What Google’s Latest Reviews Update Means for Consumer Products Digital PR

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What Google’s Latest Product Reviews Update Means for Consumer Products Digital PR

[4 minute read time]

Product reviews are about to change and this will impact your digital PR and earned media, especially CPG or consumer product brands. Google is constantly updating how it evaluates websites, to surface the best content. As Google gets smarter, so must brand and their PR agencies, especially those like ours that incorporate digital PR and SEO into our strategies and recommendations.

Constantly watching Google’s changes is part of being a digitally forward PR company.  

We’re extremely aware that SEO plays a role in brand communication decisions and as importantly, editors and publishers, and influencers of the online outlets our clients want coverage. Modern PR and reputation management takes into account many inputs and SEO is absolutely one of them.

Why Google’s High Quality Content Changes Your Digital PR

Yoast SEO has an outstanding blog if you want to dig deeper into SEO hints and tips; that’s where we picked up on a recent change that affects CPG PR and Consumer Goods PR because it’s all about product reviews. Product reviews play a considerable role in consumer goods PR like fashion, DTC brands, or home goods, or CPG PR like beverages, snacks, and wellness supplements. Journalists often do a “round-up” of products because they’re reasonably easy to create, they usually include samples, and they do well with readers who appreciate a curated perspective from a trusted third party. In otherwords, they’re a cornerstone of digital brand awareness for CPG, DTC, and consumer product brands.

But in Google’s quest for “high quality content,” it’s caught on to the fact that these product reviews might be juuuuust a tad too easy to create, so it’s updated how it views product reviews.  Savvy editors and journalists who are keenly aware that their content is in a constant battle for eyeballs will adjust the way they do product reviews, which means consumer brands and their consumer product PR agencies should be in the know too.

 

What Will Qualify As a High Quality Product Review in Google’s Eyes

As a brand, it’s in your best interest to secure earned media in outlets that do well with Google product reviews. Rarely is Google transparent about how it’s changing its algorithm, leaving SEO experts to read the tea leaves instead. BUT, this time, Google left some breadcrumbs. In it’s Google Search Central Blog, Google recently published an entire page of documentation about its product reviews update that every brand and PR agency in the United States should be reading. In this update, Google asks product reviewers to ask themselves these questions to answer whether their article is “high quality content:”

  • Express expert knowledge about products where appropriate?
  • Show what the product is like physically, or how it is used, with unique content beyond what’s provided by the manufacturer?
  • Provide quantitative measurements about how a product measures up in various categories of performance?
  • Explain what sets a product apart from its competitors?
  • Cover comparable products to consider, or explain which products might be best for certain uses or circumstances?
  • Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of a particular product, based on research into it?
  • Describe how a product has evolved from previous models or releases to provide improvements, address issues, or otherwise help users in making a purchase decision?
  • Identify key decision-making factors for the product’s category and how the product performs in those areas? For example, a car review might determine that fuel economy, safety, and handling are key decision-making factors and rate performance in those areas.
  • Describe key choices in how a product has been designed and their effect on the users beyond what the manufacturer says?

 

How Does This Change Earned Media Coverage for Consumer Brands or CPG Brands?

Here at Avaans Media, we have a saying, “media relations don’t happen without relationships.” We work extremely hard to consider the needs of the outlet and the journalists, and Google has just provided us with a modern roadmap for improved media relations.

  • For one, CPG brands or consumer product brands should be helping journalists understand these key differentiation, and those key differentiators should vary from the exact language on the brand’s website.
  • Further, CPG or consumer product brands should be prepared to develop more content, that’s exclusive to the press, which shows the product in a lifestyle setting. Most CPG and consumer goods products do a quarterly photoshoot, but they should also set aside some images for journalists only and be aware of using the same image repeatedly.
  • Your owned media and earned media should not look identical, and if you help editors and journalists by providing images that don’t appear on your site, it will help the brand get more eyeballs and the editor will appreciate your effort.
  • The information provided to a journalist should walk them through the decision-making behind certain features and design choices while also providing hard data as to how a product compares to it’s competitors.
  • PR agencies should get really great at identifying the expert journalists covering their products and lifestyle use cases and contextualizing them to different reader considerations in order to secure product reviews. This will allow a journalist to include your product in a series of different articles targeting different readers. Making the job of hardworking journalists just a little easier is one way PR and journalists create trust with one another. That trust translates into better coverage for the brands.

 

MAKE GOOGLE’S LATEST CHANGES YOUR SECRET DIGITAL PR WEAPON

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The Viral Marketing Virus

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Listen up: Going viral is a benefit to creating great content, not the goal.

But if you’re really committed to creating a viral video marketing campaign:

Creating viral content is this easy.
And this difficult.
Here’s my fool-proof 3-step process.

Create content that strikes an emotional cord (funny, sad, inspirational) and is distinctly unique and you’re one step closer to viral. 
Create content that tells a story, not a tagline and you’re one step closer to viral. 
If your branding it, make the product part of the story, not THE story. 
Not all that helpful, right? Truly the devil is in the details. Storytelling. More art than science. That’s why there is no Einstein-esque formula for viral. If only “viral” were as simple as math. It takes time to create and make a story. Song writers, ad professionals, photographers, marketers, movie makers, writers, videographers, graphic designers. We’re all storytellers. And once in awhile a storyteller also gets lucky. And viral happens. Think of all the stories out there today. Not too many go viral, but does that make them not worth making? Of course not.

So, in honor of The Story, let me tell you one. About 4 years ago, I talked with Judson Laipply, whose own viral video 2006 “Evolution of Dance” received 70 million views in under 8 months. At the time it was the #1 most viewed video of all time on YouTube (waaay before Gangam Style). Judson’s performance tells a great story in an entertaining, unique way. When I asked him about his own viral video, he said that he put it up on YouTube as a fluke, that in fact, someone in the audience recorded it and sent it to him. Judson was as surprised as anyone at the response, he wasn’t already famous (like some other viral video creators)  and he didn’t have a huge social media following at the time.  Since then, he’s done several follow-ups but none so successful as the original. Today, Judson is a working motivational speaker. The point is, completely of the moment? Yep. Complete accident? Yep. Repeatable? Probably not. With all due respect to Judson, we’ve all been there, and done that.

It’s pretty rare that branded material go viral. If you look at the most popular YouTube videos of all time (YouTube Charts), not a single one is a branded video. Almost all of them are music videos (YouTube being to this generation what MTV was

viral, branding, video,

Bloomberg Businessweek 6/14/2012

to mine). Coincidence? No.  Does that mean that branded content can’t still be powerful? No. Check out the videos in particular categories. The all-time #1 video in the auto & vehicles segment is a COMMERCIAL. The Volkswagen/Darth Vadar commercial that originally aired during the Superbowl 2011 (you don’t even have to go find it do you? You remember it). Notably, none of the other Superbowl ads from that year or this year can claim the number one spot in any category. There were some great branded viral videos in 2012, my personal favorite was the Dollar Shave Club, which was appears deceptively simple, but once you break it down you realize its the product of a lot of talent and planning.

There is a theme here: either viral is completely planned, thought out and scripted or its completely of the moment, off-the-cuff. One is time consuming, expensive and lucky and one is JUST lucky.  Which are you? 

So go forth, my marketing compadres. Create amazing content in whatever medium you wish. Please. But create amazing content because its the right thing to do if your going to create content at all. Because by creating content, you’re saying something about your brand…whether 1,000 people see it or 1 Billion people see it. Create the best, most memorable content you can create. And move on. And remember, sometimes its about quality over quantity.

 Header Image: Creative Commons Karl Jonsson

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Quality or Quantity?

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Would you rather have 100,000 Twitter followers, 95% of whom don’t RT, @mention or even acknowledge you or 2,000 who hang on your every word and identify with your tweets in a passionate way? True, in either case, your REAL fans are likely to be in the mix, and your job is to identify and cultivate them.

Don’t you feel like you’d be fooling yourself to think that simply having fans or followers is enough? How can you activate people who just don’t care? Simply following your Twitter feed or Facebook page is an awfully low entry point, wouldn’t you agree?

Read more

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