Amazon reviews can make or break a brand. In this article, we’ll show you how to use Amazon reviews to gain a foothold on a new marketplace and increase the sales of your products.
Last Updated on August 29, 2024 by Zeljko Drazovic
Amazon shoppers have a voice they’re not reluctant to use.
Whether happy or unhappy with a product purchased from your store, customers can leave a review and share their opinions with you and their fellow shoppers.
Building a successful Amazon store on your local or a foreign market is impossible without amassing vast amounts of positive reviews.
The review ratings are perhaps even more important for Amazon sellers expanding into new markets than for brands selling exclusively on their home markets because they’re displayed across all brand stores that feature a specific product.
In this article, we’ll show you how Amazon reviews can drive your brand’s success on international markets.
The growth of an Amazon store in your home country inevitably leads to expansion into new markets.
Selling products internationally presents a myriad of challenges, from understanding a country’s tax regulations to familiarity with cultural nuances.
Joining the Amazon Global Selling program makes this transition smoother by putting a broad spectrum of tools at your disposal.
Joining this program is the fastest way for Amazon sellers to start offering their products on the European, Asia-Pacific, Americas, Middle East, and North African markets.
To participate in the program, sellers must meet the following criteria:
Once your seller accounts are up and running, you can decide which products to offer on a new market by entering their ASINs into your new seller account.
Amazon connects the ratings of these products to their ASINs and displays them on the listings in your target store.
You can easily check the reviews displayed on a product’s page on different Amazon domains by scrolling down to the Customers Say section and checking the top reviews from the United States or other countries.
Hence, including products with high ratings and lots of reviews to your international offers can help you gain the initial foothold on a new market.
Even though having excellent reviews from your home market can jumpstart a product’s international sales, getting reviews from users in a new country is still paramount.
Remember that some of your international audience won’t understand the language in which the reviews in your source Amazon store were written.
Consequently, you’ll need time to establish a brand reputation in the new market and attract loyal customers, one Amazon review at a time.
Amazon reviews don’t only reflect the quality of the products in your store. Factors like the quality of the customer service, how informative the product page is, or the item’s delivery time can affect the review ratings your Amazon customers will leave.
The work of obtaining great reviews starts long before your products hit the international market. Here are a few things you can do to get reviews on a new market:
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Relying on the so-called Vine Voices, Amazon’s vetted group of reviewers can be useful in the early stages of entering the global market.
The Amazon Vine, an invitation-only program, encourages the platform’s most trusted reviewers to order free items from sellers and write honest and unbiased reviews.
Reviewers can give negative reviews to products, so joining Amazon Vine doesn’t guarantee you’ll get lots of high-rating reviews quickly.
Currently, the program is available for five Amazon domains, so international sellers can only use it if they have an Amazon account in the US, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, or Japan.
It’s worth noting that you must meet a long list of requirements to join the program. Let’s look at a few of the most important ones:
Participation in the Amazon Vine program is only free for sellers who list fewer than two units of the item they want to have reviewed.
The participation fee is $75 for up to ten units of the same product, while to enroll more than ten and fewer than thirty units, sellers must pay a $200 fee per parent ASIN.
Even so, taking part in the Amazon Vine program can help sellers entering a new Amazon market get reviews of their products quickly.
Launching a store on a new Amazon marketplace doesn’t have to be a bumpy road of continuous trial and error.
The experience of building an Amazon store on your home market should serve as a guideline for starting a new one on a foreign market.
Still, the strategy you should use to attract new Amazon customers and win their trust doesn’t necessarily have to be the same as the one you utilized to grow the Amazon store on your home market.
Let’s go through some of the best practices your brand should follow to get great reviews on a new Amazon market.
45% to 62% of shoppers in Australia, Germany, the US, and France believe local brands offer better products than global brands.
You must understand the local competition to overcome this obstacle, attract buyers on these markets, and receive good reviews for your products.
Reading the reviews of your top competitors’ products in a particular market will enable you to understand their pain points and address these points in your listings.
Trust takes years to build but only a few seconds to destroy and a lifetime to repair.
In other words, brands trying to get a foothold on a new Amazon market cannot afford to lose their customers’ trust.
Amazon reviews are a powerful tool enabling brands to build trust with new and recurring customers.
If used correctly, this tool can help brands expand their customer base as they are a digital version of word of mouth.
Its importance is even greater for brands expanding to new markets because getting reviews in the local language serves as social proof that can incentivize other buyers from that market to purchase a particular product.
The number of organic reviews you’ll amass for each item you add to a new brand store depends on the quality of the products you offer and the overall quality of the service you provide to your customers.
Although it can be highly beneficial, you don’t have to send follow-up emails after every purchase, add inserts to the packages you ship to your customers, or use any other incentivization technique to get organic reviews.
All you must do is provide an outstanding product and service to your customers, and in return, you’ll get organic reviews.
These reviews will:
Fake reviews are a common black hat SEO technique on Amazon.
Their purpose is to misinform shoppers by giving them inaccurate and biased information. Amazon uses AI tools to detect these reviews and suspends or terminates the privileges of the accounts that violate the platform’s Anti-Manipulation Policy.
Staying compliant with Amazon’s Customer Review policy will ensure your brand’s good standing and help you avoid penalties. Here are a few review policies you shouldn’t violate:
Building global brand recognition should be a part of your wider marketing strategy.
In addition, you should localize your approach to branding and adjust it to the demands of a specific market.
Dedicating resources and effort to improving your brand’s recognition on a new Amazon marketplace can boost the number of organic reviews your products are getting on that marketplace.
Listen to what your customers are saying and use that knowledge to improve the quality of your service.
Monitoring reviews also allows you to spot emerging seasonal trends and determine which items your customers want to see in your store.
Establishing an internal procedure for monitoring and responding to reviews in a timely manner will strengthen the relationship with your customer base and increase your chances of attracting new customers.
Ignoring negative reviews is a costly mistake that can undermine your chances of building a successful store on a new Amazon marketplace.
Approaching every negative review professionally and taking prompt action to resolve the issue a customer has encountered will present your brand in a positive light to a new audience and help you retain dissatisfied customers.
Get our free Brand Expansion Checklist ebook for more tips on how to enter new markets the right way.
Joining the Amazon Global Selling program is a gateway into Amazon’s international marketplaces.
The success of all your Amazon stores depends on the product reviews your customers leave. Dedicating your full attention to customer satisfaction increases your chances of receiving excellent reviews and boosting the sales of your products.
There’s no uniform approach to building Amazon stores and gathering reviews on new markets. However, retaining the flexibility to adjust to the market’s demands and cultural nuances will make this slow process smoother.
Remember, getting great reviews on one Amazon marketplace doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get favorable reviews on a different marketplace.
Offering high-quality products, exceptional customer service, and an overall fun and pleasant shopping experience is the best and fastest way to get organic reviews that will drive the sales of your products on a new Amazon marketplace.
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