Real Customer Review vs Influencer Endorsement: What’s Best for SMEs?

When it comes to getting the word out about your business, the rise of social media can help you with an abundance of marketing opportunities. Fortunately, small businesses have more choices to advertise cost-effectively. And some popular, affordable ways to promote businesses that everyone seems to gravitate to these days are using real customer reviews and influencer endorsement.

Customer reviews from those who have used your products can serve as a marketing tool for your businesses. At the same time, influencer marketing leverages influencer star power to endorse your product or service. 

Now let’s explore some pros and cons that come with these choices to decide which will work for your business!

REAL CUSTOMER REVIEWS

• PROS

1. Helpful feedback from real customers

Reviews from your customers are indeed valuable advice for future improvement. Think of it as an assessment of your business that helps you identify your strengths and improvable areas; it is basically brand research, but you can save your spending on it.

2. Establish your credibility

Customer reviews are organic since they are the real voice of the customer. When your real customers describe what you do best, that can automatically boost your brand’s credibility and attract new customers. These customer reviews are free marketing you get from your customers.

3. Customer loyalty

Reviews can encourage other customers to leave their own comments, creating a sense of community. And customers who take the time to leave reviews for your business care enough to evaluate you honestly and are the customers you want to nurture relationships with.

• CONS

1. Struggle to get reviews

It is actually not easy to get reviews from your customers despite your popularity. You can encourage customers to leave you a review for your product, but it is unpredictable whether they will leave helpful comments or even care to write about you at all.

2. Challenge to monitor customers’ reviews

If you plan to take advantage of customer reviews, it is crucial to put manpower to track and keep reviews up to date. Make sure you have enough resources for that because outdated and unorganized customer reviews will be in vain and might instead confuse your potential customers.

3. Undesirable comments

As organic as they are, some customer reviews can be tough to swallow. Sometimes it might be too harsh and hurtful, but you must deal with them while trying not to be discouraged. Moreover, negative comments online might skew a potential customer’s view without you knowing.

INFLUENCER ENDORSEMENT

• PROS

1. Save your time 

It saves your time when working with the right influencer. You can expect great content to endorse your business by giving influencers a complete brief and letting them do what they do best while you can focus on more important matters.

2. Reach a relevant audience

Influencers already have their own trusted communities to endorse your brand and attract potential customers with content that resonates with their audience. All you need for a good start is to choose the right influencers to effectively reach the relevant target from the beginning, making your marketing effort worth the investment.

3. Fuel your business growth

Influencer endorsement has the potential to rapidly build your brand preference and grow sales when you tap into the right one. One of the reasons behind such a marketing power is that consumers often consider influencers as people they can trust and value the opinions of the influencers they follow; that’s why they are called “influencers.”

• CONS

1. High cost

Perhaps this is the most obvious pitfall. Hiring influencers can cost a fortune; you could be charged additional fees depending on your tasks and eventually exceed your budget. So, you might need to reconsider whether this investment will help you achieve your goals before spending on influencer endorsement.

2. High risk

It’s important to keep in mind that influencer endorsements are not always as impressive as you expect regarding the quality of the content and engagement. There are several reasons behind this, like choosing the wrong influencer could lead to a disastrous result that costs your brand.

3. Influencer fatigue

Unfortunately, we have somehow reached the point where people are growing tired of influencers with an increasing number of sponsored posts, advertising, and endorsements on social media. Consumers might choose to engage less with influencer endorsement or even completely ignore them. Eventually, an influencer may not be able to influence anymore.

Now that we have explored some of the pros and cons of customer reviews and influencer endorsement, you might start to see how to choose the right choice to take your marketing strategy to the next level. Apart from a tailored marketing strategy, the right tools and technologies are also essential for a business to stay ahead of marketing trends–or even be a trendsetter!

Remember that there’s no perfect recipe for marketing strategy; you can design and mix a little bit of this and that into your marketing plan. Ultimately, what makes or breaks a successful strategy is the plan that best resonates with your situation and resources!