Why is it so important to get your products into the hands of online influencers?
1. Consumers are always only one click away from purchase (assuming that you sell your product online)
2. Word-of-mouth recommendations are still the most powerful marketing channel available. A study by the Vizu Corporation actually determined that customers trust peer reviews over professional reviews by a six to one ratio.
Ok, makes sense. How is it done?
Blogger reviews
Depending on the category that you're in, there often are hundreds of blogs that cover your category. Have an intern (if you don't have one, hire one on elance.com) put together a list of bloggers and their contact information. I use Google Docs to manage that process. Start reading their blogs, which you hopefully already are doing anyways, and then send relevant bloggers a personal email to offer them your product for review. I have gotten blog reviews for many of my clients, almost all of which were positive. Most notably, I want to point out our success with the RichardSolo iPhone backup battery which has resulted in reviews on all the most influential iPhone blogs and was part of a pretty scrappy marketing campaign that made this one of the bestselling iPhone batteries of all time. Richard and his team have done a fantastic job of building ongoing relationships with the blogosphere.
If you type in RichardSolo iphone battery on Google, you can see the phenomenal reputation this battery has.
Why it works?
Every review will result into traffic and sales, depending on the influence of the blogger. Also, the incoming links generated by this program will help your site from a search engine optimization perspective. Oftentimes these blog reviews will result into further coverage through more traditional media outlets, who utilize the blogosphere for their inspiration. But most importantly, you know have the opportunity to build long-lasting meaningful relationships with all the bloggers who participated.
Once you start getting some blog reviews, you will likely have people contacting you about wanting to review your product. Congratulations.
There are more and more services available to facilitate these kind of processes. If you're in the food business, check out blakemakes.com. If you're business is style, wellness, living, technology or travel, stay posted on what the folks at brandgirl.org are up to.
Participate in the Amazon Vine Program
The Amazon Vine program allows advertisers to offer their products to a network of some of Apple's best consumer reviewers. How does it work? You pay Amazon a flat fee for participating in the program and then send them whatever number of products you're willing to give away. Amazon offers the product to their network of reviewers, who then test your products and write reviews on your Amazon product pages.
Why it works?
Of course, this only works when you're selling on Amazon. Having a high number of consumer reviews is a big decision factor when buying on Amazon. This tactic will create plenty of buzz and leave you with a higher converting Amazon product page. Last but not least, you're going to get some very qualified consumer feedback. Learn from it.
There are more ways to get people to review your products, but these two methods are the most impactful. By the way, neither of these tactics work so well if your product sucks.
[ratings]