How should we think about sites like G2 and TrustRadius when setting goals for our analyst relations program?

Depending on your target marketing and how active they are on these type of review sites, you may end up finding that G2 and TrustRadius are actually more effective than analysts. This is more likely to be the case if your economic buyer and your user personas line up more often than not, as it is not uncommon for buyers, especially of single seat tools or point solutions, to buy that software similar to how one might choose a restaurant for dinner in a city they’re visiting.

As you start to move upmarket and your buyer personas turn into committees it does become less likely that G2 and TrustRadius are going to be the sole source of information, however, creating programs with yoru customer success team to encourage users to leave reviews on those sites is always a net benefit as those companies have done tons of work to build great SEO and site reputation so the referral traffic they might generate for you could be a meaningful input to your demand gen strategy.

Review site such as G2 and TrustRadius are slightly different from the traditional analyst relations program as these companies don't require the same types of engagements. While you need to keep analysts engaged with briefings and inquiries on a quarterly basis, these review sites require customer input more than anything. That is why in many cases a customer marketing team runs point in engaging with these sites.

I don't think that review sites are a complete substitute for traditional analyst programs, but it also depends on your particular market characteristics. For mature markets, they can be a great complement to give customer proof to a placement in a Magic Quadrant or Wave, for example, while for emerging categories they could be your main asset in the absence of a comparative report. 

Sites like G2 and TrustRadius may not be official analyst firms but prospects don't necessarily know that! Because G2 in particular produces a grid report that looks and functions like an MQ or Wave, they are sometimes confused and mistaken for an independent analyst firm. And I would encourage you to treat them as such as well because your prospects don't necessarily know any different! Reach out to G2 to find who is responsible for your product categories and offer to have a briefing with them. While there are no formal surveys/RFIs for G2 grids, I have found that reaching out and building rapport can only help and not hurt your placements.

Review quantity, recency and rating are certainly the top things that G2 and TrustRadius look at but they also look at other metrics as well for placing vendors on their comparisons and rankings. For example, G2 uses employee counts and company revenue that they pull from LinkedIn, ZoomInfo and Crunchbase to contribute to the market presence axis of their grid reports. They also look at website traffic and search analytics. So it is not only about reviews. But reviews are the things you can influence the most so I would encourage you to start a formal review gathering program at your company. Reach out to all your customers who have given you NPS ratings or signed up for your community or get your customer success team to nominate people. Then send them review requests. And keep doing this throughout the year because recency and consistency is just as important as rating.

Also, don't forget Gartner Peer Insights and Gartner Digital Market properties like Capterra, GetApp, and Software Advice. Depending on the size of company you target, those sites might be more important than G2 and TrustRadius which tend to focus on large and midsize companies.