Online sellers are always looking for ways to get great reviews on Amazon. Achieving positive reviews – and lots of them – is a sure fire way to get more people to try you and your product out.
The most effective way of doing this is by giving a great customer experience, following up on every purchase, showing you care about feedback and resolving any problems, paying attention to those that sell similar products (and learning from them) and soliciting Amazon’s top reviewers. This blog will focus on that last point.
Getting a positive review from one of Amazon’s prized reviewers can do wonders for your sales. More than ever, consumers need convincing to part with their hard earned money, and whether they’re using TripAdvisor or any other independent feedback site, hearing good things about a product or service will do no harm. In fact, a positive review could be the thing that finally makes them go through with a purchase – this is where a top Amazon reviewer comes in. Though it may be hard to believe, so coveted are some of these reviewers that an increasing number are actually doing it for a living, with some reviewers writing as many as 100 reviews a month.
With the number of people marking their feedback as helpful running into the tens of thousands, it’s clear to see that getting on the good side of a few of these top reviewers isn’t a bad idea, and before you ask yourself how on earth you’re supposed to find them, you’ll be pleased to hear that it couldn’t be easier. Amazon have compiled a list of their top customer reviewers for everyone to see, and divided them into various categories. The ‘Hall of Fame reviewers’ are the most prestigious, and these are followed by the various top reviewer rankings.
Next, you will need to search for the tags that are most relevant to the product or products you are selling – hover your mouse over the reviewers’ names and this will bring their most used tags. For example, hovering over the name Mary Whipple – one of the top reviewers – just now reveals a list of tags thus: “literary, mystery, historical, British, American, contemporary, thriller, humour, satire, noir, police procedural.” If you were a crime writer selling your wares on Amazon, a positive review from Ms. Whipple would probably do you no harm at all. Your goal is obviously to find top reviewers who have used tags related to your product or industry in the past.
Many reviewers (though not all) will have their email address on their profile page; now’s the time to plead your case. Obviously, should they agree to review your product, you will need to send them a free sample – a small price to pay if you should end up with a top reviewer giving you a positive review (although you should remember that they are under no obligation to be positive. Send them a bad product, and they’ll let the world know).
On this note, when contacting a top reviewer, you should mention that you’re hoping for an honest review of the product, and that no obligation is required. Making your email as personal as possible, rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach, will greatly improve your chances of getting a reply – after all, they do get a lot of requests for this sort of thing. It’s likely that you won’t get a response, and only around half will review the product you send, but this is an odds game. A five star rating from one of these reviewers can be HUGE!
If you are lucky enough to get a positive review from Amazon’s cream of the crop, be sure to thank them for both their time and kind words. Sounds obvious, but it’s always worth saying. After all, if you can succeed in building a relationship with these reviewers, you will be that much closer to achieving something of huge importance on Amazon…credibility.