Power Your Product and Service With Customer Reviews

by Steve Sedowski
April 16, 2014

Read Customer Reviews Before You Launch

If you read customer reviews before you buy, say, "Aye!" There’s no shame in reading what customers think about the products or services that they bought. In fact, its just plain darn smart, borderline genius in fact.

Learn From the Mistakes of Others

Customer reviews offer other benefits besides acquiring the lowdown on a product before you buy – product developers and managers can use reviews to craft competitive products and services. How so? If you have plans to write a book, engineer a new mobile app, or manufacture an electronic gadget learning what people like and dislike about similar products before you start your project can save you not only time and money, but possibly position your product to take the lead in its category.

Get the Best Customer Reviews

Trying to attain the number one business e-book, or number one gaming mobile app, or number one anything takes a LOT of work, re-work, editing, deleting, late nights, keyboard typing, and yerba mate tea if you’re like me and don’t drink coffee. So why not do what you can to help ensure rising to the top and becoming the whey in a competitive pot of milk. Or if you’re lactose intolerant, I’ll use oil rising to the top from a vat of water for this metaphor. Good, delicious, and amazingly nutritious coconut oil. Yum. And utilizing customer reviews of products that are similar to the product that you want to create is a fantastic way to perform due diligence prior to launching your work.

Discover What Customers Want

Discover what customers want by diving into their complements and complaints. Customer reviews for competitor’s products and services offer an insightful perspective on what resonates and repels purchasers.

Utilizing the reviews on Amazon, Yelp, Angie’s List, Swanson Vitamins, Expedia, and any website that provides reviews on products or services that you intend to offer can give you great intelligence on what the customer is thinking. Discovering what purchasers enjoy the most about a competitor’s product and what they like the least will take time and effort.

However, if you can find just one kernel of insight that you can turn into an added benefit for your product, it’s worth it. Incorporate what the customers’ of competitors like and leave out what they don’t like. Then, once this feedback is built into your product or service, you can use this in your advertising. You can say that your product does NOT do X or Y and that your product offers A and B. Customer reviews can give you clues on what is on a customer’s mind and you can profit from this understanding. So go ahead and peruse the customer reviews in your product category. You just may find that one nibble of data to score you a number one hit.

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