Transcription
Amazon reviews play a massive role in whether or not shoppers decide to buy your product. They affect trust. They affect conversions. They affect ranking. But here's the catch. Customers don't like to leave reviews. So, the big question becomes, how do we generate reviews for our products, especially during a new product launch when we need reviews fast and at the same time keep the reviews coming in consistently long term? Well, that's exactly what we're going to cover in this video.
I'm going to show you seven proven strategies to get Amazon reviews that won't get you banned that myself and my students have been using to get reviews faster than most sellers think is even possible. And real quick, if you want to see more videos like this that actually show you what works right now, smash that like button. It really helps the channel out more than you know, and it helps this video reach more sellers.
But before we talk about what to do, let's talk about what not to do. Amazon takes review manipulation very seriously. If you try to game the system, in the best case scenario, your reviews get blocked. And in the worst case scenario, your entire account gets suspended or even worse, permanently banned. So, let's quickly go over Amazon's review policies.
According to Amazon selling policies and seller code of conduct, you may not attempt to influence or inflate customer ratings, feedback, and reviews. You may request feedback and reviews from your own customers in a neutral manner, but you may not pay for or offer an incentive such as coupons or free products in exchange for providing or removing feedback or reviews. Ask customers to write only positive reviews or ask them to remove or change a review. Solicit reviews only from customers who had a positive experience. Review your own products or a competitor's products. And although it doesn't explicitly say it here, this also includes friends and family leaving you reviews. I'll leave a link to Amazon's review guidelines down in the video description below so that you can read everything for yourself.
Now that we've covered the rules, let's talk about how to actually get those reviews. I'm going to break this down into two parts. First, we'll cover the fast strategies. These are ideal for product launches. Then, we'll go over the long-term strategies. This is how you can get hundreds or thousands of reviews over time. Let's begin with the fast strategies.
One of the fastest and easiest ways to get initial reviews and one that's officially supported by Amazon is the Amazon Vine program. With Vine, you allocate free units of your products to trusted Amazon reviewers known as Vine Voices. And in return, they'll leave detailed, honest reviews. But keep in mind, these Vine reviewers are extremely thorough and often very honest and picky. That means your product needs to be high quality, free of defects, and accurately represented in your listing. Otherwise, if your product is bad or has any issues, the Vine reviewers will expose them very quickly. And honestly, that's a good thing. Selling low-quality products is not a long-term winning strategy anyway.
Now, in order to enroll in Vine, you must be a professional selling partner. That means you have the professional seller plan, not the free individual plan. You must have a registered brand in Amazon brand registry. You must be identified as a brand owner and you must have an eligible FBA offer. And your products must meet the following criteria. Be brand registered and Amazon brand registry. Have fewer than 30 reviews on the product detail page. Have a buyable FBA offer in new condition. Not be an adult product, digital or heavy and bulky item. Have already launched at the time of enrollment. Have available inventory. And have an image and a description. And once you've enrolled in Vine, things can start happening very fast. In most cases, Vine Voices can start ordering units within 24 hours of enrollment being completed. Vine Voices can start leaving reviews immediately after receiving units. 25% of reviews received occur within 5 days of the order, while 99% of reviews received occur within 35 days of the order. And I'll leave links to Amazon's Vine details down in the video description below if you want to read more about it.
Now, before moving on, here's something many sellers don't know. Amazon has a program called the new seller incentives. And one of these incentives is a $200 credit for Amazon Vine. That means if you're a new seller and you enroll your product in Vine, you can get up to 30 reviews completely free. I'll leave a link to this free credit down in the description below as well.
All right. Now, the second strategy to get reviews fast is by using third-party product testing services. These services are similar to Amazon's Vine program where people can purchase or redeem your product and leave a review. Now, I've personally used them and from my experience, they're easy to use and quick to set up. And reviews typically start showing up within 1 to 4 weeks. For example, with Rebate Key, you can offer your products to their community of shoppers that are looking for a discount. Or on FBA reviewviews.com which is very similar to Amazon's Vine program. You can offer your products to their community of product testers that they've curated who often leave high-quality product reviews. Now, do your due diligence if you plan to use third-party services. Make sure they are Amazon compliant. In this case, both of these platforms claim that they are Amazon compliant because buyers are not required or incentivized to leave reviews.
Now, let's move on to one of the most obvious strategies to get reviews fast, and that's getting your friends and family to leave you reviews. Remember, I mentioned earlier that doing this is strictly forbidden. However, if you're less risk averse and if you're extremely careful and you follow my specific guidelines that I'm about to go over here, then you can minimize your chances of getting caught to basically 0%. First, in order to qualify to leave reviews on Amazon, shoppers must have already purchased at least $50 worth of products. So, if you want to use your friends and family, make sure that they've made enough purchases first. And once they do qualify, in order to not get caught, you must follow these specific guidelines. Do not underestimate the power and reach of Amazon. They have an uncanny ability to catch people posting fake reviews. So, make sure that you've never shared the same Wi-Fi, you don't live in the same household, you don't have the same last name, and you don't live in the same zip code. And it may seem odd, but also make sure you're not friends on Facebook. If you are, unfriend them first before posting any reviews. Basically, remove anything that can connect you and your friends and family together online. And remember, these reviews need to appear like real reviews. So, do not post reviews without buying your product. And make absolutely sure to wait a few days or a week after they've received the product before posting their review. It's a huge red flag if they don't buy your product or if they leave a review before the product has even been received. How can someone review a product if they haven't purchased it or have an opportunity to use it? And a pro tip here to get the most value out of these reviews, don't just have your friends and family write you some random review. You know your product best and what all of its features and benefits are. So, you write the review yourself and have them post it. Also, take some photos and a short video to post along with the review. Highlight any specific or unique features and benefits. That way, other potential shoppers can see even more details about your product. Doing this is a highly effective way to help boost your conversion rate. And with that said, also keep in mind that the average sales to review ratio is around 1%. That means for every 100 sales, you might get one review. So don't go crazy getting reviews from your friends and family all at once. Space them out. It's a huge red flag if you suddenly get 10 sales and all 10 buyers leave a review.
Okay. The fourth strategy to get reviews fast is using Amazon related Facebook groups or specifically review trading groups. I'm in a lot of these Facebook groups and I see a lot of people trading reviews there, but I also see a lot of horror stories of people getting caught and banned. So, use this one at your own risk. I have a suspicion that Amazon spies have infiltrated many of these groups and communities and they're actively monitoring what's going on inside. So, you've been warned.
All right. Now, that covers the fast strategies. Let's move on to the long-term strategies. These are the strategies that will have the biggest impact on your long-term success and help you scale. If you've ever wished your products had thousands or tens of thousands of reviews like some of your competitors, this is exactly how to achieve that.
The first strategy, and easily the most powerful one, is using product insert cards. But most sellers are using them completely in the wrong way, which I'll explain to you in a second. First, let's go over Amazon's product insert guidelines. You can see here that it says, "Amazon policies prohibit box inserts and product packaging that direct customers to write a positive review even if no incentive is offered for the review." What this means is you can't explicitly ask the buyer to only leave a positive review. It also says directing customers to contact you instead of leaving a negative review on Amazon is also prohibited. What that means is you can ask your customers to leave you a review. As you can see here, it doesn't specifically ask them to only leave a positive review or a five-star review. For example, like this one here, it says to contact them first before leaving a bad review.
With that said, why are sellers using product insert cards doing it wrong? It's because the traditional insert cards don't work anymore. You know, these standard insert cards that all say thank you for your purchase on them and have more information about the product, warranty details, or some bland marketing or ads on them. And almost all of them also ask the buyer to leave a product review like the example that you see here. While these product insert cards just end up in the garbage. And that's because there's no value or benefit for your customer to take any action that's printed on the insert card. In fact, what turned me onto this new strategy is this one time I bought this USB extension cable and inside the package was an insert card that said that I can get another USB cable for free. I was like, really? Who wouldn't want another free USB cable? So, I scanned the QR code that's on the insert card and it took me to their website where I filled in my order details and my contact information so that I can get the free USB cable. And on the final step, it asks me how I like the USB cable that I bought and if I'd be willing to share my feedback on their Amazon listing. And that's when a light bulb went off in my head. That's clever. I never would have taken the time to do any of that in the past. This strategy is so powerful because it didn't even mention reviews on the insert card. It offered something of value, a free gift that I wanted. This small change on the product insert card completely changes the psychology. You're no longer asking your customers to go out of their way to do you a favor. Instead, you're rewarding their engagement.
So, how can you incorporate this strategy for yourself? Well, head on over to reviewcango.com. Normally, you'd need to build a website or hire a developer, but not anymore. Reviewscan go handles all of that for you. In just four easy steps, you can create a campaign, choose a type of offer from a free gift, a coupon code, a digital asset like an ebook or extended warranty, or if you don't want to offer anything at all, you can just collect reviews if you want, and the funnel will automatically generate a QR code that you can download and print onto your product insert cards. When your buyers scan the QR code, they're brought directly into your own personally branded funnel like you can see here, where the funnel will collect their order details so that you can verify their purchase, collect their information so that you can build your own email list and then ask them for their feedback. And Reviewscan go has made this extremely frictionless for your customers. With one simple click, it automatically copies their feedback and takes them directly to your Amazon product detail page where they can simply paste their feedback to leave a product review. How awesome is that? With this strategy, you can collect much more reviews and build an email list for future marketing and retargeting needs. But here's what makes Reviewscan go even more powerful. The funnel is smart. If your customer wasn't 100% happy with your purchase, for example, they didn't choose that they were 100% satisfied here, then on the last step, it will only collect their feedback for your own internal use and analysis. It won't ask them to share their feedback. Notice that the share feedback section is missing. This prevents bad experiences from getting shared on your Amazon product listing. But you also have the option to disable this SmartFunnel feature if you want, so it always shows the share feedback section. And guess what? Reviewscan go is 100% Amazon compliant. Your buyers are never incentivized to leave you only positive reviews, and they're not even required to leave you a review in order to redeem your offer. You're never influencing or trading anything for a review. Now, I've been using this strategy for years, and now it's even easier for all of you as well. With Reviewscan go, you can collect unlimited reviews and create unlimited campaigns and promotions. The starter plan is the perfect solution for those launching their very first product. In fact, you can join right now and create your first campaign for free and try it out for yourself. I'll leave a link down in the description below.
All right. Now, the next long-term review strategy is an obvious one, but you may not know about it or you don't know how to do it efficiently, and that's sending review requests to your customers through Seller Central. Each time you make a sale, you can head on over to your order history and send a review request to your customers. However, keep in mind Amazon already sends out review reminders automatically for you on your behalf. So, you can only manually send one additional request. Now, manually sending review requests every day can get pretty tedious, especially if you have a lot of orders. So, there's actually a way to automate this task for you. What I use is an email automation tool included with Helium 10. You can easily set up filters to target specific shoppers or products and how long to wait before sending the review request. So, if you already have a Helium 10 subscription, then definitely take advantage of this tool if you didn't know about it already. However, I have a free trial as well as a huge discount for my community if you want to give Helium 10 a try. And I'll leave a link to it down in the video description below.
Now, on to strategy number seven. And this is one of my favorites and a secret that I kept to myself for a very long time. And that's using online review websites. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, let's jump on Amazon. And if we take a look at this ceramic soap dish sold by Loia, if we do a search for soap dishes, we can see that their product is actually here on the first page. Okay. So now, if we jump onto Google and do a search for soap dish reviews, we can see a list of websites that have a lineup of top soap dishes. And if we pick one of these websites like this one here for example, we can see that this ceramic soap dish made by Loia is the number one rated soap dish. And not only that, if we scroll down, we can see that this wood soap dish ranked number two can also be found on Amazon. And it just happens to also be on the first page of the search results. And the number three soap dish made out of bamboo, no surprise here, it's also on the first page of Amazon. So, how can this help you get reviews? Basically, these review sites are the top ranking Google websites in their niches, and they get tons of traffic, as you can see here. What these site owners are doing is they're getting affiliate sales for the products that they highlight and review on their websites. So, basically, if we take a look on the review site, you'll notice that next to each review, there's a link to buy the product directly on Amazon. And guess what? These are affiliate links. Anytime someone clicks on the button and buys anything on Amazon, the site owner gets a small commission for the referral. So, you can take advantage of this by contacting the site owners of these top review websites in your niche and get them to list and review your product on their websites. How powerful is that? They're basically doing all of the advertising and marketing for you.
Now that you have some new powerful strategies to get reviews fast, you also need to make sure your product listing is fully optimized in order to capitalize on those reviews so that you can boost your sales and get your listing ranked to the number one spot. And this video right over here will show you exactly how to do that.