Ads need angles -- where creativity meets purpose and campaigns meet objectives. The angle you take for ads determines the pitch, the creative concepts, the images and the copywriting after you set your advertising objectives.
If there’s one angle, concept, or creative direction you could stick to, by default, it’d be the “reviews, testimonials, or the social proof angle”.
If you ignore everything else said and written about advertising and marketing and had to choose one thing alone, pick social proof. More specifically, you’d want to use actual customer testimonials, customer generated content as proof, or even video testimonials (as a part of your video ads).
Business and commerce -- for all of the known history of mankind -- was based on trust. Brands were built over time, thanks to the trust and goodwill each of these brands earned over a period of time.
Whether you do a regular business or an eCommerce business, it’s what being said about your business or brand that matters more than anything else.
Using eCommerce reviews as a part of your marketing strategy, marketing campaigns, and specific ad angles is a powerful way to convince, convert, and grow your customer base.
Here are some of various kinds of eCommerce reviews you can use with ads:
Star product reviews
Of all the types of reviews you can feature as (or as a part of) ads, select some of those star product reviews and feature them as the content or copy for your ads.
While you might want to edit some of the text of the featured reviews or testimonials, these star reviews make for the perfect recipe for your winning eCommerce ads.
Written by actual people, about your products or services, in their own words.
UGC Testimonials
UGC stands for User Generated Content. Some brands or businesses generate enough buzz on social media, within your support forums, on general public forms, and elsewhere.
Part of these conversations could be a venerable “Wall of Love” on Twitter, mentions within blog posts, discussions or mentions about your products inside relevant forum threads.
Mentions, small talk, recommendations, and other types of user generated content is valuable input for eCommerce ads.
This is as raw and natural as it can get.
Review about your brand and unboxing experiences
Story for the new age we live in: almost the whole world wants to see how a product looks like, how a car drives, how a motorbike rides, and how a new product feels by watching others “Unbox” these products.
Unboxing reviews are all the rage (especially in the video format, on YouTube and elsewhere). These unboxing experiences let others (viewers) live through the experience vicariously.
While you might not be able to use the complete unboxing experience of a product as an ad, you could clip parts of this experience and use it as a part of your ad.
NPS and Survey Recommendation Scores
Want a little more scientific and proven way to let your potential customers know that your brand and/or products can be trusted?
Use NPS (Net Promoter Score) and survey recommendation scores as a part of your marketing campaigns. The NPS or Net Promoter Score is a way to measure customer satisfaction. As a widely used method for benchmarking and measuring customer satisfaction for products and services.
The NPS makes use of a simple survey sent to customers and feeds the resultant feedback into a formula to generate a simple score often used for benchmarking.
Organic Recommendations
Sometimes, you’d get tons of love even if you didn’t go asking for it.
Often, your customers will mention your products, services, or your brand out in the open: social media networks, YouTube Videos, Instagram reels, and so on.
They’d also mention your brand in forums, social forums such as Reddit or Quora, and within blog posts.
All of this, without you ever asking for it.
These are organic recommendations. Any mentions of your brand, products, or services organically (in the wild) are worth pure gold.
Seek them out, collect them, and use them in your eCommerce ads.
Classified reviews [on specific features, benefits, or aspects]
As you receive feedback from customers -- organic or requested -- you’d find that some reviews can be very specific. For example, you might get special mentions about certain product features.
Or your customers might highlight specific aspects of your features.
These types of specific reviews are perfect for eCommerce ads which highlight the exact same features, benefits, or aspects of your product or service.
When you create ads for products or services that single out a specific product or service, use these targeted reviews or classified reviews pertaining to those exact features or benefits.
Which of these eCommerce reviews would you like to use for your ads? If you’d like to see how brands use reviews as angles for creatives while running ad campaigns, get an entire library of live ads at Panoramata.
