4 min
Collecting reviews before the product is launched? What on earth is the point of that? Not only will you pick up on the product's flaws, but you'll also get valuable reviews up front that will quickly build customer trust. Especially in the eyes of early adopters. More reviews will roll in organically through the snowball effect.
You can't launch a product without reviews anymore
30,000 new products come to market in a year. All are unique, disruptive and enticing. And yet 95% of them fail. How so? Most of the time, the fault lies with a lack of product launch preparation, a failure to thoroughly validate that the new product will find its customers, or a total absence of a trust-building strategy.
How to avoid these problems?
Start testing before the product is released
There are many questions about the functionality and reliability of new products. Maybe you've fallen in love with your innovation and are absolutely sure it's perfect. However, due to author blindness, you may not see some of the flaws. Only real customers can provide the final answer - they pay, they decide. And that's why you need pre-testing, where real clients try your product for real, under normal conditions.
Pre-testing offers many benefits:
- You get valuable feedback to help you improve your product to perfection. Testers will be happy to tell you what they like and what they don't. Detailed pre-testing will also help you finalize details such as packaging design.
- Only through pre-testing you will find out if the product really does what it's supposed to do. And sometimes you even find that people find other uses for it than you planned.
- You might be able to find areas where you can save money. By correcting product weaknesses, you avoid future complaints and repairs.
"Thanks to the reviews, we got quick and useful feedback from our customers and got a much better understanding of how they consume Cointreau at home. Not only were we more confident in launching the liqueur, but at the same time we were much more familiar with how our customers consume the liqueur." link to the full case study
-Jiří Poláček, Brand Manager, MAST Jaegermeister CZ
From pre-testing you will get essential reviews for the beginning
Only about 10% of customers will buy a product without reviews. And of that fraction, only 5 to 10% will leave a review on their own. That means that out of every 100 people who see your product, at most a dozen will buy, and from that you'll get one short review at best.
And when you add the statistic that you need at least 100 reviews to see the full effect of review marketing, it's clear that having a base volume of reviews ready ahead of time through pre-testing is not just a benefit, but an existential necessity.
Release the snowball
It's called the snowball effect and it plays significantly in your favor during a product launch. It comes from a simple observation - when buyers see that a product already has some reviews, it forces them to leave their opinion as well. This makes the reviews quickly pile up.
One of our case studies nicely shows this in practice. Reviews from testing dietary supplements literally pulled down an avalanche effect, which resulted in the client getting quality organic reviews long after the testing, and completely free of charge. In short, think of pre-testing as just an initial investment that will pay for itself many times over in the future.
"It doesn't end with reviews, it begins with reviews."
-Kateřina Janoušková, Digital Marketing Manager, Stada
The first swallows won't fly away and they will take the cormorants with them
Early adopters are people who like to try new products and are not afraid to take risks. That's exactly what your first customers will be - early swallows. They are the ones who will purchase your product for the first time, potentially catapulting it to the rest of the market and thus to other consumer groups.
Credibility plays a huge role in attracting early customers.
And this is exactly the point at which you will again appreciate reviews. According to research, 72% of customers perceive a product with positive reviews as trustworthy, even if they have no personal experience with it. In the 18 to 34 age group, the percentage is as high as 91%. In short, numbers you can't ignore.
As a result, reviews create a rock solid social proof that sells
Social proof in digital marketing effectively kicks sales. In some studies, reviews have even resulted in a nearly threefold increase in conversions, especially when they are easily visible on the web.
How does social proof work? Think of it like a sticker: verified by real people. If you find enough organic quality reviews about a product that praise it in every way, there's simply no reason to hesitate over a purchase.
Want to ensure your product slips seamlessly into the market? Contact us.
