Fake reviews can affect your product more than you might think. They can erode trust, misinform potential customers, and give them vastly different expectations for your product. What can you do about the epidemic of fake reviews online? From validating reviews to working with product review services to ensure authenticity, here’s how you can respond to fake reviews and their effects on your brand and products.
The Internet: A Sea of Misinformation
The internet is a sea of misinformation, just waiting to take potential customers under the waves. Fake reviews can be from bots or actual people who may or may not have used your product. In 2023, nearly a third of all reviews online were fake. Nearly a third of returned items or products that were ultimately not purchased were caused by suspected fake reviews. They aren’t real, don’t add valuable information, lack credibility and authenticity, and generally have a negative impact on your product and marketing.
Consumers Crave Authenticity
Because fake reviews can be hard to identify, potential consumers crave authenticity. The easiest way to cultivate authenticity for your brand is with the help of a complete product education platform that can help you create product review videos. Videos are much harder to fake than written reviews, giving you a built-in advantage. If you feature an expert in your industry reviewing your product, you also get their credibility. Videos of industry experts providing unscripted reviews of your products can appear on a product page or a retailer’s website. That way, consumers see your authentic approach in action at the point of purchase.
Encourage Customer Reviews
Another way to cultivate authentic reviews is to encourage customers to leave their own reviews. Providing compensation or other incentives in exchange for writing with a particular sentiment, positive or negative, is prohibited by the FTC. So, you can’t buy good reviews for your product, and competitors can’t buy negative reviews to disparage your offerings. On the flip side, you can’t suppress real negative reviews through intimidation, unjustified legal threats, false accusations, or even simply removing negative reviews. If they are legitimate reviews, it’s best to leave them up. In short, encouraging customers to write real reviews about your products is an excellent way to keep your consumer base engaged and attract the attention of new customers who want to hear from someone in their situation.
Establishing Trust with Consumers
The key is to establish trust. Again, you can use a product education platform’s video production services to help you gain trust by featuring unscripted reviews by qualified professionals. You can disclose any relationships you might have with reviewers. They might be an employee of your brand or a customer who you sent a free product to make an authentic review offering their honest opinion. If there could be any kind of bias, it needs to be disclosed. The more transparent your brand is with reviews, the better.
About The Desire Company
Building genuine brand loyalty is a vital part of establishing trust with potential customers. Today’s digital marketplace is full of fake reviews and misinformation, and the FTC is cracking down on them. Plus, celebrities’ and paid influencers’ credibility is declining. As a result, consumers value honest advice and helpful feedback from reputable sources more than ever. The Desire Company goes beyond strategies like product endorsements from paid influencers, celebrities, and fake experts. They’re more than just a creative agency or video production company. The Desire Company is a complete product education platform. The Desire Company is a complete product education solution that combines content strategy, expert vetting, and matching with their vast Pro Community, video embed technology, and media distribution to keep your audience informed, not influenced.
Learn more about The Desire Company’s product review services at https://brands.thedesirecompany.com/
Original Source: https://bit.ly/3VOIiBm
