Capterra advertising and organic marketing can be valuable for a company's reputation as well as an important source of leads. Here are best practices to follow for a success on the social review site.
The latest research shows that more than 90 percent of B2B buyers conduct online research in the buying process, including seeking honest reviews. Capterra is one of the most widely used and respected review sites for SaaS products -- which means it's critical to leverage for both visibility and sales.
Here are 12 steps for getting started with and maximizing your Capterra program:
1. Connect with your Capterra representative. They are there to help you get the most out of the platform and to give you tips on how to improve the performance of the program.
2. Create a high-quality profile. Write a compelling company description and add a high-resolution logo, your best pictures and videos. Test different descriptions and media to see which one gets you the best reviews -- and the most clicks and conversions.
3. Get a list of your happiest customers and send them an email asking for a review. Maybe this is a list of those categorized as "promoters" after an NPS survey, or a list of people that have had favorable interactions with your support team. You can offer them a gift card to incentivize them to write their review sooner rather than later.
4. Co-brand customer outreach with Capterra. Capterra can send a co-branded email and call your top customers for you if you give them a list. Capterra will even offer your customers a gift card that Capterra pays for! They do the follow up and handle the gift card pay out. You can access Capterra's customer outreach service here.
5. Follow up. Remember to follow up with those who don't leave a review, and to thank those who did.
6. Create a killer landing page. Once you have a healthy number of reviews, create a landing page for each category you are listed under. Make sure you follow best practices when developing these landing pages and that you test them out to learn which ones perform better over time.
7. Create thank-you pages for your landing pages and add Capterra's tracking code (linked) before the closing body tag. This is the correct and best way to track conversions. Do not conform with just having a thank-you inline message after form submission on your landing pages. Use your thank-you page to direct visitors to your website or blog or to give them a resource they might find helpful (no need to ask for their contact information again).
8. Now it's time to advertise. Setup your billing information here and check the boxes that say you want your profile to appear on other Gartner websites like GetApp and Software Advice.
9. Determine a bidding strategy. Decide if you want to bid the same for clicks on Capterra and GetApp, or if you want to have different bids for each platform. Start out by bidding the same and then you can test different bids on each website and see what works best for your advertising strategy.
10. Add or remove the countries your want your advertising to appear. You can also adjust the bid up or down depending on the country.
11. Make sure you add a source tracking key to your URLs. This will help you recognize traffic from Capterra's ads on Google Analytics.
12. Analyze your results. On a monthly basis, take a look at your report and decide if you should up the bid to increase your average position. A better position will get more eyes on your listing and, hopefully, more conversions. We would only recommend upping your bid to increase your position if you have a strong conversion rate (above 5 percent) to make sure you are making the most out of those clicks.
If you are getting a good amount of clicks on your listing, but you are not getting as many conversions, then the problem probably lies with the landing page. Make changes to it on a monthly basis until you find one that optimizes conversions.
Checklist for a Successful Program
- A high-resolution logo
- A list of happy customers
- An email campaign to solicit reviews with follow up and thank you.
- Incentives to leave reviews
- A compelling landing page for each listing
- A thank-you page for each landing page
- Time to set up an effective profile and advertising settings
- Time to review the report every month and make changes as needed to the bid or the landing pages
That's it -- for Capterra and GetApp at least. SoftwareAdvice's advertising program is pay per lead not pay per click, so they gather the conversions and send them to a number of competitors. Then, you have to win over the prospect. The key in that model is to be the first to call, text, and/or email the prospect. We find these conversions to be very affordable and worth it even if it's just to get their contact information.
Leveraging Capterra for Business Buzz
Here's a helpful video explaining how to use Capterra to build buzz and capture leads.