How to support review websites, its advantages and one case with BrainMarket.cz
For a large part of e-shops, creating of review content is one of the most valuable and naturally the most desired ways of promotion.
It is a part of the advertising space with significant added informative value. On the one hand, such content is highly demanded by users. Furthermore, it can convey in the right form exactly what is needed for the user to convert and turn into a customer.
A wide variety of comparison sites measuring customer satisfaction and experience with products can provide basic knowledge, especially about the sellers themselves and their qualities.
But they rarely provide more detailed information (and in sufficient quantity) about the product itself. All this is in the hands of the reviewer himself - an affiliate partner.
For the advertiser, the affiliate partner's review content means not only new high-quality advertising space, it is essentially a beneficial source of additional orders (the delivery of which by the partner is rewarded purely performance-wise) and also support for the growth of the conversion rate.
As much different as each form of promotion can be, is its target group too. Such users make decisions based more on the knowledge they have gained about the product, rather than price-sensitive customers who are primarily looking for the maximum possible discount or simply the lowest price, to the extent that not finding it can decide whether or not to make such purchase.
A well-written product review can, on the contrary, convince the reader that it is worth "investing" more money in the product. Without the obtained information, there remains the fear of whether to spend the money after all.
1. The basic option is an adequate commission evaluation of such partners who create reviews.
If the advertiser rewards its partners within different commission levels (e.g. according to the promotion segment, i.e. cashbacks, catalogs, content ones differently), it is worth working with the possibility to reward review partners more motivationally than others.
You can always set an average CPO for the entire channel, and within it you can distinguish who can have a higher one and who a lower one. Let's not forget that, in addition to the commission, that any discount also affects the costs - at eHUB, we work with reporting that allows such CPO to be evaluated very precisely (you can learn how in our older blog article).
2. Very important and fundamentally necessary is the support of partners through the provision of products for review. In the case of consumer goods, such products are normally provided free of charge, in the case of electronics or other products that by their nature are used for a longer period of time, they can be borrowed for the purpose of the review.
An alternative is for the advertiser to provide an exclusive discount to the partner for the purchase of goods, but it must be borne in mind that the partner may not be able to afford such an input cost.
Our long-time client, an advertiser of affiliate programs BrainMarket (CZ SK HU PL), went through such a development as mentioned above.
In the CZ program, we gradually adjusted the commission levels for individual partner segments (from which those with content profit the most), on the contrary, we limited cooperation with some completely.
In the meantime, we at eHUB have been consistently actively searching for inactive content partners in the program, as well as content projects that have not yet been registered (often newly created) in the network.
The results have arrived, the program has gained a strong group of active partners with content projects.
The joint work of developing the partner group is represented by three graphs for the period of the year (2022 until the end of October). The support of coupon partners (light red section) was completely reduced, as well as partially cashbacks (dark blue sections), and on the contrary, the content segment (dark green sections) was systematically supported together with social networks.
A follow-up step was the incentive of closer cooperation and the provision of products for reviews. BrainMarket is an e-shop focused on a wide range of food supplements, of which it produces a considerable amount itself.
This is where the advantage becomes apparent, when exactly such products can be provided to partners for free with a relatively small cost. An established mechanism was created from the initial incentive, where partners are not afraid to ask for the product and within a few days it is on their doorstep.
Based on the results of the amount of tracked orders of three long-term active, similarly sized, content partners, we highlighted when they were provided with products to review and after which the reviews were published. There was a steady increase in the number of orders for all, the strengthened results can last many months after publication.
No less positive results can also be traced to the conversion rate of these partners. Although the new content increased traffic in clicks (among other positive performance indicators), thanks to the good work of reviews and a significant increase in conversions, there was also an improvement in the conversion ratio, which for these partners is significantly above the overall average of the program.
BrainMarket's partner group, amount of orders, and turnover continue to grow. Together with the advertiser, in addition to the CZ and SK, we have recently launched PL and HU programs, where we are already offering the first support to content partners. The procedure successfully tested with domestic partners can also be applied abroad.
What we mainly appreciate about the eHUB platform is high-quality communication and the ability to flexibly and quickly solve our requirements. Thanks to cooperation with eHUB, affiliate has become a stable part of our marketing mix.
Jiří Votava, owner of BrainMarket
As we were able to see together, the support of review contents in affiliate has its important place and it is definitely worth it. It is a cost-effective form of advertising, it provides completely unique high-quality advertising space and helps to bring more orders and a better conversion rate.
The advertiser does not have to worry that the number of executives will increase significantly. All the communication and activities with all partners continue to be ensured by the affiliate manager, who will prepare everything necessary to specify the shipment of samples. As this logistics repeat a few times, such a procedure creates a well-established process with minimal time consumption.
If you have any questions about the work of sending samples for reviews, possible effects on results, or anything else you are interested in, please do not hesitate to contact us at any time. We're here for you :)
