Bridging the Gap Between Peer Review Sites and Customer Marketing

Irwin Hipsman · 2025-10-15T18:03:13.154Z

I am working on an article about the disconnect between the peer review sites (PRS) and customer marketing (CM). The basic premise is PRS gets a lot of their reviews thru CM, but the CM tech vendor categories in the PRS are pretty sad. Would love a quote (anonymous or not) from a CM vendor and practitioner. If interested, can share a draft with its recommendations.

9 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Rachel Bonistalli
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I can see what you mean. But haven’t Analyst Relations and Product Marketing for an extended period of time been the ones leading the strategy around them? If anything, the growth in Customer Marketing presents an opportunity to look at the approach with fresh eyes to get more meaningful insights from customers.
Lauren Stefano
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I think we are all jaded about reviews because we're so in the weeds with it (or maybe that's just me)
2
Irwin Hipsman
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The CMO of G2 talks about how they opened up their platform to the Gen AI sites. As people search about vendors, G2 reviews are part of the response, which will probably translate into more pressure to get customers to write reviews.
💯3
Lauren Stefano
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Irwin Hipsman we are having this exact conversation right now, and it's really shifting the perceived value of reviews
1
Irwin Hipsman
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Lauren Stefano check out the Oct 9 exit 5 podcast with cmo of g2. There may be some insights for you
2
Erin Koerpel
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Same here Lauren Stefano! Thanks for sparking the conversation Irwin Hipsman!
Evan Huck
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yea it's interesting - there's is some nuance to it though - had lunch w/a friend at dreamforce that has a startup in the LLM optimization (AEO/GEO etc) space. While G2 is one of the more cited sources, it's still a tiny fraction of the overall search volume. Also the most cited pages from G2 are the overall category pages - not your individual review pages (e.g. this type of page - https://www.g2.com/software/call-recording) In other words - LLMs don't go to the same place all the time - the range of sites they pull from is pretty diverse, and unpredictable. So it's not quite as easy as "let's just game G2 reviews like we did a few years ago and we'll be good on LLM search" You want to have a multi-pronged approach:
1.
Yes still game the review sites and drive positive traffic to those sites. They are important. Note tho a lot of that buyer "traffic" is getting the high level info they need from the top-level category page and not necessarily clicking through to the source page/g2 website. So implications on the Intent Data effectiveness/volume.
2.
You need to start to create more specific pages on your website b/c the LLMs crave specificity and context in their searches. EG if you've spent the last 3 months telling ChatGPT about how you're building a PLG/self-serve GTM model - having a page on your site that is titled "How we help PLG companies" with a bunch of proof/reviews might have a good shot of showing up in LLM search. So pages by industry, persona, competitor, use-case, etc
3.
And then 3rd-one which I didn't really know about but apparently is a big hitter is 3rd-party sites - e.g. industry influencers/analysts/bloggers/etc that write little listicles on "top vendors in X category" - those can be high rankers to having a program to reach out to those writers and make sure you're in those lists/articles is a good component of the strategy as well.
Anyway the prevailing wisdom in this space is that the LLM algorithms are still a tough black box to interpret - probably more analogous to email deliverability where there's a lot going on and it's important to monitor but not straightforward to optimize. Some of the usual SEO best practices still apply as well - so it's not a completely different game than SEO - just the "searches" in LLM have a lot more personalized context attached to them. We got into a bit on our webinar yesterday where we talked about our new research from a survey of 800+ B2B Buyers, Sellers, and Marketers that highlighted some of the new buying patters (LLM search/discovery and evaluation being a big one) - https://userevidence.com/the-evidence-gap-why-buying-has-gotten-easier-and-selling-has-gotten-harder/
Erin Koerpel
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Thanks for sharing, Evan Huck!
👍1
Irwin Hipsman
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Evan Huck Thanks for the detailed response. Did not know that the citations are to the category as opposed to the vendor. In the Exit Five community there was just a discussion about using review sites for buyer intent and most responses were pretty negative. The peer review sites do other things, so not going away. Totally agree on LLM algorithm's and one day the review site could disappear as a source or could increase in importance. It's a tough call to double down or status quo on review sites. See u in Boston!!

Bridging the Gap Between Peer Review Sites and Customer Marketing | CMAweekly Customer Marketing and Advocacy Slack

Rachel Bonistalli
·
·
I can see what you mean. But haven’t Analyst Relations and Product Marketing for an extended period of time been the ones leading the strategy around them? If anything, the growth in Customer Marketing presents an opportunity to look at the approach with fresh eyes to get more meaningful insights from customers.
Lauren Stefano
·
·
I think we are all jaded about reviews because we're so in the weeds with it (or maybe that's just me)
2
Irwin Hipsman
·
·
The CMO of G2 talks about how they opened up their platform to the Gen AI sites. As people search about vendors, G2 reviews are part of the response, which will probably translate into more pressure to get customers to write reviews.
💯3
Lauren Stefano
·
·
Irwin Hipsman we are having this exact conversation right now, and it's really shifting the perceived value of reviews
1
Irwin Hipsman
·
·
Lauren Stefano check out the Oct 9 exit 5 podcast with cmo of g2. There may be some insights for you
2
Erin Koerpel
·
·
Same here Lauren Stefano! Thanks for sparking the conversation Irwin Hipsman!
Evan Huck
·
·
yea it's interesting - there's is some nuance to it though - had lunch w/a friend at dreamforce that has a startup in the LLM optimization (AEO/GEO etc) space. While G2 is one of the more cited sources, it's still a tiny fraction of the overall search volume. Also the most cited pages from G2 are the overall category pages - not your individual review pages (e.g. this type of page - https://www.g2.com/software/call-recording) In other words - LLMs don't go to the same place all the time - the range of sites they pull from is pretty diverse, and unpredictable. So it's not quite as easy as "let's just game G2 reviews like we did a few years ago and we'll be good on LLM search" You want to have a multi-pronged approach:
1.
Yes still game the review sites and drive positive traffic to those sites. They are important. Note tho a lot of that buyer "traffic" is getting the high level info they need from the top-level category page and not necessarily clicking through to the source page/g2 website. So implications on the Intent Data effectiveness/volume.
2.
You need to start to create more specific pages on your website b/c the LLMs crave specificity and context in their searches. EG if you've spent the last 3 months telling ChatGPT about how you're building a PLG/self-serve GTM model - having a page on your site that is titled "How we help PLG companies" with a bunch of proof/reviews might have a good shot of showing up in LLM search. So pages by industry, persona, competitor, use-case, etc
3.
And then 3rd-one which I didn't really know about but apparently is a big hitter is 3rd-party sites - e.g. industry influencers/analysts/bloggers/etc that write little listicles on "top vendors in X category" - those can be high rankers to having a program to reach out to those writers and make sure you're in those lists/articles is a good component of the strategy as well.
Anyway the prevailing wisdom in this space is that the LLM algorithms are still a tough black box to interpret - probably more analogous to email deliverability where there's a lot going on and it's important to monitor but not straightforward to optimize. Some of the usual SEO best practices still apply as well - so it's not a completely different game than SEO - just the "searches" in LLM have a lot more personalized context attached to them. We got into a bit on our webinar yesterday where we talked about our new research from a survey of 800+ B2B Buyers, Sellers, and Marketers that highlighted some of the new buying patters (LLM search/discovery and evaluation being a big one) - https://userevidence.com/the-evidence-gap-why-buying-has-gotten-easier-and-selling-has-gotten-harder/
Erin Koerpel
·
·
Thanks for sharing, Evan Huck!
👍1
Irwin Hipsman
·
·
Evan Huck Thanks for the detailed response. Did not know that the citations are to the category as opposed to the vendor. In the Exit Five community there was just a discussion about using review sites for buyer intent and most responses were pretty negative. The peer review sites do other things, so not going away. Totally agree on LLM algorithm's and one day the review site could disappear as a source or could increase in importance. It's a tough call to double down or status quo on review sites. See u in Boston!!