The old ways to get reviews for your products on Amazon are gone. Try to use them today and you put your Amazon seller account at risk of getting banned forever.
Today I’m going to show you how to get reviews--legitimate, 5 star organic reviews that make customers fall in love with your product.
But first, you need to be aware of a serious challenge:
Your business ultimately needs reviews if you want a lot of sales. But to get reviews, you need sales first.
You need reviews for sales but sales for reviews, so you’re stuck!
Today, I’m going to show you how to overcome that. I will give you four methods you can start using today to get reviews even if you’re a brand new seller selling a brand new product without a single review.
And just for fun, at the end, I’m going to show you the old ways to get reviews which are dead—gone-zo—six feet under—never to return again.
Method 1: Give me a reason to buy your product before you have a single review.
If the success of your business depends on reviews, then you built your entire business upon something you cannot control. That’s a horrible way to live. You are literally setting up your life for insurmountable stress and angst, your happiness being controlled by what people say in the reviews.
“But, Seth, how do you expect me to get sales if I don’t have reviews?”
Build a better product. Quit being average and start being better.
“But isn’t the whole point of this training to teach me how to get great reviews?”
Yup. Which means, you need to first get sales. Without any sales you won’t get any reviews. And if sales depend on reviews, you won’t get either.
Yes, I’ll show you how to get reviews. But the first step is to build a product that does not entirely depend on reviews.
If your product looks like everyone else’s on Amazon you have literally forced me as a customer to make reviews the final determining factor. And since you have no reviews, you don’t get my purchase.
Let’s say you love chess. You hop onto Amazon.com. You see two listings selling chess sets.
Similar photos.
Similar features.
Similar bullet points.
Same price.
But there is just one thing that distinguishes them from each other.
One has 1,200 reviews.
The other has none.
Which one are you going to buy?
If you are the seller with the reviewless product, you lost before you got started.
“Yeah, I know, Seth, because I have no reviews.”
No! Because you did not add unique value to your product.
How do you think the listing with 1,200 reviews got all of their reviews when they started out? A virgin listing, with no reviews.
They added unique value.
Unique: no other sellers are doing this
Value: customers want this
To win on Amazon, you have to stop trying to be like the other sellers and start delivering unique value to your customers. They are the ones writing your paycheck--not your competitors.
Give me a reason to buy your product, before you have a single review.
So how do I do that?
You can:
- Offer a better product.
If they use plastic you use titanium. If their product has no accessories, you include ALL the accessories. - Offer a novel product.
When shoppers are hunting for a product that never graced the pages of Amazon, and you launch this product, you are going to build yourself a goldmine. “But Seth, how do I know there’s demand if no one is selling it?” We save that for our students. Go to JOD.com/freedom if you’d like us to work with you. - Offer a premium product.
Not every Amazon shopper is addicted to the best deal. Some will only buy the best. Be the BEST and you can charge the MOST.
Now that your product is ready to get sales with no reviews, let me show you how to get those reviews once you get those sales.
METHOD 2: Set my expectations. Then, outperform them.
There are only two times when customers leave you a review: when they are really upset or really delighted.
Deliver a product way below my expectation and you’ll get a review all right.
Deliver a product far beyond my expectations, and you’ll also get a review.
There is something you need to understand.
I will not leave a good review on your product because I got what I expected.
Why should I do something nice for you when I already paid you for your product?
It was a fair transaction. You got money. I got my product. And now we part on our merry ways.
This is the very reason so many Amazon sellers have to resort to desperate measures to suck good reviews out of their customers. Receiving what I expected does not motivate me to go write something nice about you, so now you have to beg me.
“We are a tiny little family-owned company living on potatoes and broccoli sprouts so please, if you can find it in your heart, leave this little fledgling of a baby business a kind-hearted review before we die of starvation.”
Or it’s like this:
“Hey! Want a gift card to Amazon? If you leave me a really nice 6 star review and then email me your order number, I’ll give you a gift card. Huh? What’s that? Yeah, yeah, I know incentivized reviews are against Amazon’s terms of service and Amazon can completely shut our operation down and never let us sell on their platform again but I did absolutely nothing to outperform your expectations….so now I have to manipulate you.”
You want my five star review? Surpass my expectations so well that I feel like a total jerk if I don’t give you a fantastic review.
I go to Amazon and order a chess set. And I’m excited. That doorbell rings and I rip open the Amazon box expecting a weighty, premium chess set with pieces that belong in a king’s palace.
But it’s made of squishy plastic.
How do I feel? And how do you think I am going to express those wonderful feelings?
Let me give you a tip on how to do this:
Create a listing that is great.
Create a product that is amazing.
Your listing’s job is to persuade me to buy.
Your product’s job is to persuade me to leave you a fantastic review.
Method 3: Surprise me with a gift.
The gift is not expected.
The gift is not expensive.
But the gift is incredibly persuasive.
In one of our product launches for cremation urns we included a little filter kit that allows you to easily pour the ashes into the urn.
Do you know how much that kit cost us? $0.19 a piece.
Do you know how many 5 star reviews we gained within 2 weeks of launching? 18.
$0.19 is worth thousands of more sales.
When was the last time someone gave you something of value that you did not expect, and you did not feel highly motivated to say, “Thank you!” (If you didn’t feel that way, we need to have a conversation.)
When you make a customer feel grateful, you make them want to give thanks. And how do customers give thanks?
Positive reviews!
Selling a French press? Include a beautifully designed insert that shows them 7 different ways to make coffee.
Selling a chess set? Include extra game pieces in case they lose one.
Selling a dog collar? Include a dog toy.
The customer loves this because they never expected it in the first place. That’s because you never mentioned it on the listing.
Now customers are funny. Some of them will get the gift and go, “Huh. I forgot this came with a dog toy. Okay, cool.” And go on their merry way.
But you do not want them going on their merry way! This transaction is not over.
You sent them a gift, you never mentioned the gift, and now they have a gift, and they still don’t realize it’s a gift so you have to TELL THEM it’s a gift.
On the insert card, write, “I hope you love the gift! 😉”
And they will go, “Oh. Will look at that? They sent me a gift. These guys are amazing. This is the best company ever.”
Mr. Customer, I just so happen to know a place where you can share those joyous feelings percolating through your body right now.
Method 4: Get your first reviews using the Amazon Vine Voices Program.
With Amazon Vine, you can get a flood of honest reviews when you send your product, for free, to “Vine Voices”.
Find Amazon Vine in Seller Central under "Advertising".
You can enroll up to five ASINs to get reviewed by Vine Voices.
Vine Voices are Amazon shoppers that Amazon trusts to write insightful, honest reviews. These reviewers are prolific, often writing hundreds upon hundreds of Amazon reviews.
There’s no guarantee that they’ll write you a five star review, or even a review at all, but if you built your product right, why wouldn’t they?
In order to qualify for Amazon Vine, your product must:
- Be brand registered in Amazon Brand Registry.
- Have fewer than 30 reviews on the product detail page.
- Have a buyable FBA offer in ‘New’ condition.
- Not be an adult product.
- Have already launched at the time of enrollment.
- Have available inventory.
- Have an image and a description.
6 Dead Methods to Get Extra Amazon Reviews:
- Early Reviewer Program
- Incentivized reviews
- Swapping reviews with other sellers
- Using a service that offers discounted products for reviews
- Reaching out to the top reviewers on Amazon
- Emails to shoppers directly from Seller Central
Just so you know, violations to Amazon's Customer Reviews policies include, but are not limited to, these actions:
- A seller posts a review of their own product or their competitor's product.
- A seller offers a third party a financial reward, discount, free products, or other compensation in exchange for a review on their product or their competitor’s product. This includes using services that sell customer reviews, websites, or social media groups.
- A seller offers to provide a refund or reimbursement after the buyer writes a review (including reimbursement via a non-Amazon payment method). This could be done via buyer-seller messaging on Amazon or directly contacting customers or using 3rd party services, websites, or social media groups.
- A seller uses a third-party service that offers free or discounted products tied to a review (for example, a review club that requires customers to register their Amazon public profile so that sellers can monitor their reviews).
- A family member or employee of the seller posts a review of the seller's product or a competitor's product.
- A seller asks a reviewer to change or remove their review. They might also offer a refund or other compensation to a reviewer in exchange for doing so.
- A seller diverts negative reviews to be sent to them or to a different feedback mechanism while positive reviews are sent to Amazon.
- A seller creates a variation relationship between products with the aim of manipulating reviews and boosting a product’s star rating via review aggregation.
- A seller inserts a request for a positive Amazon review or an incentive in exchange for a review into product packaging or shipping box.
- A seller uses a customer account to write or change a review on his or his competitor’s product.
