When marketing any type of products and services, your customers trust third-party content more than they trust data provided by your company. They want information that they consider to be credible and objective.
While this is something we may intuitively understand, new data from inPowered and Nielsen confirms it.
According to the study, consumers rely on third-party content (surveys, product reviews, other data) more than branded content or even user reviews when making purchase decisions. In fact, the study showed that expert content was the only content type to exhibit a strong lift in all three areas of the purchase cycle.
On average, expert content . . .
• lifted brand familiarity 88% more than branded content and 50% more than user reviews;
• lifted brand affinity 50% more than branded content and 20% more than user reviews; and
• lifted purchase intent 38% more than branded content and 83% more than user reviews.

 
How do you benefit from expert third-party content for your products and services?

 
Add expert reviews to your marketing and public relations “to do” list. Once you have this content, add the most compelling snippets to your print marketing materials. Reprint them on your website. Link to them in your emails. Use QR Codes to point to them on your product packaging. You might also want to print some of this content in your in-house newsletters so your sales and customer service teams can tap into it when talking to customers.
It’s great when you, your customers, and your employees can rave about your products and services. But when experts do it, it’s even better!