{"id":1817,"date":"2016-10-07T06:04:53","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T06:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/merchantlabs.wpengine.com\/uncategorized\/amazons-review-policy-bombshell-the-winners-losers-and-what-it-means-going-forward\/"},"modified":"2021-09-10T17:07:46","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T17:07:46","slug":"amazons-review-policy-bombshell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/landingpagepromoter.com\/blog\/amazons-review-policy-bombshell\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon’s Review Policy Bombshell. The Winners, Losers and What it Means Going Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 3rd of October 2016, what some have been calling Reviewgate.\u00a0<\/i> The\u00a0day Amazon announced that they are no longer allowing incentivized reviews, which means that running\u00a0giveaways in exchange for reviews is now BANNED.<\/p>\n

For those paying attention, this update comes as no surprise. In the past several months Amazon has slowly been clamping on what they deem ‘review manipulation’. First, they made it a requirement to include a disclaimer in incentivized reviews and then they removed the ‘Verified’ label from heavily discounted purchases. But they didn’t stop there. Amazon then set a $5 minimum spend on accounts (raised to $50 a few weeks later) in order to leave a review.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then in the first week of October, they\u00a0went all in and completed outlawed all incentivized reviews.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why did Amazon change their guidelines?<\/h2>\n

Recently the public has become more aware of the fake review epidemic\u00a0on Amazon. Many buyers have gone public after being\u00a0tricked\u00a0into\u00a0buying low-quality products with very high rankings. The media also noticed and countless articles have been\u00a0published warning the public about the quality of Amazon reviews.<\/span><\/p>\n

Companies such as\u00a0Fakespot<\/span><\/a>, that used big data and data analytics to detect\u00a0how genuine the reviews were on a particular listing have also received lots of media attention. Similarweb<\/span><\/a>\u00a0reports that they received 1.9 million visits in September alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

The final straw seemingly was a post on Reddit<\/span><\/a>\u00a0from ReviewMeta<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0who analyzed 18,000,00 Amazon reviews and proved that incentivized reviews were biased. This post went viral with over 3000 comments and millions of views.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amazon obviously were not very happy about these developments and likely\u00a0believed that the public were losing trust in their review system. So\u00a0in a drastic fashion they completely revamped their policies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Was this a good thing for small businesses who leverage Amazon as a sales platform? Here is my analysis.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Review<\/a><\/h2>\n

Who will the changes benefit?<\/h2>\n

Established\u00a0Sellers of Commodity Products<\/h3>\n

For established sellers of ‘commodity’ products (non differentiated generic products that someone has just whacked a label on) this is a great thing. For these products, previously their\u00a0place at the top of the rankings could be overthrown by sellers using brute force rankings tactics. This involved using giveaway services and review groups to giveaway\u00a01000s of units at heavily discounted rates. Although this strategy is not completely nullified it’s effectiveness will greatly be reduced since approximately half of the benefit of this strategy was to solicit reviews and improve their star rankings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Creative\u00a0marketers<\/h3>\n

The change will also reward\u00a0sellers who are more sophisticated marketers. For example sellers who are sending external traffic to their listing<\/span><\/a> and then using well thought out email follow-up sequences to solicit genuine reviews.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other examples include sellers who create Amazon affiliate sites that send traffic to their own listings<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0or sellers who leverage influencer marketing on platforms such as Instagram.<\/span><\/p>\n

Brands<\/h3>\n

When it comes to long term success in eCommerce, everything always\u00a0comes back to brand building and thinking bigger than just Amazon. Going forward, successful eCommerce entrepreneurs\u00a0are going to have become more creative and look at multiple\u00a0channels to find their customers and build their business. The low hanging fruit has mostly been claimed. Building a brands with a loyal customer base is the best way to become successful in the long term.<\/p>\n

Who will the changes punish?<\/h2>\n

New Sellers of Commodity Products<\/h3>\n

On the contrary, this update will severely punish\u00a0new sellers trying to succeed\u00a0by selling\u00a0commodified products. It will be much more difficult to compete with established sellers selling non-differentiated private labelled products. That means sticking a branded logo on a generic silicon kitchen accessories, giving away 1000 units and praying you will shoot to the top of the rankings is probably not the best strategy going forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lazy Private Labelers<\/h3>\n

Lazy sellers who conduct no brand building\u00a0activities and don’t actively try to engage with their audience will also be punished.\u00a0There are hordes of sellers who have for too long relied\u00a0on review groups and giveaways as their sole marketing tactic to improve\u00a0their rankings and increase their review count.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, there are private label businesses who have not neglected these activities and have actively sought to engage their audience to\u00a0build a real customer base<\/a>. These businesses will benefit indirectly from these changes due to reduced competition. Instead of using review groups and services at a substantial cost to get biased reviews they can instead launch their new products to their loyal customer list who would be more than happy to buy their new product and leave an unsolicited review (as long as your product is good!)<\/p>\n

Chinese Sellers<\/h3>\n

The new guidelines will significantly effect Chinese sellers who are heavy users of review groups and services. This is a great thing for most Amazon sellers as the Chinese often would engage in pricing wars which would reduce the profit margin for everyone in that category.<\/p>\n

Review Services<\/h3>\n

Review groups and\u00a0platforms such as AMZTracker<\/a> and ReviewKick<\/a>\u00a0have overnight become a lot less useful. Even though they changed their policies (they no longer require users to leave reviews) to become compliant with Amazon’s TOS, sellers will be rightfully hesitant to use these platforms due to fear of getting their listings and\/or accounts suspended. It will be interesting to see how these businesses pivot to stay relevant moving forward.<\/p>\n

So\u00a0how can sellers\u00a0get reviews now?<\/h2>\n

\"5<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

You may be wondering, how am I going to get reviews now?<\/a> By getting your high-quality\u00a0product in front of REAL customers (not ‘professional reviewers’!) and asking them for genuine feedback post-purchase.<\/span><\/p>\n

To do this you should\u00a0look off the Amazon platform. You will need to find out where your target market hangs out and join in the conversation with them by actively providing value.\u00a0This might be more expensive and time-consuming in the beginning, but as time goes on your efforts will compound until you have\u00a0established a real business with a moat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We can’t tell you exactly where your market hangs out, but a great place to look would be Facebook or online\u00a0forums. Once you have built up sufficient trust then you can offer them your product at a discount and use AMZPromoter<\/a>\u00a0to create a sales funnel and distribute your coupons codes.<\/p>\n

We truly believe this is the best way going forward. And even if you break even\u00a0(or take a loss) from a\u00a0customer acquisition, you will gain a:<\/p>\n