When it comes to strategic understanding, data insights aren’t only all the rave, but also the fundamental foundation to building an evidential intelligence for the organisation to follow. Whilst most brands understand data’s value, many are unsure of the various dimensions of value it can deliver across their end-to-end operations.
In the 1960 American Western, The Magnificent Seven, a group of seven gunfighters are hired to protect a small village. The seven share traits, but are all different and work best together, so too, when combined, the “Seven Data Dimensions” can protect and empower your brand.
This series will provide an overview of the magnificent seven datasets that most brands have access to, that can be leveraged to gain insight and understanding to design strategies, develop tactics, deliver experiences and drive innovation. Working with the global mTab network and other industry experts this series will pull out examples, and top tips, where brands are most effectively harvesting and deploying data.
Reviewing the Reviews
Previously, we reviewed social media data streams. Now we’ll explore online reviews, which have evolved into an integral component of products research and purchase decisions for many consumers. The opinions and experiences of other consumers have largely and widely become important considerations for shoppers to consider; even to the point that research has shown that products with a lack of online reviews tend to impact sales. Fundamentally, behavioral science tells us people are more likely to participate in behaviours – like buying products – which are socially proven and in that context, reviews are arguably the ultimate en masse form of social proof.
As Alex Hunt, CEO of Behaviorally explains:
“Online reviews have widely become a must-have data point that consumers rely on to guide their path to purchase. In our work, Behaviorally has seen this be true in a varied set of categories; from birthday gifts and big ticket purchases such as kitchen appliances, through to category-focused but relatively small impulse purchases such as selecting a new flavor of chocolate or pet food.”
Reviews have evolved tremendously from the traditional expert overviews that were found with automobiles and movies, before the internet’s commercialisation. Today, the social dimension of the online world has expanded online reviews across a spectrum of sources, from manufacture presented reviews to marketplace reviews (e.g. Amazon) to community reviews (e.g. Rotten Tomatoes). Similar to social media, the ability to craft and broadcast opinions has empowered consumers with the ability to influence and impact brands. Consumer reviews are particularly powerful, if you look at the Edelman Trust Barometer it shows that people are more likely to believe “everyday folk” rather than businesses.
“Fundamentally, there is an emotion tied to an online review. The customer was motivated by their experience enough, whether positive or negative, to share it with others. This in itself is a tremendously valuable data point,” according to John Sevec, Senior Vice President of Client Strategy, mTab.
Growing Complexity
Online reviews seem straight-forward in concept. However, they’re several considerations a brand should review before basing major decisions on them. As Alexander Edwards, President of Strategic Vision explains:
“The one thing to always take into consideration in online review data is the bias of the person writing the review. We have found that the most trusted sources of online reviews are also filled with the strongest biases. For example, a respected magazine that focuses on the power and performance of a vehicle will have a different measure of a “good” vehicle than a group that focuses primarily on reliability and durability.”
The subjectivity, bias and different scales of measurement in reviews can provide complexity for the user. Often a product can have both many “rave” reviews (e.g. five stars) and many “rants” with little in the area of “middle of the road” opinions. This can be a factor of expectations of the consumers and applications of the product. This can lead to confusion for those reviewing the reviews, whether an individual or a business.
As Edwards says:
“A review can be very positive or negative about a product or service, but in actuality, depending on the values and priorities of each consumer, this could easily lead to an incorrect consumer choice or poor strategic decisions based on a company believing the reviews are bad, when in fact, the audience they targeted love the product.”
This complexity makes it important to understand the context and details around the review with a consideration of the trends with the reviews of the product, and also the opinions of the reviewer.
Engaging Opinions
How a business approaches and engages the opinions in the market is an important factor in how they use online review data to advise decisions, guide strategy and drive innovation.
“Too many brands tend to ignore the online reviews of their products with the “it is what it is” approach,” explains Matt Hay, CEO of Bulbshare. “However, there’s tremendous value in not only reviewing the reviews, but also responding to them. This not only provides the opportunity to transform unhappy customers into pleased customers or even evangelists, but also puts on display to potential customers the level of service your business provides, as well as the level of commitment to your customers.”
As Hunt explains:
“It’s essential for every business to track and analyse reviews in order to both assess the strengths and weaknesses of product and service offerings as well as determine how best to promote the pros and improve the cons. Of course, it’s common for a product to be delisted in certain platforms if not receiving strong ratings or a sufficient volume of reviews. It’s obviously vital to know if you, or more likely a competitor, face that risk.”
Review Evolution
Online reviews are continuing to evolve beyond merely an outlet of star ratings; it’s essentially become a vital dimension in the sales process. It’s important to understand the shifting opinions of one’s products and brands in the market, and where and when consumers are seeking online reviews in their path to purchase.
According to Sevec:
“Reviews have widely become a necessary dimension of the customer journey, where shoppers seek them out and often require them to make their purchase decision. So, analysing them to see how they are impacting your sales performance is also becoming a fundamental performance metric.”
The key is triangulating where customers are going to seek online reviews and then tracking this content to understand the insight from it on an ongoing basis. Whilst a challenging effort, it is one that can be fundamental to a product’s success.
Getting Started
The first step in getting a handle on online review data streams is to determine a centralised owner of the sources. This generally tends to lie with Marketing or Product given the nature of the information being provided by consumers in their reviews. The ownership group should monitor and track dimensions across review sources including criticisms, praises, ranking and overall trends.
There should also be a focus on reviewer trends across demographics or geographic aspects. Increasingly it is now possible to link reviews to data that can be used to profile the reviewee – be that by age, gender, location or other metrics – this can be invaluable. From here, there should be point owners across every team in the organisation who serve as the conduit for relevant review intelligence and deliver it to the appropriate employees to assess and address the specific issue. It should also include the communication specialists to devise and draft a response and resolution, where appropriate.
When a spike occurs, in either a positive or negative direction, these individuals should work congruently to quickly determine the scope of the spike, the impact on the company and the response in terms of operation and communication.
With each data source, the key is to strategically set a plan to identify, collect, analyse and democratise the intelligence as effectively as possible. There also has to be ownership of decisions in terms of assessment, response and reaction. From there, it becomes a matter of creating a habit of returning to the data to identify and understand shifts and evolutions in order to design strategies, develop tactics, deliver experiences and drive innovation.
Reviews are just one of these ‘Magnificent Seven’ datasets that can empower your brand. Stay tuned in this series as we continue the review of these dimensions of data to help guide understanding of the holistic health of a brand.
