Comments and review sections are a wonderful place. Bizarre, unruly, often downright chaotic. But above all, insightful. That said, they’re regularly overlooked. Sure, we’re all thankful for the good ones. But how often do you take a closer look and analyse the patterns?

Think about it for a second. Raw customer data? For free? What’s not to love? This is where your customers come to crack open their thoughts and let you take a big insightful gulp. Comments and reviews aren’t just useful for hearing what your audience likes and loathes though, they’re also a reliable springboard for finding fresh marketing angles. 

Here’re a few ways to make the most of the purest customer data you’ll ever get your hands on…

Method 1 - How to get customer insight from comments sections

Here’s a handy trick from consumer psychology expert Sarah Levinger, who recommends prioritising comments over reviews. You might be thinking, why comments over reviews? Well, as Sarah puts it, comments are more likely to be reflective of the customers true self because they’re reactive, rather than curated. Satisfied? Good. Let’s get stuck in.

Stage 1

Pull as many comments as you can on your socials and put them in an Excel spreadsheet (aim for 500-1000). Start reading through them to see if there’re any words that keep appearing. What’re the recurring themes?

Stage 2

Organise and categorise. Start by organising similar words and themes, particularly focussing on life events. Why did they buy from you in the first place? 

Stage 3

 Time to colour code the data. Green for context - what life event is on their mind? Yellow for company - who were they with when they purchased? Pink for emotions - what emotive language did they use? 

This technique helps you join the dots between the social context and emotional state of your customers, specifically in relation to how this correlates with buying patterns. In Levinger’s own words, “a deep understanding of this first-hand consumer data will level up your ad creative”. And I couldn’t agree more. 

Now go! Use this data and test to your heart's content! 

Method 2 - How to get customer insight from reviews

Read between the lines.

Reviews also come in handy when you’re coming up with ideas. Try to think of them in three categories; 1 star, 3 star and 5 star. The 1 and 5 stars provide clear reasons why people buy, laying bare what they like and don't like and offering a total polarity of opinion. These are great for learning your strengths and weaknesses, but it can often be hard to distinguish between total bias and useful insights. 

The best reviews to look at when coming up with reliable angles are the 3 stars. The people in the middle. Here lies the juicy goodness we all know and love - the balanced perspectives. The 3 stars already recognise your product has merit, they just have specific reservations about it. These are the ones you want to listen to and inevitably win over. And as fortune would have it, they’ve made it incredibly easy for you to learn how. 

The good news doesn’t stop there. No no. If the thought of sifting through all those reviews sounds like a terrible afternoon to you, have no fear. This is a job for the robots. Load the reviews and comments into AI software like ChatGPT and ask it to analyse the text and identify trends for you. This’ll save time and it may even find things that you’ve previously missed and potentially even offer a fresh take. 

Method 3 - Implementing review data into an ad strategy

Last, but by no means least, we have the beast. This one requires a bit more elbow grease than the rest, but I promise you will be rewarded.

Courtesy of Jake Abrams, this whopper works like a charm. Here’s how it goes…

• Make your merry way to the review platform 
• Kick things off by exporting all the reviews (from last 6 months) as a CSV
• Get your analysis on and find the most common themes within the data
• Seek out the top five reasons for buying
• Get plotting and find 3 shiny new ideas for each of your discovered five reasons
• From this, you should have 15 total ad ideas (using your raw static and video assets) 
• For each buying reason build 1 testing campaign with 5 ad sets
• Dedicate £100-£200 per day for each ad set 
• Keep the campaign up for 7 days, then sit back and relax. Grab yourself a cold one and watch the results unfold   

Well, that’s all for today folks. Hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. Go forth and look upon thy comments and reviews with the renewed admiration and respect that they deserve. Don’t be shy to capitalise on some of the best raw data you’re ever gonna get for free!

If you're struggling to find inspiration for your brands digital marketing strategy and need a helping hand, book a call to talk with us today  here's a link to Joe, Dom, or Freddie's calendar to book a discovery call.