Welcome to another View on Reviews interview!
Today’s guest is Katlin Hess, the Director of Customer Marketer at G2.
Katlin is one of the most active customer marketing and advocacy (CMA) community members. She covers a range of CMA topics, from how to make the most of your review content across marketing channels to internal feedback to review gen strategies.
Naturally, she’s an advocate for G2, but she does a great job of participating in the community in a non-sales-y, genuinely helpful way regarding how vendors can best leverage reviews on G2 or any other review platform.
Before G2, Katlin was a Director of Customer Marketing at Phenom and Director of Marketing at TargetX.
Here’s my interview with Katlin on her views on reviews.
My Interview with G2's Director of Customer Marketing, Katlin Hess
What drew you to a career in Customer Marketing & Advocacy?
Katlin: I sort of accidentally landed in Customer Marketing!
At TargetX we were a small (5 person) marketing team, so we were doing a little bit of everything. When TargetX got acquired I knew it was time to look for my next opportunity and ended up meeting with the VP of Marketing at Phenom for just an intro. As he and I were talking he asked me what I like to do and what I was excited about in my current role and without realizing it, everything I listed were the customer marketing parts of my job. He ended up calling me two weeks later saying they had created a Director of Customer Marketing role and he’d love for me to take it – and the rest is history here!
What was your first review generation campaign? Which was your favourite / most effective?
Katlin: Oh gosh – my first review campaign was sort of a forced toss in the deep end! When I was at TargetX we had an email tool that wasn’t working the way it should for some of our largest customers at a really crucial time in the college admissions cycle. A whole bunch of customers took to G2 to tell us (and the whole world) about it! I learned really quickly the power behind replying to reviews and showing them that we took their feedback seriously. We were able to make it right with our customers and convince a lot of them to update their reviews, and started expanding our review asks across the customer base to get a more holistic collection of reviews.
My favorite review campaign though was one I ran at Phenom – we were struggling to get started with reviews and were doing a lot of 1:1 asks. I was working closely with our G2 CSM and AM on brainstorming some new ideas, and they suggested reaching out to our most active and academy certified users. For women’s history month we launched a campaign to this highly engaged audience and used a G2 Gives landing page with all donations going to Girls Who Code. The emails came from me, so I got to meet some new customers I wouldn’t have interacted with otherwise, we captured a bunch of new reviews and we also ended up raising a few hundred dollars for Girls Who Code, which was a great cherry on top!
At the most recent G2 Reach event, you and your colleague Rachel Bentley (Director of Product Marketing) taught a masterclass titled "G2 for Customer Marketers: Building a Diversified Review Gen Strategy." It has a lot of great content, and I have a few questions for you.
A) You presented 4 pillars of review collection. Can you sum up what vendors/sellers need to know about these?
Katlin: The four key pillars of review collection really boil down to capturing your true customer experience so that buyers visiting a review site get an understanding of what their experience might be as a customer.
So making sure you’re asking for reviews from across your customer base, asking at different points in their customer lifecycle, following up to get updated reviews and then responding to reviews to make sure you’re painting an authentic, holistic picture of what your customer experience really looks like.
Note: here’s a link to the G2 Reach event.
B) You also presented how to create a diversified review (generation) strategy (i.e. using different channels to collect reviews). Why do vendors need diversified review collection, and how can they balance how many resources go to each?
Katlin: I think a diversified review collection strategy is so important for making sure that you’re capturing reviews from across your customer base that you’re hitting people at different moments when they’re experiencing your products or services.
When you’re thinking about balancing what resources go to each review site, I always encourage marketers to make a list of where you want to be showing up and then prioritizing from there.
You can start by making a list of where your competitors are, and then a quick Google search for “your company name and reviews” or “your product category and the word reviews” basically replicating the journey a prospect would take, and see which sites come up at the top there. Then work your way down your list, I would say dedicate 60% or more to that top site, and then split the remaining 40% on the rest of your list.
Most customers who are willing to give you feedback are willing to give it to you in multiple places at different points in their lifecycle. So you can start to build out a plan for each of these sites and determine who are the customers that I’m targeting for each, what are my goals and sort of work your way backwards into a plan.
What do you find are the best ways to get reviews? Is there anything vendors should be particularly mindful of when it comes to getting reviews on G2 versus other review sites, like in-app reviews?
Katlin: I always say the best way to get reviews is to just ask – but one of the most successful things that I’ve seen in working with customers at G2 really are in-app review asks. Meaning putting the review form directly in your product. We have a few different Integrations that you can leverage with tools like Pendo, Medallia and Delighted or if you don’t use one of those tools we also have a custom API that you can ask your team to integrate into your product.
I’ve talked to a lot of customers who use these and they said it was a very quick implementation and a relatively easy lift for their development team so super easy to get those turned on, and the results are pretty incredible.
But it’s not surprising that these are so successful – you’re engaging with customers when they’re actively using your product and it removes a lot of the friction of leaving a review. The review form is a little bit shorter for these in-app asks and customers don’t have to do any of the secondary login or authentication – because they are responding to a review request directly in your product, we know they’re already one of your customers.
Once a company has generated reviews, how does it make the most of its review content across channels?
Katlin: What I love about reviews is it really is a quick and relatively easy way to sort of supercharge your customer story engine.
I encourage thinking about using review content in the way you would use a customer testimonial or customer story. I love when I see review content across social channels or embedded into blog posts or on webinars in sales decks. I obviously believe very strongly in the power of customer voice and it’s a really great way to capture customer voice at scale, across multiple industries, multiple segments and in a way that’s also verified by a third party.
I think the other side of that is leveraging your G2 badges across marketing channels. I’ve seen badges on everything from blog posts and Linkedin header images to tradeshow booths and billboards. I know lately the perception has been “well everyone gets a G2 badge” but actually only 3% of products on G2 earn a leader badge every quarter. Our buyer behavior report tells us that customers are more likely to convert on a site with trust badges – so if you’ve earned them, use the heck out of them!
Software companies can gather feedback from customers in a few ways, like with surveys and reviews. What do you recommend software companies consider when deciding how to leverage reviews for feedback? Also, do you have a view on if and how the adage, “praise in public and criticize in private” applies to reviews and critical feedback?
Katlin: I think leveraging reviews for feedback is really smart, it’s an easy way to get an accurate picture of what your customers are really experiencing. BUT the only way to do it is by asking all of your customers at several different points throughout their customer lifecycle for a review.
I feel like the piece that’s often missed is making sure that you have a plan for who’s going to follow up, especially with those customers who maybe leave not so great feedback. Oftentimes responding to reviews falls on the customer marketer, and I think that’s a great starting point, but in an ideal situation you should have a team of people and the response should come from the person who is closest to whatever the feedback is. If a customer is taking time to leave you specific feedback about the support team, ideally it should be the head of your support team responding. If they’re leaving you feedback about a specific product feature, it’s great if you can have the product lead respond to that review. Making sure your responses are specific and coming from the most relevant contact on your team not only gives your team a clear picture of what’s working and maybe where some improvements could be made, but it also shows customers AND prospects that you take customer feedback seriously.
When it comes to praise in public, criticize in private, I think that’s great, but it definitely doesn’t always happen that way, so make sure you’re prepared. And on the flip side, public criticism gives you a chance to show that you take customer feedback seriously.
I also always think about my own buying experience, if I’m thinking about buying something on Amazon and I see a listing that has all five star reviews I don’t really trust that. My first instinct is usually “these must be fake reviews.” But if I see something that has maybe four stars and I read the reviews in the things that are maybe knocking them down a star are not things that I care about or aren’t relevant to me, I’m much more likely to purchase that four-star item than a five-star one.
Responding to reviews. In business software, it seems to me like there’s a chasm between the best practice advice to respond to reviews and the common practice of not responding to reviews (in business software). Can you share some practical advice on how vendors can get past the hurdles that prevent responding to reviews (like who should be responsible for responding to reviews?)
Katlin: Yeah that’s absolutely true. I think the stat is something like over 50% of customers expect a response to their review within a week of leaving one, but less than 1/3 of companies actively respond to review.
I said it before, but the key here is making sure that you have a plan for responding to reviews. At G2 we have a Slack channel that all of our reviews feed into and our team is seeing real-time what’s coming in, and as reviews come in I will usually either tag the person who’s most relevant to respond although oftentimes our product team will beat me to the punch and respond before I even see it! But I know that’s not going to be the case everywhere – to start, I’d recommend blocking an hour once a week and spend that time responding to any new reviews that might have come in.
One other hurdle I see is people don’t know what to write as a response. We do have a full G2 University course on responding to reviews. It’s totally free and open to anyone, I highly recommend you check it out. It includes some quick templates for crafting a response to reviews and digs in more on how to get the right stakeholders involved.
Also, if you’re a G2 customer we have a relatively new feature that is an AI response generator. It helps you get started with writing a response based on the content of the review. This lives in the back end of my.G2.
What do you think most software companies get wrong about reviews? What do they need to get it right?
Katlin: I think people feel like they have to have all five-star reviews and they only ask their top customers to leave reviews.
While I don’t think it’s bad to ask your happy customers to leave reviews (why wouldn’t you!) the biggest risk in ONLY asking these customers is that your profile feels inauthentic and is not an accurate representation of what it’s like to be a customer. (And I should also mention this also violates FTC guidelines).
And I’ve said it a few different ways here but opening up your review asks to all of your customers makes sure you’re capturing an authentic impression of what it’s like to be a customer. In the short term that feels really scary, but in the long term it’s only going to help you find better fit customers.
What can Customer Marketers, Product Marketers and other business software professionals learn about reviews in “G2 University”?
Katlin: In G2 University we have several different courses on everything from Building a Review Gen Strategy and Responding to Reviews to Buyer Intent Basics and Profile Anatomy.
We also have specific courses for customer marketers and we are looking to build out our library of persona based learning over the next couple quarters.
We also have three G2 certifications so you can become G2 certified in G2 Foundations and then G2 for Marketers and G2 Buyer Intent. All of these courses and certifications are totally free open to everyone whether you’re a G2 customer or not. If you have anything to do with G2 Reviews or Data I highly recommend you check those out – and if you get certified we’ll send you a really cool certificate that you can put up on your LinkedIn profile!
Based on your experience as a two-time G2 customer and now a two-plus-year veteran of G2, what do you recommend Customer Marketers consider when deciding whether to claim a G2 profile, maintain a free basic listing, or upgrade to a premium listing?
Katlin: Claiming a G2 profile and maintaining the free basic listing to me is a no brainer. It’s totally free and it’s the best way to make sure your company is accurately represented on G2. We get 90 million visitors a year, so at the very least making sure your profile is claimed and the info is correct is a necessity.
If you’re at a point where you’re focusing on building a review gen strategy, that’s when I think you should look into upgrading to a premium profile. This makes the reviews you’re capturing even more impactful – and measurable. Upgrading to a premium listing gives you more control over the buyer experience for your prospects coming to G2, and more insight into traffic being directed back to your site. You can add a custom CTA, link back to your website, add downloadable content and additional product info. All of this generally relates back to higher conversion rates and more organic traffic.
In your experience, what has brought multiple functions — customer marketing, product, demand gen, sales, and others — together to collaborate and benefit from reviews? Were their views different on what they wanted to get from reviews, and how did they overcome this?
Katlin: Generally speaking the customer’s I see who are the most successful on G2 and the ones who get the most from their investment are the ones where multiple teams or departments care about their presence on G2.
Typically we see the customer marketing team cares about the voice of their customers. They want to make sure that they’re capturing customer content as broadly as they can, they’re leveraging review content in their marketing assets they are using things like reference pages to supply their sales team with assets tied to customer voice or they are using our list of references that we capture on the back end to feed their reference program.
In terms of a product team, it’s a treasure trove of customer feedback and an opportunity to engage directly with a customer. One of the cool things about having your product team respond to reviews is that they’re building a direct connection with an actual end-user customer.
For the demand team we didn’t really talk about this but another offering we have at G2 is our Buyer Intent offering where we capture information about prospects who are coming to your profile or visiting your profile category page. Demand Gen usually leverages this data to fuel their ABM or paid campaigns. I think for sales it’s similar they’ll leverage review content or the badges in talking to prospects.
I think to get other teams to care about G2 or review content in general is by making it super visible. We have a Slack integration where you can have every review that comes in go to that Slack channel. I love it, especially when one comes in and it mentions their CSM by name and I make sure that I tag that CSM, I make sure that I take their manager really just bringing visibility to review content.
Based on your experience at G2 over the past two and a half years, how do you see G2 and business software reviews evolving?
Katlin: This feels like the easy way out answer, but I really think AI is going to change the way we shop for almost everything, and software is no different.
Today we have Monty – our buyer assistant. You can tell him exactly what you’re looking for and he “reads” the millions of reviews on G2 and can make specific recommendations for you.
I think this tech will only continue to get better and those recommendations will become even more specific – and maybe someday Monty will even be able to help you get started making your purchase!
My Key Takeaways
We covered most of the main questions B2B software marketers have to answer to run a review collection program.
Here’s a recap of what I think are the top 5 takeaways from my interview with Katlin:
- Balance your review resources strategically across review sites: Prioritize review sites by competitor presence and search results, dedicating more resources to top sites and distributing the rest strategically. Katlin recommends dedicating 60% or more to that top review site in your category, and then splitting the remaining 40% on the rest of your list.
- Diversify review collection in your G2 reviews: Capture reviews across your customer base and lifecycle stages to present an authentic, holistic picture of your customer experience. This increases the chances that your buyer will find relatable reviewers to them.
- Try in-app review requests: Simplify the review process by integrating review requests directly within your product (“in-app”) leveraging tools like Pendo, Medallia, and Delighted for seamless customer feedback. (Just note that you aren’t able to provide an incentivized G2 review request in-app at this time.)
- Infuse review content into your sales and marketing messages: Use review content as you would customer testimonials, across social channels, blog posts, webinars, and sales decks, and leverage G2 badges to build trust and enhance marketing efforts. The voice of the customer and review site accomplishments are generally trusted more than vendor claims. Use them to support your marketing and sales messages.
- Responding to Reviews: Develop a structured plan for timely responses to reviews, involving the most relevant team members to address feedback and demonstrate genuine customer care. Create a Slack channel with cross-functional representation for visibility and an easy way to tag the right person to respond to a review.
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