I’ve had the chance to have ten Views on Reviews interviews.
B2B SaaS practitioners in Customer Marketing, Customer Success, Demand Gen, Community, and the C-Suite have shared their thoughts and recommendations on the matter of reviews. Thank you to the interviewees for sharing 
.
What are the top 10 tips on reviews?
While it’s hard to pick the 10 top takeaways on reviews in B2B SaaS, here goes: 5 on how to get reviews and 5 on how to leverage them.
Getting Reviews
★ Find review candidates in your NPS survey responses – Nick Bennett
★ Take a multi-channel approach to review generation – Melody Leatherbury
★ Use reviews as a company strategy for growth – Anna Nørager Deigaard
★ Bring Customer Success in on the Marketing Strategy for Reviews – Leona Leong
★ Go beyond Marketing and CSMs to ask for reviews – Bianca Del Vecchio
Find review candidates in your NPS survey responses
I drove 73 new G2 reviews in 2 days. Here's how I did it:
> Built a list of customers who rated us in an NPS survey in the last 90 days
> Wrote them an email like an actual human with an incentivized offer
> Sent them review requests (using Marketo)
> Got 73 of 310 to write a review (24% conversion.)
Take a multi-channel approach to review generation
My favorite review request campaign was one that I ran at an in-person user conference. I drove reviews through two main channels: a review booth and a digital scavenger hunt (in our customer advocacy platform)... This multi-channel review campaign generated over 250 new reviews in 3 days.
Use reviews as a company strategy for growth
As a fairly new company, our initial strategy was making a name for ourselves on G2 by getting a steady (and large) stream of reviews in… ensuring a steady stream of G2 reviews is an overall company goal that goes beyond marketing.
(Reachdesk was ranked the 5th fastest-growing product in 2021 on G2’s Best of Software list and is 18th on the 2022 list. It’s got over 500 reviews in the past 3 years)
Bring Customer Success in on the Marketing Strategy for Reviews
What would help drive this ask (Marketing asking CS to get reviews) is understanding how this fits into the greater strategy of the organization: why it’s important to our customers that we have online reviews (validates us and their choice in the market); why it’s important to the CSMs that there are online reviews (helps us confirm our value prop and shape our narrative that then is used in our conversations with customers); what happens if we don’t have enough reviews (the company is at a disadvantage in the market.) All this will help a CSM team prioritize the requests and position to customers why we’re asking them for this.
Go beyond Marketing and CSMs to ask for reviews
Reviews shouldn’t be one team’s (or one person’s!) responsibility. Yes, one team may own the strategy and KPIs, but it should be an organization-wide effort. There are so many opportunities to ask for reviews; each function can take a different approach, addressing different audiences.
Marketing: Whether through an email nurture campaign, social media, a webinar or in-person event…
Customer Success: CSMs know who is successfully using the software or service …and their existing relationships with the customer can make an ask more impactful.
Sales: …whether they’re closing a new customer or renewing a longtime one…there’s no better time to ask a customer to share a review (than at renewal.)
Implementation: When potential customers seek out reviews, they’re not just looking for how your software works but the overall experience of working with you as a SaaS provider.
Leveraging Reviews
★ Gather competitive intelligence and refine positioning – Dev Basu
★ Turn short-form reviews into long-form customer stories – Dan Kalmar
★ Bring reviews to life in video – Sam Shepler
★ Engage your prospects (and customers) with review site buyer intent data – Tara Robertson
★ Expand your buyer intent data playbook beyond review sites to include other sources like community – Scott K. Wilder
Gather competitive intelligence and refine positioning
A lot of marketers evangelize ‘talking to customers’ but very few actually do it. So in the absence of these 1:1 conversations, review sites play an important role in being able to get competitive intelligence that can help you chisel and refine your positioning.
Turn short-form reviews into long-form customer stories
“No one has attention spans anymore!” “They can only maintain focus for 8 seconds!” That’s not even remotely true…people watch one-hour Netflix shows. They listen to two-hour podcasts. People have attention spans, we just have a lower threshold for crap…if you’re a SaaS marketer, you’re not selling socks. You’re selling a complicated product and prospects want to truly see what it’s like. Give them an engaging, in-depth story, and you’ll see better engagement numbers (with your customer stories.)
Bring reviews to life in video
Reviews are fantastic and absolutely need to be a part of everyone’s advocacy strategy, but also—you don’t get tone through text. With video testimonials, you’re able to actually feel a person's emotions and see and hear them light up. There’s a trustworthiness there that really is unmatched, aside from getting someone on a 1-1 reference call.
Engage your prospects (and customers) with buyer intent data from review sites
We use G2 intent data at Chili Piper in two key ways:
1) Build retargeting lists for our paid social ads (this is automated via the G2 > Metadata integration (we run our paid social ads in Metadata.io)
2) Alert SDRs if an account they’re working on takes specific actions on G2 (visits our company profile, visits a competitor’s profile.)
Expand your buyer intent data playbook beyond review sites to include other sources like community
At Marketo, I managed The Marketing Nation, and hosted learning, community, partner portal information, and customer support tools (open a case, etc.). When a Member of the Nation participated in a webinar and / or looked in a discussion, we forwarded that information to our sales team, especially when the member participated in a discussion about a feature or add-on they didn’t already use.
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