Creating Quality Review
If you are reading this page, you are probably looking for the key components for writing a quality review that will bring in sales. It could be on a website blog, a YouTube channel vlog, a landing page to drive traffic to you or a myriad other places.
In the 21st century when someone has an idea about buying something one of the first things they do is reach out to Google and start a search on that product. They want to see what people are saying about the product. Is it good? Is it bad? How well is it rated? What are its key features and benefits? What can it do for me?
As an affiliate marketer, what does that mean for us?
We want to build a trustworthy and authoritative online website. We want folks to come to our website and select the great products that we have to offer through our affiliate links.
My base of operations, if you will, comes out of everything I am learning from Wealthy Affiliate. An example of a finished review can be found on “WEALTHY AFFILIATE REVIEW 2021 – AFFILIATE MARKETING FOR BEGINNERS – REVISITED“. Wow! That’s a long title!
But, let’s not put the cart before the horse, okay!?
Now, I know that some people can learn better by seeing something done that by reading text like you are doing here. Therefore, I would like to give everyone three options.
- The 1st option is to go ahead and watch this video made by Kyle, one of the owners of Wealthy Affiliate.
- The 2nd option is to continue reading this article and learn about the four CIAO principles that lead to a great review.
- The 3rd option is to join me at Wealthy Affiliate where you can get this training more in-depth, along with a lot of other training and help from those who have already established themselves as successful affiliate marketers and are doing it full time.
Looks like you have chosen the 2nd option! Let’s do this!
CIAO stands for Captivating, Informative, Accurate, and Opinionated.
Captivating
If you don’t gain your readers interest within the first sentence or two you will lose them forever. And, this is after you already got their attention to come to your web page to begin with, so don’t lose them after they have arrived.
Make sure you have a strong title and heading throughout your article.
Tell them what they are going to learn about in the coming story, tell the story, and tell them what you talked about.
When I say tell them a story, I mean talk to them like you would a friend or relative who is interested in what you have to offer. Let them know you are right there with them. I’ve never been this excited about working on something like this, since I joined Wealthy Affiliate. It makes it easy to talk to you about what it has to offer because there is so much more to it than a web hosting service.
Informative
You need to be informative about what you are offering. The reader should be able to make a decision without any images after reading your article. Of course, if you have great images of the product that’s a plus, but don’t think you will convince the reader on images alone.
They are here because you got their attention so give them the attention that they deserve. Let them know all about the product especially how it benefits them. On recruiting duty they taught us about features and benefits. The feature would be the military would pay X amount of dollars per year for college. The benefit would be “you can leave the service with a bachelor’s degree that would help you get a higher paying job in the civilian work force.”
Which sounds better? The feature or the benefit?
Accurate
The information that you provide on the product needs to be accurate. You do not want to mislead your readers in any way. The best way to gain someone’s trust is to be open and honest in your relationship with them.
Where can you get the information to put in your post? You can go directly to the vendor’s website and see what they have published there. You can see if they have a press kit for those who want to talk about or sell their product.
Remember, Google is your friend, as you can do a search on “xxx product review. Sometimes big publishers will do reviews on products where you are able to compare this product to similar products. You can search for the product on Amazon and see what there is there, as well. You can look at Reddit threads, forums, websites, YouTube, Vimeo.
A word of caution, people that complain about the product or write bad reviews may have had bad experiences but that doesn’t mean what they say about the product are 100% accurate. Check to see what the manufacturer says in response to their review, if it’s available.
Something that I do when I review a product is post the article on the vendors social media sites or if they’ve disabled posting then send them an email letting them know that I’ve posted an article on their product. On several occasions I was either corrected in the information I had on the product or asked to reword something.
Speaking about having accurate information, you can also ask them if they have any photos you could use on your site. Some are more than willing and already have press kits to give out to those who do product reviews.
Of course, if you have had your own personal experience with the product all the better. Because then you can speak from experience and speak at the same level as the consumer who is interested in the product.
I have a folding bike and if I do a review on another folding bike it is easier for me to speak to those who have folding bikes because they have the same experiences I do with folding bikes.
Opinionated
Here is where they are really going to see if you are being truthful or not! If you tell them everything is great about the product, then it sure better be! If there is a flaw in the design of the product or something you wish was different let them know just like you would your best friend. By doing that you are showing them right up front that this product is great but I have to tell you about X and Y, too.
That reminds me of a story I heard. There were two realtors, one who had a great sales record and one that was mediocre at best. Well the mediocre one had this piece of property that bordered the railroad tracks and couldn’t sell the house to save his life.
He complained about it at the office constantly. Finally, the better realtor said I bet I can sell that property no problem. So, the mediocre realtor said you’re on.
Within a couple of days the house was sold! How did he do it? It was the same property that the other realtor had for a long time and couldn’t get anywhere with it? What would you do to sell it?
The answer is, the better realtor made his appointments to coincide with the time the train would go by the house. He did this so he could point out the one thing that was stopping people from seriously considering buying the house. So they could experience firsthand what would be their biggest objection and find out it wasn’t that bad. Whereas the first realtor would avoid showing the house when the train went by and the topic of buying a house so close to the tracks would come up as an objection and there was no way for him to get past it.
If you want a little more depth to this, feel free to watch Kyle’s video up above. Of course, he is much more experienced in this than I am but I’ve been around the block a time or two, too. 🙂
If you have any questions, please feel free to drop them in a comment below.
Cheers!
Les
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