall too far behind or too far over budget. For smaller companies and startups, choosing the wrong manufacturer or supplier can actually bankrupt them.

 

So what are people researching B2B purchases doing? They are going online to find more and more information before ever reaching out the vendor. They now perform 12 online searches and are 57% through the decision making process before they actually perform an action on your website.

 

Discovery

How do people find your company on the internet? Are you coming up high on the search results for key words? Or are you lost in the crowd that is Google search results for most B2B categories?

 

Reviews are a natural SEO booster. Search engines such as Google love reviews as they are constantly providing fresh, relevant content. In addition, reviews provide content for natural long-tail keywords without you having to do a thing. How much of an impact? As little as 10 reviews can lead to tens of thousands of impressions.

 

Stand Out
We all have other companies that we are competing with for the same customers. To attract customers, we use key phrases we think potential customers want to hear: “Low Cost,” “Fast Delivery,” “High Quality,” or “Dependable” just to name a few.

 

But how do can you prove that you actually deliver on these claims? This is where reviews really shine. Previous customers actually reaffirming your claims and providing some you didn’t even think about can really make you stand out from your competitors and avoid the no win situation of competing on price alone.

 

Trust

Trust is one of the key factors in choosing a vendor. Do you trust that the company can deliver? In many cases, sourcing a new vendor is a major decision. In the past, word of mouth was the major source of developing “trust” in a vendor prior to use. Now with the internet this has been changing. Word of mouth = online reviews. In fact 88% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.

 

Why is this? B2B buyers want to know what working with you throughout the project will be like. They are investing a lot of time and money into your business and want to reduce the risk as much as possible. Reviews give this exact insight they are looking for. Online reviews are 12x more trusted than product descriptions and 71% of people develop trust of a business based on reviews.

 

 

Conversion

One of the biggest boosts to your revenue can be increasing your conversion rate, the percent of customers you are able to close after providing a quote. At this point, all the hard work is done and just need to close the deal. Companies with at least 20 reviews have seen almost a 2x increase in conversions which led to an 18% increase in sales.

 

It is great to hear how reviews have changed the sales process but there is much more to them than just generating leads. If you actively are involved in obtaining reviews and interactions with the reviewers you can take your company’s internet footprint to the next level:

 

 

Branding

With the internet and the dawn of social media, your company’s brand is now whatever your customers are saying about you. Customer opinions have always been an influence through word-of-mouth, the internet has brought it to the forefront. With all the various forums, discussion groups and posting sites, the voice of your customer is more important than ever.

 

This is a huge change in the B2B world but if you embrace it, your company can leverage the change to your advantage. A few customer evangelist can go a long way to increasing your reputation with potential clients. Reach out to your customers and ask for reviews. This can go a long way to quickly building your online brand.

 

Engage

Buyers are completing more of the purchase cycle before visiting your website or contacting you than ever before. They have now completed between 50% – 90% of the process before they first contact you. Third party information is now the norm with buyers consuming 10 pieces for every piece they get from you.

 

By responding to reviews, you are able to engage with the buyers even before they contact you. Responding to negative reviews in the correct way can increase sales, credibility and trust, but don’t forget to respond to the positive ones as well. Let your customers know you appreciate them taking the time to share their experience. A little bit of empathy can go a long way.

 

 

Feedback

We all love positive feedback. Confirmation we are doing a good job. Employees will love to read the good reviews about the work they performed and can lead to an increase in moral. The reviews also let you see what your customers value and you can ensure to keep delivering on them.

 

Even more important to your business is the not so good comments. They are always hard to hear but they can give valuable insights in to where your business can improve to even be better. Read reviews for patterns. They will be quite a few one offs but if you start seeing the same comments over and over, you might have something that needs to be fixed. These can even be in positive reviews such as, “ Great work all the time but they tend to deliver late.”

 

 

 

Millennials

Millennials are here. They are now a major player in the B2B buying making up 46% of purchasers. Millennials are most active during the the initial research stage of the buy cycle. This generation grew up on the internet and are use to instantly being able to find the information they are looking for and seeing peer reviews for every purchase. Now they are in the workforce, they want the same B2C purchasing experience for their B2B purchases. Here are some startling facts about their purchasing behavior.

Millennials are the first generation to prefer online reviews to personal recommendations

They trust user generated content such as reviews almost twice as much as traditional marketing media

93% of Millennials read reviews before making a purchase

 

Are you ready for this new generation and their purchasing behavior?

Need help getting reviews for your company? Check out our post on How to Get Reviews.