Review Sites and PPC
Most SaaS companies do not leverage review sites fully. While they recognise the importance of such sites to a certain extent, they’re mostly occupied with building their own channels instead of leveraging existing ones such as review sites. SaaS companies need to understand the various powerful ways in which review sites can be used to their advantage for not only reputation management but also for competitive intelligence.
What are SaaS Review Sites?
SaaS reviews sites are specific web directories or platforms that contain information about the top SaaS companies & their products. It may range from outlining the features to including consumer feedback. Most SaaS vendors frequently update each listing with the most current information. To guarantee that customers receive reliable information about the company, all information is listed and verified by experts.
Websites that offer software reviews are excellent resources for introducing and showcasing your solution to potential clients. They provide a level of recognition and trust for your business, and their ratings and reviews have a big impact on consumer decisions.
At this point, you will get hundreds of review sites that are available. Choosing the one site which is perfect for your solution can be overwhelming. To simplify this process for you, we are going to share our opinions on the top 3 review sites available!
What are the advantages of SaaS Review Sites?
Collecting and publishing reviews of your product should be a key component of your marketing plan if you operate a SaaS company. Reviews on the web are crucial. 90%+ of consumers believe that online reviews influence their choice of whether to purchase a solution or not.
1. Increase Exposure and Social Proof
Review sites are a great place to promote your SaaS product and increase awareness. SaaS enterprises can boost their chances of getting discovered by potential clients by developing a strong presence on these websites. There is a greater probability that positive ratings will result in higher sales.
For example, in the image below, we searched for ‘Marketing Automation Solutions’ in one of the review sites, and we got 363 results from companies which have registered under this category.
2. Make Your Website More Authentic
Review sites are valuable since they improve the trustworthiness of your website. Backlinks to your website from well-known review websites help in building and enhancing your social authority. When you obtain links to your website from review sites that are regarded as reliable by search engines, your brand will have an edge over competitors in terms of organic search and search engine optimization.
3. Have Greater Insights into Your Market and Business
Apart from using review sites to find new customers, companies may enhance all the areas where their customers have issues by gathering feedback from current customers. Businesses can also enhance their customer experiences by continuously monitoring their input and making adjustments.
Companies can utilise these customer review sites to learn more about their competitors. Companies can research customers’ views of their competitors and adjust their strategies accordingly. By analysing these customer reviews and their patterns, you can also develop an effective marketing strategy
4. Get Usable Customer Feedback
You can acquire as much consumer feedback as you can by listing your SaaS products on well-known review websites. You may provide your clients with more opportunities and routes to provide inputs by establishing your online presence on a variety of websites. This input can then be used to improve your product, customer experience, and the entire business.
Top 3 SaaS Review Websites
Here is the comprehensive list of the top 3 product review sites that you need to consider for listing your product in.
A. Capterra
Capterra is one of the top-rated platforms for listing both B2B and B2C SaaS companies. With an Alexa Review of 3,982, Capterra is one the most used review platforms by consumers. This site will not only increase your trustworthiness among customers but also help you rank better on search engines.
Capterra is designed to help your business generate traffic and revenue with its more than 5 million monthly business software customers, rich product descriptions, features, and functional listing capabilities. With Capterra, you can rest assured about the authenticity of the reviews.
However, this is a demand-based platform which is extensively ad-driven. This is why Capterra might not be very cost-effective for you if you do not have a well-planned strategy.
B. G2 Crowd
G2 is one of the most prominent up-and-comers in the SaaS review industry, therefore you should absolutely join them. Customers believe G2 to be helpful and reliable since it strives to eliminate prejudice and uses authentic reviews from verified sources.
Fraudulent reviews from the company’s direct competitors are filtered out by their own algorithm. Additionally, if you’re interested in paying for some extra benefits, you may get access to buyer insights and look at data from your target markets to help your sales and marketing teams promote your product more effectively.
C. TrustRadius
In comparison to the other platforms on this list, TrustRadius is a little unique. TrustRadius is more akin to an online community that recommends your product to customers whose needs match what you are offering.
This is an excellent platform for vendors with little resources because TrustRadius doesn’t run any paid advertisements, making it impossible for merchants to manipulate any results. The site also employs “TrustMaps” to group goods according to review quality and frequency of research, giving you another way for potential customers to find your product.
This is going to be one of the best resources available to you if you have a genuine product that offers genuine value.
What is the utility of review sites for SaaS founders and marketers?
Let us give a small view of how your company can benefit from being listed on these review sites. There are several ways in which your business can leverage these SaaS customer review sites. Here are the top three ways.
1. Using Online Customer Reviews to Define Your Perspective – Ideally, refining your positioning includes having a distinct understanding of who your product is intended for, the problems that it will help customers solve, and why they should choose your solution over that of your rivals. Review sites are a great place to start promoting your SaaS business because they provide you with in-depth insights into your target audience and what they think about your solution.
2. You can establish a direct relationship with your customers – By allowing them to provide feedback on your SaaS product, you’ll have a good reason to stay in touch with them, which will provide you with a chance to promote more of your SaaS goods and services.
3. Improving your SEO – These websites provide a ton of useful information for your business. The opportunity to acquire deep insights overcomes the low-quality leads, making it a great area to experiment with your PPC ad spend even though the quality of the leads may be low.
Because you have many online reviews, search engines will take notice and may give your site higher rankings. Having a lot of good reviews will also help your website to rank on search results.
4. Establishing a new PPC channel – Most review sites allow SaaS vendors to run ads and acquire better placements in their directories. If you’re strategic enough and have a tightly-knit category for your SaaS product, you’re going to see outstandingly good results in terms of demand generation. A lot of consideration and bottom-of-the-funnel traffic i.e. traffic that wants to purchase your product flows into review sites, and tapping it can help you acquire high-quality leads.
Here’s how you set up and run ads on Capterra…
Step 1 – Go to ‘Listings’ and click on ‘Add a Product’. Then, identify the right category where you want to list your product and start with a free, basic listing. Lastly, click on ‘Send a Request’ for approval of your listing.
Step 2 – You can speak to Capterra’s PPC consultant to get a better idea of the platform and its PPC feature. All you have to do is click on ‘Get PPC Consultation’ under PPC Bidding.
Step 3 – After getting all your queries and doubts cleared by the PPC Consultant, you can request an upgradation to PPC Campaign under PPC Bidding. All you have to do to fill in a form and send your request for approval.
Step 4 – Under PPC Bidding, update the locations where you’d want to show ads.
Step 5 – Set up your ‘Traffic and Bid Estimates’ under PPC Bidding as well.
Step 6 – Add conversion tracking under PPC Bidding itself.
Step 7 – Now you are all ready to Launch your PPC Campaign in Capterra!
Conclusion
The chances of turning prospective leads into new customers become higher when your company is more visible on well-known customer review sites. The more customer reviews you have, the more likely it is that people will talk about your product.
Yet, these review sites can also negatively impact your business if you are not strategic enough. There is a good potential that you may receive negative or false reviews, which can damage your reputation in the marketplace and cause you to lose a lot of money without gaining anything in return.
You should proactively collect reviews and manage your listings, and spare a few bucks every week to gain better placements in front of your potential buyers.
Take the best step for your company with review sites, and consult our experts now!