Do you write persuasive product reviews on your blog, and want to boost conversions?

Then, this post will help you for sure.

If you are an affiliate blogger, most of your revenue will come from the product review posts you publish on your blog.

Writing effective product reviews on your blog posts accounts for more affiliate sales and more revenue.

For any good product on the internet, there is no shortage of reviews.

There is a shortage of in-depth and authentic reviews, that truly help people make a well-informed decision.

In this guide, let me give you some solid insights on how you can write a great product review that sells.

Principles of influence in writing web copy

Principles of influence in writing web copy

Robert Cialdini, an author of the award-winning book – influence, describes the 6 principles of persuasion that is invaluable for you to know prior writing any web copy.

Just read the explanation thoroughly, and while reading the next sections of this blog post you’ll be astonished by realizing how easy is it to adapt these in your product reviews.

Here are the principles:

#1. Reciprocity: This refers to the tendency of people to return a favor done to them. If you present someone a gift on their birthday, chances of them gifting you on your birthday will be more.

Marketers use this all the time.

For example, offering free samples while selling supplements, ice-creams, etc. Or perhaps a free consultation session.

#2. Scarcity: People tend to make quick favorable decisions when there’s scarcity. This can be attributed to our cognitive bias called “loss aversion”, where the pain of loss is more than the pleasure we get from equivalent gains.

This is the reason why sales like “limited time”, “get while it lasts”, are extremely persuasive.

#3. Authority: People have the tendency to comply to authority. We are conditioned from birth to do so, compliance to teachers in schools, to politicians while paying taxes, and others.

If you are an authority in your field, chances are there that people comply with your recommendations.

#4. Consistency: This refers to the feeling that people have that their outer actions and deeds should remain consistent with their inner or core beliefs.

When we make any buying-decision, we tend to justify this commitment by coming up with logical reasons or asking others whether we made the right decision.

#5. Liking: People like people who are similar to themselves in appearance, behaviors, core values, beliefs, etc. This is the reason why building rapport and getting to know your prospects is very important before a sale could happen.

#6. Consensus / Social proof: This refers to the tendency of people to rely on what their peers or people like them are doing, when uncertain about taking some action.

This is the reason why testimonials work great.

Researching and outlining your product review

Research and outline process for product reviews is quite different than the generic research you do before writing your blog posts.

Use the product

Researching and outlining your product review

In order for you to deliver in-depth product reviews, you need to use the product before hand.

Before writing a review you can do one of the following things to use the product:

  • Search for the demo version of the product
  • Ask the product creator for a free trial
  • You may also ask the product creator to give away the product in return for the review.

Using the product in hand, gives you an idea about the ground-reality of the product – the practical problems and benefits. It helps you a lot to craft a very good product review.

But, I understand.

Not every-time you can own the product you review. Especially, if you are reviewing physical products.

In case of writing reviews on products you don’t own, you may consider being more upfront with it or you include the features and specifications of the products comparing it with other similar products.
You need to review the products in the style of unbiased researcher where you collate scattered information around the web to make the purchasing decision easy for the prospect buyer.

Get to know your readers

know your readers

Before writing your review it’s highly essential to know the nature of the audience of your site.

Your goal with product reviews is to convert as many people as possible to buyers.

For that, you need to write a product review by understanding that “ideal buyer” in mind.

  • What kind of products your readers are willing to buy?
  • Prospect buyer avatar – like their demographics, behaviors, etc
  • Their pain problems (Analyze how your product can solve their problems)

For finding out the burning problems in your niche you can consider browsing the niche forums or asking your readers directly about the problems they are facing via newsletters.

Understanding this also helps you to frame the content on your review posts, so that you build a rapport with them and make use of the “liking” aspect of the principles of influence I described earlier.

The best places to get to know more about the people is browsing through the forums, groups, etc.

Browsing through the forums, groups, etc.
 Browse some of the forum and  get information regarding review

Like this, you need to browse some of the forum threads that have discussions related to the product you’re gonna review.

With this, you’ll get a clear idea about the kind of readers who will be visiting your blog.

You can also research what are the concerns of the people by browsing the comments on other blog posts related to the product that you are reviewing.

Make a list of reasons why people won’t buy

reasons why people won’t buy

The goal of your product review is to combat all the objections and excuses that people have when it comes to buying your product.

When people have no reason to not buy your product, they’ll buy.

You as a content marketer, before writing any review, need to make a huge list of reasons why people won’t buy your product.

I know it might sound counter-intuitive, but hang on…

When you have all the possible reasons why people won’t buy, you can formulate the combat mechanisms to negate each of their excuses.

So, how to come up with the reasons why people won’t buy?

  • Browse through the forums, groups, and analyze.
  • Browse through the other blog comments.
  • Analyze the features that the product’s competitors offers
  • Use the product in hand
  • Do the brainstorming process wearing the shoes of your prospects.

Come up with at least 10 objections and excuses that your prospects may come up with before buying the product you review.

Please do remember that objections are different from excuses.

List the questions people have

There are certain answers that your prospect buyers will be searching for before buying your product.

So, how to know them?

For this, you need to make use of tools like AnswerThePublic. This tool allows you to discover all the common questions people have, when it comes to the product you’re reviewing.

Use AnswerThePublic to get questions

By analyzing the results that this tool returns you, it’ll be easier for you to determine what are all the information your audience are looking for when it comes to the product.

It’ll also help your review to be a lot more insightful than your competitors and helps you fill the missing gap of information that your visitors find nowhere.

These are the keywords that you need to include in your review outline and address in-depth in your review.

How to write a perfect product review

No matter how good your writing skills are, writing content that sells is quite different.

It takes a great understanding of your target audience and their problems to write great reviews.

Show your face

I bet you are a human.

Why not be a human?

Show your face

It is a well-known fact that including a smiling photo of yours on your blog increases conversion rate. Readers trust you because they are seeing your face.

You can consider including some of your images and videos in the sidebar of your blog to add a humanly touch to your blog.

“People buy people, not products”

Trust is hard to come by in the online world. So, showing your smiling face on your blog via images, videos, helps a lot of creating that trust.

I highly advise you invest in a good professional photoshoot, as it can increase the conversions on your website rapidly.

Build authority

Build authority

If you’ve read the Cialdini’s principles of influence that I described earlier in this article, you know what I’m talking about.

People tend to trust the information and the statements from authority people, influencers and also deemed trustworthy sources.

It’s very essential to build authority and credibility in the eyes of your readers.

A single professional pic of yours in the sidebar will make a great difference when it comes to building credibility.

You may also consider having a series of testimonials in your sidebar and even the landing page of your blog.

Even, having a professional design with color psychology in mind also adds to building authority in the minds of the audience.

Be conversational

Include a humanistic tone in your article

Include a humanistic tone in your article.

Address your readers as “you” and “your”

Incorporate more and more story-telling in your articles.

In this case, include your personal story related to the product you are reviewing, Describe about the results you got using the product, a story about how you solved a problem, etc.

Write as if you are having a conversation with your friend.

This helps you build likeability with your audience more quickly – provided you’ve crafted your message considering the psychographics of the audience.

Empathize with the readers

Empathize with the readers

Empathy means the the ability to wear the shoes of another person, and understanding/sharing the feelings of others.

While writing any copy, you need to empathize with the problems that your readers are facing. You need to be able to describe the problems that your readers are facing than they themselves would.

Empathizing is best done in the introduction of the article, to make sure that you set the frame, build rapport quickly, and further let them read the review.

Having an empathizing introduction is important for your every blog post. But for your product reviews and important landing pages, it is very important.

Speak their language

Speak their language

You need to know what your prospect language is like and speak their language i.e using the similar words and phrases they use.

People like and trust people who are like them, it boils back down to the likeability concept of Cialdini.

Similar to the concept of matching and mirroring in NLP and body language, using the same jargon your prospects use helps you to build instant rapport and empathy with them.

So, how to know their language?

Browse the forums
browse through Quora for your topic

You can browse forums, FB groups, blog posts, etc. You can also browse through Quora for your topic.

After browsing through a couple of threads, you can easily figure out the language of your prospects.

I would like to emphasize that speaking the audience’s language is important. Because when they are skimming through your content, they’ll stop skimming and start paying attention only when they find their language in the content.

Close highly-motivated buyers

Close highly-motivated buyers

It’s very important to have a product review summary section at the top of your review.

It lures in people who are quick to make the buying decisions.

dynamic product overview section

I’ve created this dynamic product overview section using Astra Pro, Elementor Pro and ACF plugin. It automatically generates the following section based on the data I give in the custom fields on the post editor screen.

You can also make use of some review plugins for implementing this functionality on your WordPress site.

This kind of product overview section lures in people with ultra-low attention spans, and convert great as it has CTA button above the fold.

In this section it’s important for you to include the summary of the product in such a way that their probable objections for buying the product will also be countered.

These highly-motivated buyers need no convincing. Because, they are hunting for more logical reasons to convince themselves to buy the product they have already decided to buy.

Educate first

Educate the readers

You can’t say like – “Hey this product is awesome, it will be good for you”, instantly after the starting of your review post.

You need to make your readers go through the review and gradually attempt to convert your readers by educating them.

You should follow the popular 80-20 rule (Pareto principle).

80% of your review should educate the readers about the product by providing both the pros and cons of the product.

20% of the content should be related to the call to action and is an attempt to convert your readers. That would be a soft-sell in most of the product reviews.

Convert features to benefits

Convert features to benefits

You need to create a list of main features that the product has got to offer to your readers, and map those features to benefits.

People don’t buy features, they buy benefits.

People while reading your review, will be constantly asking to themselves – “What’s in it for me?”.

Marketing strategy

Apple never marketed their iPod as – “Hey buy this! It has 4GB storage inside”. They marketed it as – “Say hello to iPod, 1,000 songs in your pocket!”

You need to include the article full of benefits rather than that of features.

First off, you need to create a list of features that the product you’re reviewing has got to offer.

Now you need to add in your perspectives and experiences to them and try to come up with at least two or more benefits for each of the features.

If you struggle to come up with the benefits, you can also come up with the benefits of the benefits i.e. the indirect advantages of the product.

Now you need to add in those benefits inside the review where it makes sense and creates maximum impact.

What kind of benefits work best?

Consider the most primitive desires of the human being, and find an alignment where the product you’re promoting benefits them.

 Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs

For this, you need to understand the Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs and implement it in your copywriting and content marketing.

According to this model, all human beings have the desire to move upwards on this pyramid.

move upwards on the pyramid

That fear they have of falling down this hierarchy is what that causes “Fear Of Missing Out”.

Most of the online users have their physiological needs met (as they have internet access). So, you may need to consider aligning your product benefits in any of the top four tiers of this hierarchy to increase conversions.

Include the downsides of the product

Include the downsides of the product

Do you know how to be authentic while writing reviews? It’s by being authentic. Read it again.

People come to read your product reviews for a reason. They want to know the downsides of the product.

If you have used the product in hand, you should have identified some of the disadvantages of the product. So, these cons should be included in your review.

Don’t be too optimistic while writing your product reviews. When you highlight some of the disadvantages of using the product, you showcase your honesty and authority – it leads to likeability.

Presenting the downsides of the product while reviewing the products is the best way to eliminate doubts around trustworthiness of your review.

You’ll find a plethora of articles on the web where the author has nothing to say but to praise the product.

Recall the last time, you searched for a product review while buying a mobile or any product.

How was your mental state? Were you searching for the reviews to expect only positive reviews? No, right?

People assume that if I include downsides of the product, it hurts conversions. It’s plain dumbness.

In fact the opposite is true.

Why?

Without you including the downsides of the product, people won’t trust your review – this hurts the conversions even more.

including downsides of the product in your review

To include a pros and cons box in your review, you can make use of drag and drop page builders for this, or you can also make use of custom CSS code.

Include alternatives and comparisons
Include alternatives and comparisons

In your product review, you need to include the downsides of the product.

When you include the downsides, along with them also include the alternative products that fill the gaps.

Don’t forget to compare your product with various other competitors of your product in the market. By this, you’ll be showing your readers the awareness and your consideration of other similar products in the space.

You’ll not seem biased about a specific product, and the chances of people trusting your review will be more.

Here’s an example of how I compare the products together.

Compare products together

By comparing your product with other competitors, your review will become the one-stop destination for your prospects, as you’ve already helped them to compare the products with others in the market and sliding them down the sales funnel.

If the product you are reviewing is costlier than its alternatives, justify why your readers need to pay extra bucks to get your product. If paying those extra dimes is worth it, present a proof about what your product does whereas other products can’t.

You need to also include a detailed comparison chart if there are any competitive products to the product you’re reviewing.

Comparing 3 best products

In the online world, there’s a big crowd of people who desire to get the ultimate best possible product among all of the other competitors. If you show that your product is clearly the best among its competitors in spite of some flaws, you win!

Be in-depth

Be in depth

Your article should be so in-depth and complete that it should be the last article they ever read before making that purchase. Or else, they’ll refer some other article to complete their research, click on someone else’s affiliate link and make the purchase.

That’s why earlier in the article, I emphasized the fact that you need to create an in-depth outline before writing the actual review.

Including all the below things contribute to the depthness of the article:

  1. Explanation of the need for the product and what pain problem it’s trying to solve.
  2. Information that’ll help them determine whether the product is for them or not.
  3. All the product features and benefits.
  4. A brief explanation of how the product works and how you can make the most of it.
  5. Use cases of the product with optional examples of people using it.
  6. The alternatives for the product and how it compares to each of them.
  7. How the product integrates or works with other products in the market?
  8. Pros and cons of the product. And, what can they do about the cons?
  9. FAQs about the product.
  10. Any case studies, stories or examples of you or people who’ve used the product.

As your review goes too in-depth, it may become boring and monotonous. So, make sure you include plenty of images and divide the review neatly into several sub-sections.

You need to make use of table of contents in your blog posts in order to help even the people with short attention spans easily get meaning out of your review.

Include FAQs in your review

Include FAQs in your review

Answer the common questions that readers may have before buying a product. Clear their doubts about the product.

FAQs regarding a product

Before writing a product review, sit back, close your eyes and brainstorm all the questions that may come to your readers while buying the product you are reviewing.

You can also make use of the review outline you created in the previous section of this blog post.

Most common questions for the products are:

  • For what things this product may be used for? (How?)
  • How this product performs well compared to other competitor products?
  • What are all the truly unique features of the product? USPs
  • Common problems you face while using the product?
  • How to solve them?
  • Will the product payback the spent money, if so how?
  • Pros and cons of the product?
  • Is the product worth the money?
  • So on

Just answer all the questions that your potential buyers have regarding the product.

At last, I would stress that answer FAQs in your review post. It makes a lot of difference in terms of conversions.

The social proof

add social proof

If you’ve read this blog post fully, you now know what the social proof is. It refers to the tendency of people to rely on what other people are doing, when uncertain about taking some action.

You may need to add in some people’s testimonials, comments, case studies, examples, stories inside your product review to add in the social proof element to your copy.

But, how to get the above information?

searching the case studies

If the product you are promoting is good enough, you get decent number of case studies online. You can include them in your review.

include snippets from other case studies

If you are in a niche where real-life results like body transformations works great in boosting up conversions, you can include snippets from other case studies, experiments and testimonial videos.

including the snippets

You can consider embedding others’ YouTube videos, before-after images, mentioning their names or linking to their websites.

People trust information coming from multiple sources vs. a single source.

If the testimonial or the result is from an individual who was in the same position as your prospect audience are in, and made a massive shift, it will be much more effective as they can related to him and be like – “If him, why not me?”.

The CTA

Once you made sure that you made your readers educated enough to opt or not for the product, it’s time to add a clicky button.

Make sure you are using attractive buttons for your affiliate links. The effective color for the button depends upon the design of your blog. You may consider A/B testing the colors of your buttons.

You need to know the basics of conversion rate optimization to make effective click to action buttons and help with your affiliate sales.

Try to include the color of the button complement to the main color of your site. For example, if your site’s theme color is blue, try to include a blue color CTA button; so as to make it stand out.

Button-blindness is the real problem and needs addressing through strategic use of the concepts of pattern interrupt, color psychology and design patterns.

Final words

I hope you found this blog post on how to write reviews helpful.

The one-tip you need to always keep in mind while writing product reviews is – “First educate and then sell”.

Educate in every aspect on how the product is going to address their problems and convince them that the product is well-worth for them.

As I said, trust is hard to come by in the online world. So, you need to first create that connect with your readers before you can promote your products to them. The only ways by which you can do it is by showing them the real you and helping them genuinely.

What techniques you follow while writing product reviews? Let me know in the below comments section.