Comment marketing, or marketing through user reviews, is a powerful strategy for boosting engagement, building user trust, and ultimately increasing your sales. Unlike direct advertising, it works on your customer’s decision indirectly and shows a real, tangible experience of your product or service. In this article we’ll get familiar with practical comment marketing techniques and approaches, and see how you can put them into practice in online businesses.
What Is Comment Marketing?
Comment marketing means using user reviews on websites, social media, and online forums to grow your brand and build customer trust. These reviews can be direct feedback from your current customers or content the business itself creates, like answering users’ questions.
For example, many reputable Iranian online stores like Digikala use a user review system. Positive reviews about products like smartphones or home appliances win over other buyers’ trust and raise the conversion rate.
Why Does Comment Marketing Matter?
It Builds More User Trust
Studies have shown that more than 90 percent of customers check other users’ reviews before buying online. When there are positive, useful reviews, trust gets built and the buyer’s hesitation drops.
It Improves Your SEO Ranking
User reviews are actually user-generated content (UGC), and search engines care a lot about them. By adding natural keywords and increasing engagement, these reviews help your site rank better. On top of that, they keep your content constantly updated and turn it into evergreen content.
It Raises Your Conversion Rate
User reviews can have a huge effect on a customer’s decision. When you show real experiences and answer questions in the comments section, the likelihood of a purchase goes up.
Practical Techniques in Comment Marketing
Create a Space for User Reviews
Enable commenting on the product pages and articles of your website. For example, Iranian stores like Digikala have implemented this feature really well.
Make Leaving a Comment Simple
You need to make leaving a comment easy for users. If a user has to register on your site or fill out a bunch of fields just to comment, their engagement rate will probably drop a lot. The thing is, most of us are impatient these days, and nobody wants to fill out a long form full of their personal info just to leave a comment or ask a simple question.
Respond Actively to Comments
Reply to user comments quickly and professionally. This shows that the customer matters to you and that you’re building positive engagement with them. For example, if someone asks under this very article “what is comment marketing?”, the worst answer would be to say I explained it at the start of the article, go read it. Instead, you should answer them as fully as you can and explain the topic again. This way other readers also realize you actually like to respond and they’ll ask their own questions, and the person who left the comment will appreciate that commitment and might turn into your customer.
Encourage Users to Leave Reviews
To get more comments, you can use loyalty club and points systems, like the one we see in DigiClub, and boost user engagement that way. Another option is to ask users directly within your post to leave questions and comments. Or, after publishing the post, share it on social media and invite people to ask questions and comment, because the first comment has a huge effect on encouraging others to leave reviews. And if despite all this nobody engages, you can use one more method: post the first comment yourself as a fake, under the name of an imaginary customer in the form of a question, and then answer it from your admin account. This way others get encouraged to comment too.
Use Reviews on Social Media
Share users’ positive reviews on social media to win more trust. For example, clothing shop pages usually use this exact method to promote their products and put customer reviews in their Instagram stories.
Manage Negative Comments
Don’t ignore negative comments. Instead of deleting them, reply to them and fix the problem. This approach earns users’ trust and improves your brand image. It’s happened many times that I got a negative comment on social media and instead of deleting or hiding it, I replied; then either the user deleted their comment themselves, or we had a conversation that ended with that user becoming interested in our services and turning into a sale.
Successful Examples of Comment Marketing in Iran
There are definitely plenty of examples, but in my opinion these are a few successful cases of using comment marketing in Iran that you can model after:
Digikala
Pretty much anything we want to buy from Digikala, we look at the product reviews section, and the fact that users can write critiques, mention pros and cons, and even send photos has made this section really rich and helpful. Plus, by connecting it to DigiClub and giving users points, engagement in this section has gone up too.
Cafe Bazaar
Cafe Bazaar’s user review and rating section has forced app developers to fix problems and improve their apps, and these ratings have a huge effect on which app a user chooses.
SnappFood
Not even once have I ordered from SnappFood without first checking that restaurant’s user reviews. Not even once have I ordered from a restaurant with negative reviews, and this has always influenced me. I think the biggest impact of reviews on a user’s buying decision is on SnappFood, and they’ve implemented it really well.
Conclusion
Definitely use comment marketing in your business, because it has a big effect on SEO as well as your conversion rate. The simplest way that any business can use is to enable commenting on your articles and products, and if nobody participates, create the first comment yourself.