A company selling field service management software reviewed its quarterly numbers and found that visitors referred by a review site requested demos at 9 per cent, against 1.5 per cent for every other paid source. Senior management outside the media team asked why the channel with the best conversion rate held only 6 per cent of the media budget, and the review-site budget was tripled. The extra money bought higher positions in the same category listing, shown to the same visitors. Clicks rose by a fifth, cost per click climbed steeply, and two quarters later the count of opportunities from the channel had barely moved. The number of category buyers comparing suppliers on that site in any month was fixed, and no budget could raise that number.

The budget move failed because the plan treated a stage-of-buyer number as a channel-skill number. The review sites and marketplaces have a real and valuable job in a B2B plan, and the job comes with a hard ceiling. This post explains what the channel is for, how the channel is bought, where the channel fits beside the other channel families, how to measure the channel, and the four ways review-site reporting overstates the channel. The series hub, How B2B Media Actually Works (and What It Cannot Do), covers the research behind the plan as a whole: the 95:5 rule, the buying committee, and demand creation versus demand capture.

What Review Sites and Marketplaces Are For

The software review sites are websites where buyers of business software read peer reviews, meaning assessments written by people who use the product day to day, and compare competing products side by side. Category marketplaces work the same way: the marketplace organises suppliers into categories, and a buyer opens a category to see every supplier that claims to solve the problem. Buyers use these sites to build a shortlist, meaning the set of two to four suppliers the buying committee agrees to evaluate seriously. A buyer reading comparisons on a review site is deep in evaluation, often days or weeks away from a shortlist decision. Gartner's research on the B2B buying journey shows that buying groups spend most of their buying time researching independently rather than talking to suppliers, and the review sites are where a large share of that independent comparison happens.

The channel's job is demand capture at the latest possible stage. Demand capture means intercepting buyers who are already looking for a solution; demand creation means building memory among the buyers who are not yet looking. Paid search, covered in Paid Search in B2B: What It Captures, What It Cannot Create, captures buyers as those buyers start searching for a solution. The review sites capture buyers further along, at the moment those buyers compare named suppliers. Later capture means higher conversion: visitors referred by a review site convert at the highest rate of any paid source, because almost every visitor is a buyer with an active project.

The same fact sets the ceiling. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute's research in How B2B Brands Grow holds that around 95 per cent of category buyers are not in market in any given period, a finding unpacked in What Is the 95:5 Rule in B2B Marketing?. The visitors on a review site are drawn only from the in-market 5 per cent, and only from the fraction of that 5 per cent that has reached the comparison stage. The channel therefore delivers the highest conversion rate in the plan and the smallest volume in the plan, and both readings come from the same cause.

How Review Sites and Marketplaces Are Bought

Paid placement on a review site buys three things. First, position in the category listing, meaning the ranked page of suppliers a buyer sees on opening a category, where a paid supplier appears above or among the organically ranked suppliers. Second, profile enhancements: more screenshots, video, customer proof and prominent calls to action on the supplier's profile page. Third, the ability to be contacted, through forms on the profile that send a visitor's details to the supplier as a lead. Pricing runs on cost per click, the price paid each time a visitor clicks through to the supplier's website, and on cost per lead, the price paid for each visitor who submits a contact form. Both prices sit among the most expensive in the media plan, because the sites price for the stage of the buyer, and a click from a comparing buyer is worth many clicks from anyone else.

Category placement is the buying decision that matters most, and rank is the buying decision teams argue about most. Being listed in the category where the product's real buyers compare beats any rank in a category those buyers never open. A rota-scheduling product built for care homes, ranked fifth in the workforce-scheduling category, will meet its buyers. The same product ranked third in a general human resources category sits in front of buyers comparing full HR suites, who will not shortlist a scheduling specialist. In my experience, the category conversation with the marketplace is worth more preparation than the rank negotiation, because the sites will happily sell a high position in a big category where the product cannot win a comparison.

The sites also sell intent data: signals that named companies have been viewing the supplier's profile, the supplier's category, or competitor profiles. Intent data is sold as an add-on subscription, and the signal describes research activity at the account level, not a person and not a request for contact. What intent data is worth, and what intent data cannot prove, is covered under Where the Numbers Lie. The contracting detail, placement auditing and profile method sit in the course Media and Measurement.

Where Review Sites and Marketplaces Fit in the Plan

The review sites sit at the end of the capture sequence. Demand creation channels build memory among buyers who are not looking, so that when a project starts the company is on the mental list. Paid search captures buyers as those buyers research the problem. The review sites capture buyers as those buyers compare suppliers, which is the last moment media can still influence a shortlist. Fund the channel as a completion of capture coverage: the spend is modest by design, because the channel saturates quickly, and any budget beyond saturation buys higher positions shown to the same visitors.

The real asset on a review site is the review profile, not the placement. Paid placement changes where the profile appears. The reviews decide whether the profile converts, and the readings that matter are review volume, review recency, average rating, and how the supplier responds to critical reviews. Buyers read the critical reviews first, because critical reviews are where the product's limits show, and a measured supplier response to a critical review is evidence of a supplier worth working with. A profile carrying only perfect reviews reads as managed, and buyers discount it. Review generation is therefore ongoing work that belongs to the whole company: ask real customers for a review at the right moment, such as after a successful implementation or a renewal, and never incentivise fake reviews or filter which customers are asked. A supplier that only invites its happiest accounts is building the suspiciously perfect profile buyers distrust.

In my experience, the channel earns its place in almost every software media plan, at a low single-digit share of budget, funded after search coverage is complete and with the demand creation budget protected. The buyers who arrive on a review site were built by everything else the company did: the demand creation that put the company in memory, the search coverage that caught the early research, and the retargeting that kept the company present during evaluation. Retargeting, meaning the tactic of showing ads to people who have already visited the company's website, is examined in Retargeting in B2B: The Most Overcredited Tactic in the Plan. The review site is where that accumulated work gets tested against competitors, side by side.

How to Measure Review Sites and Marketplaces

Measure the channel on four readings. First, cost per qualified opportunity: total channel spend divided by the opportunities that review-site visitors produced, confirmed in the CRM. Second, win rate on closed opportunities, meaning the share of opportunities from the channel that end in a sale, because comparison-stage buyers should close at an above-average rate if the profile and product hold up. Third, available volume: the number of clicks or contacts the channel can supply in a month before the spend starts buying position instead of people. Fourth, the health of the review profile itself, read as review volume, recency and rating, reported beside the media numbers rather than hidden from them.

The table below is a worked example for an expense management software company. The company spends $15,000 per quarter on a review-site placement and $15,000 per quarter on non-branded paid search, meaning search ads bought on category terms such as "expense management software" rather than on the company's own name.

Example figures for illustration. Qualified opportunities are confirmed in the CRM. The review-site channel saturates at a low spend: at roughly $5,000 per month the placement already reaches every visitor in the category, and additional budget buys a higher position shown to the same visitors, not more buyers.

The review-site channel wins the cost-per-opportunity comparison and the win-rate comparison, and delivers less than a third of the click volume paid search delivers at the same spend. Both results are structural. A plan that read the comparison as an instruction to move $10,000 a quarter from search into the review site would find the extra money buying rank, not opportunities, because the visitors were already all being reached.

Where the Numbers Lie

Review-site reporting overstates the channel in four recurring ways.

1. The highest conversion rate in the plan is presented as channel skill

A 9 per cent conversion rate beside a 1.5 per cent conversion rate looks like a channel that outperforms, and the conversion rate describes the buyer stage, not the channel's work. Every visitor referred by a review site was already comparing suppliers; most visitors from every other paid source were not. Moving budget toward the "best converting channel" hits a volume wall almost immediately, because the number of category buyers at the comparison stage in any month is tiny, and no spend increases that number. What to do: hold conversion rate as a health check within the channel, judge the channel on incremental opportunities and cost per qualified opportunity, and treat available volume as fixed by the market rather than by the budget.

2. Review-site leads are claimed entirely by the review site

Attribution reporting hands the whole opportunity to the last click, and the last click before a demo request is often the review site. The buyer's presence on that site was built by every other channel: demand creation put the company in the buyer's memory, search caught the buyer's early research, and the company's content shaped what the buyer went looking to compare. The comparison stage is the end of a journey that demand creation started, and the review site was simply the last place the buyer visited before converting. What to do: report review-site opportunities with the account's full touch history from the CRM beside the last-touch credit, and never fund the channel by cutting the demand creation that fills it. The series hub, How B2B Media Actually Works (and What It Cannot Do), covers why last-touch credit flatters every capture channel.

3. Paid rank improvements are reported as profile performance

A quarterly report showing the profile climbing from seventh to third in the category listing reads as progress, and the climb was purchased. Meanwhile the readings that decide whether visitors convert, review volume, review recency, average rating and the supplier's responses to critical reviews, go unreported, because those readings sit outside the media invoice and outside the media report. A profile can hold a paid third position while its most recent review ages past a year, and conversion will fall while the rank report shows improvement. What to do: report review volume, recency and rating in the same table as the media metrics every quarter, and treat a stalling review pipeline as a channel problem even though the fix sits with customer teams rather than the media team.

4. Intent-data signals are counted as pipeline

A slide reporting "47 accounts showing intent" invites the reader to count 47 pieces of pipeline, and a signal is a research event, not an opportunity. Someone at the account viewed the category or a profile. That person may be an analyst doing a market scan, a student, or a competitor. The account has no recorded project, no budget and no buying committee attached to the signal. What to do: treat intent signals as prioritisation, not prediction. The signals are useful for sales timing, meaning which target accounts to contact this month, and for building retargeting audiences, as covered in Retargeting in B2B: The Most Overcredited Tactic in the Plan. Never present intent-signal counts to senior management as evidence that those accounts will buy.

What Review Sites and Marketplaces Cannot Do

The channel cannot create demand, because every visitor already has a project, and no placement makes an out-of-market buyer start one. The channel cannot scale, because the visitor count is set by how many category buyers are comparing suppliers in a given month, and spend past saturation buys position rather than people. Paid placement cannot rescue a weak review profile: a top position in the category listing puts more buyers in front of stale reviews and unanswered criticism, and those buyers shortlist a competitor. The channel cannot substitute for search coverage, because buyers earlier in research never open the marketplace, and the channel cannot substitute for demand creation, because the buyers comparing on the site today learned the company's name from demand creation over the preceding quarters. Intent data from the sites cannot prove an account will buy. What the channel can do is put a well-reviewed product in front of buyers at the moment the shortlist is decided, at the best cost per opportunity in the plan, up to the ceiling the market sets.

Review Site and Marketplace FAQs

What do paid placements on the software review sites include?

Paid placement buys position in the category listing, profile enhancements such as video, screenshots and prominent calls to action, and the ability to be contacted through forms on the profile. Pricing runs on cost per click or cost per lead. Paid placement does not buy reviews, ratings or the trust those carry, and the sites separate paid position from review scores because the sites depend on buyers trusting the scores.

Why is cost per click so high on review sites and marketplaces?

The sites price for the stage of the buyer. A click from a review site comes from a category buyer actively comparing suppliers, often days or weeks from a shortlist decision, and that click is worth many clicks from earlier-stage sources. Cost per click and cost per lead on these sites sit among the most expensive in the media plan, and the fair comparison is cost per qualified opportunity, where the channel usually performs best in the plan.

How do we get more reviews without breaking the rules?

Ask real customers at the right moment: after a successful implementation, after a renewal, or after a support interaction the customer valued. Make the ask a routine step in customer programmes rather than a quarterly scramble. Never pay for fake reviews, and never filter the invitation to happy customers only, because a profile carrying only perfect reviews reads as managed and buyers discount it. Respond to critical reviews calmly and specifically, since buyers read the critical reviews first.

Which category should a product be listed in?

The category the product's real buyers open when comparing. Check where current customers say they looked, and check which categories the closest competitors sit in. A niche product ranked fifth in the category its buyers use beats the same product ranked third in a broader category, because the broader category's buyers are comparing a different kind of product and will not shortlist a specialist.

Is review-site intent data worth paying for?

Intent data is worth paying for when sales and marketing will act on the signals as prioritisation. A signal that a named account is researching the category tells sales which target accounts to contact this month, and gives media a live audience for retargeting. Intent data is not worth paying for as a forecasting input, because a signal records a research event by an unknown person at the account, and proves nothing about budget, a project or a buying committee.

Go Deeper

This post carries the judgement: why the channel converts best and supplies least, why the review profile outweighs the placement, and why intent signals are prioritisation rather than prediction. The method sits in the course Media and Measurement, which covers marketplace contracting, profile and review programme design, and cost-per-opportunity reporting step by step. The free module in B2B Marketing Fundamentals covers the positioning work that decides which category a product can win. The research explaining why comparison-stage buyers are so few at any moment is the subject of What Is the 95:5 Rule in B2B Marketing?.

Sources

• Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, 2021, How B2B Brands Grow: the finding that around 95 per cent of category buyers are out of market in any given period, which is why the population of comparison-stage buyers on a review site is tiny and no spend can enlarge it.
• Gartner, The B2B Buying Journey: buying groups of 6 to 10 decision makers who spend most of their buying time researching independently rather than meeting suppliers, which is where peer reviews and side-by-side comparison do their work.
• Les Binet and Peter Field, The Long and the Short of It, IPA, 2013: analysis of the IPA effectiveness databank showing that capture-style activity converts existing demand efficiently while long-term growth depends on demand-building activity, which is why the review site collects what demand creation built.