Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Review of "Naked Truths About Getting Product Reviews on Amazon.com: 7 Insider Tips to Boost Sales," by Gisela Hausmann



Review of

Naked Truths About Getting Product Reviews on Amazon.com: 7 Insider Tips to Boost Sales, by Gisela Hausmann ISBN 9780996897204

Five out of five stars

 The rise of Amazon as a global business power of the first magnitude has done what most new, expanding businesses do. Created opportunities for existing businesses to ride the coattails as well as give entrepreneurs the chance to create brand new businesses, mostly as sideline endeavors, but a few as actual full-time jobs.
 One part-time job that has been created by the rise of Amazon is that of the (semi)professional reviewer. The position began when Amazon was largely just a seller of books, at the time they started their reviewer program. I was a very early participant in the reviewing process, at one time I was ranked in the top fifty.
 As Amazon has expanded the breadth of their offerings, the review umbrella has also expanded to cover the new products. This has made the Amazon reviewer program a critical, and relatively cheap, component to the marketing strategies of companies that sell their wares on Amazon. With Amazon ranking their reviewers based on a secret formula, smart companies can intelligently select a small set of reviewers, send them products for free or a reduced rate and reach a significant audience. For reviews posted on Amazon are visible around the world and on the product page on Amazon foreign language sites.
 The key phrase in the previous paragraph is “intelligently select” and that is where many of them fail, sometimes miserably. As Hausmann points out, it is not difficult to determine the reviewers that promise the greatest return on investment. Simply look at reviews for competing products, examine the ones that have a lot of “helpful” votes and then check their rank. A short day’s worth of work and anyone can create a small, but very valuable list of people to contact.
 Once that is established, the next thing to do is to send the reviewer a message that will interest them. The writer of the message needs to understand that they are just another fish in a turbulent sea and there are others vying for the limited attention of the reviewer. It is here that Hausmann once again shines and demonstrates her expertise in the area of email communication.
 In my experience, this is where many marketing contacts totally fail. As Hausmann demonstrates, the generic message sent to a list that so falsely sounds personal is something that yells out “Amateur!”  The worst is when the entire list appears in the “To” field, so when someone accidently hits the “reply all” button, everyone on the list knows about it. If you want me to spend the time reviewing your product, spend a few minutes trying to entice me.
 Amazon provides sellers with a great deal of opportunities for selling, which also means that there is a great deal of competition for attention and subsequent sales. The Amazon reviewer program can be an incredible asset or put you as just another annoyance, depending on how well you play your position. With Hausmann’s help, you can win at that game, or at the very least keep up, assuming that your competition has also read it. 

This book was made available for free for review purposes

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