An overview of what peer reviews can do for any vendor, and how our offering gives users a competitive edge.

Experienced AR practitioners and stakeholders know that peer review sites like G2 and Trust Radius can be a useful source of marketing content and that reviews (positive or negative) can impact the perception analysts have about vendors, particularly in the case of Gartner Peer Insights and their MQ process. But, as review sites grow both in the number of reviews, participating vendors, and categories, world-class AR teams are using customer feedback as a rich source of market and competitive intelligence.

On most review sites, notably Gartner Peer Insights, there is no paywall or other gating; therefore, ratings and commentary from the customer are available for all to read. Vendors and potential buyers alike can see how a reviewer rated a particular product, their likes and dislikes, and also what types of use cases or capabilities were most important in their decision. There is also user data, such as the reviewer’s role, company size, geographic location, industry, and more. There are potentially dozens of data points in every single review, and many categories have thousands of reviews.

Spotlight Intelligence

Spotlight has been leveraging intelligence from peer review sites for years to enhance our clients’ knowledge and provide them with a competitive edge in the market. It’s one thing to understand what customers like and dislike about your own product, but then comparing that to likes and dislikes from your top competitors brings a whole new level of insight. One of Spotlight’s notable deliverables are competitor battlecards. These are strategic points you can leverage in the market to defend against competitors and highlight differentiators for proactive purposes.

Customer insights get supercharged when we compare them to insights from published research, as well as feedback insights from our own interactions with analysts (remember, a large majority of what an analyst knows never makes it to print*). At Spotlight, we use the term “triple-validated” to describe intelligence that we’ve gathered from all those sources. It’s one thing to have a leader dot in a major report, but when you can combine that with customer feedback and analyst commentary you’ve got a compelling story to take to market.

AR’s Impact Beyond Sales and Marketing

But it’s not just sales and marketing that can benefit from customer intelligence; product teams can learn from peer reviews as well. Spotlight recently had a client that was losing market share to a competitor. They had anecdotal evidence of why (cost-cutting and vendor consolidation), but not a great volume of evidence from their customers. Spotlight did a deep analysis of Gartner Peer Insights to identify what product features were most important to buyers and to better identify any gaps in our client’s offering. Our team leveraged insights from the relevant Magic Quadrant, analyst feedback, and reviews to give triple-validated answers to why they were losing customers and provide guidance for how to defend going forward.

This is insights-driven AR at its best. Vendors assimilate a wealth of insights, analyze trends with the assistance of Spotlight, and are subsequently rewarded with an enhanced offering and a compelling narrative. They can then present this strengthened proposition both in the market and when engaging with analysts. World-class vendors are doing this kind of reflection at least once a year, typically on the heels of a piece of major research publishing.