Influencing the Influencers
Rich Beattie
“Smelly, Hot, Shabby & Dirty. Otherwise OK” “Go and sleep on the subway, it’s cleaner” “Go and sleep on the subway, it’s cleaner” “Perfect for a six inch tall Indiana Jones”
“The neighborhood is filled with aggressive mimes, including one sitting on a toilet bowl (how creative).”
• 60 contributions per minute
• 60 million+ monthly uniques
• Market cap of $6 billion
• Market cap of $6 billion
53%
Travelers who will not book a hotel that does not
have any reviews on TripAdvisor. *
UGC: DEFINITION FOR THIS PRESENTATION
The production of non-social-media-based
reviews, ratings, and comments by the
general public rather than by paid
professionals and experts in the field.
professionals and experts in the field.
60 80 100 120 140 160 2008 2013
millions
Source: eMarketer 0 20 40 60WHY DO WE CARE?
88%
Travelers who consult UGC reviews before booking. *
50%
Reviews are the greatest influence on their booking choice. *
125%
Higher conversion rate based on customer reviews. **
Higher conversion rate based on customer reviews. **
157%
How much longer visitors who read customer reviews spent on sites. **
12X
How much more consumer reviews are trusted than product descriptions
by the company. ***
Sources: * EyeforTravel ** MarketingSherpa *** eMarketer
49%
UGC has “some” influence on purchase decisions (59% for Millennials).
21%
UGC has “a lot” of influence on purchases (25% for Milliennials).
WHY DO WE CARE?
42% of the global population but contribute 45% of total online product opinions.
They tend to leave more positive sentiment, assigning a higher
proportion of five-star ratings than other generations by 3 percentage points.
Many marketers focus on social networks. After all:
=
=
Boomers:
69%
Trust opinions from family and friends (56% for Millennials).
34%
Strangers’ feedback is more important than the opinions of their family and friends (51% for Millennials).
WHY DO WE CARE?
There’s now hard data. A 2011 study from Cornell University’s Center for
Hospitality Research showed that a one-point increase in a hotel’s
100-point Global Review Index (from ReviewPro) leads up to:
• 0.89% increase in price
• 0.54% increase in occupancy
• 1.42% increase in revenue per available room
“Positive online reputation doesn’t merely provide higher pricing power
for online sales. It is correlated to higher group booking rates and
corporate negotiated rates in addition to reservations made over the
phone.”
--Chris Anderson, study lead“How a hotel is positioned is entirely driven by the consumer.”
HOW TO CAPITALIZE
• Your customer is now your marketer.
• Positive feedback? Ask customers to post their review.
• Print “share your review” on employee business cards—include QR code. • Read a positive comment on another site or via e-mail? E-mail them back
and thank them. Blog about it and/or put the comment on your site. • Put these comments into your e-mail marketing and ask for more
feedback.
• Multimedia opportunities?
• Remember when people are looking for/contributing UGC: inspiration, research, experience-sharing.
66% / 59%
Leisure/business travelers use search engines to help research and make purchase decisions. *
10%
Lift in organic search traffic from UGC **
25%
25%
Search results that return UGC (review sites, blogs, and social media updates) for the world’s biggest brands. ***
* Travelport
** MarketingSherpa *** Socialnomics
HOW TO CAPITALIZE: SEARCH
• Commerce sites are becoming
publishers; your customers are your
writers.
• Context becoming more important as
we move more into semantic search.
• Publish reviews with tools from
• Publish reviews with tools from
companies like Revinate or Customer
Alliance.
• Hire an SEO guru to optimize content
and maximize UGC exposure.
How important is UGC video?
35% 35%
Lift in featured product sales when professional video and UGC video were used in conjunction.
25%
When professional video used alone
19%
When UGC video used alone
“
I've been surprised to see how
negative reviews increase sales. It's
great to have people talking about
your product, even if everything they
say is not stellar.”
--Panos Ipeirotis, professor at New
--Panos Ipeirotis, professor at New
York University
NEGATIVE REVIEWS
74%
Write reviews because they want to share a good experience with other travellers.
78%
Write reviews because they feel good about sharing useful information with other travellers.
71%
Like to see basic information (i.e., number of reviews written) about contributors as they browse through reviews.
67%
When available, they look at traveler-submitted photos to help them make hotel choices.
59%
Ignore extreme comments.
5%
Focus more on negative reviews.
57%
Agree that seeing hotel management responses to reviews generally "makes me more likely to book it (versus a comparable hotel that didn't respond to
travelers)"
84%
Agree that an appropriate management response to a bad review "improves my impression of the hotel"
78% 78%
Agree that seeing a hotel management response to reviews "makes me believe that it cares more about its guests"
64%
Agree that an aggressive/defensive management response to a bad review "makes me less likely to book that hotel".
NEGATIVE REVIEWS: RESPONDING
“I make no apologies for the lilac colour in the room....after all the room is called "The lilac room" so what colour do you expect .... I have checked the paint tin and it definitely says lilac not 'terrible lilac'. To avoid further
disappointments, please note that disappointments, please note that "The red room" is red and "The coral room" is coral. If you want luminous we suggest you book the 'Mark Rothko room' which is
18%
Customers with resolved issues who made repeat purchases of the same
product.
34%
Those who deleted their negative reviews after complaint was handled
efficiently.
33%
Those who posted positive reviews
HOW TO RESPOND
• Re
spond to all negative reviews quickly, with as personal a message as possible, in as public a forum as possible.• Respond to some positive reviews. • Don’t respond to average reviews.
• Responding an appropriate amount can lift number of incoming reviews by • Responding an appropriate amount can lift number of incoming reviews by
35%. Responding too often, though, can be seen as dominating the conversation and drive users away. *
• Don’t edit.
• Having an agency respond on your behalf is better than not responding at all, but a far cry from someone directly associated with your brand.
fakes?
• Industry moving toward “verified” reviews (Expedia, Amazon); HotelMe from USA Today is latest effort.
• But is that the silver bullet? There’s truth in volume.
• Users getting better at ferreting out the fakes.
• The future of reviews is not in the con-sumer but the pro-sumer. --Panos Ipeirotis