*This post has been updated on November 25, 2019 with the Q4 2019 Buyer’s Guide publication schedule.*

Your buyers are already on TrustRadius. They’re looking for insights from their peers—about your product, and about your competitors’ products. They’re trying to get the full picture, to find the best fit for their scenario.

They can read reviews, compare products, discover alternatives and develop a short list. And in many new categories this year, they’ll be able to access in-depth Buyer’s Guides.

These in-depth reports help your buyers:

• Make sense of your category
• In a crowded market, understand how products are actually different from each other
• Move down the buyer’s journey more confidently
• Make the right purchase decision for their needs

But there’s good reason for you to pay attention to Buyer’s Guides, too. What do buyers care about in your category? Does your product fit in among buyers’ top consideration sets? Does your differentiation shine through? In this post, you’ll find information about:

• TrustRadius’ 2019 calendar for reports
• How to use the reports to influence your buyers and accelerate deal cycles
• What to do to make sure you’re accurately represented in the guide

2019 Schedule for Buyer’s Guides

• April 10: HR Management (view the guide here)
• May 1: Integration Platform-as-a-Service (view the guide here)
• June 19: Marketing Automation (view the guide here)
• August 14: Data Center Backup (view the guide here)
• August 28: Accounting & Budgeting (view the guide here)
• September 12: Platform-as-a-Service (view the guide here)
• September 25: Project Management (view the guide here)
• October 10: Ecommerce (view the guide here)
• October 23: Business Intelligence (BI) (view the guide here)
• October 30: Web Conferencing (view the guide here)
• November 6: VoIP (view the guide here)
• December 11: Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)

How to use Buyer’s Guides to influence in-market buyers, target new ones, and accelerate deals

Influence

Buyer’s Guides are used by a broad spectrum of buyers: From those first identifying a pain point, to those who need final validation for a selection decision. From those who have never used any of the products in a given category before, to experienced users who want to make sure they’re aware of any new products they should consider. From those who will use the product daily, to executives signing the dotted line.

If your product is newer, you want to make sure that you’re in the consideration set.

If your product is tried and true, you want to make sure your value shines through.

All in all, buyers in your market will be looking at the Buyer’s Guide (as well as reviews on our site!), and you need to be present, represented accurately, and differentiated.

Target

You can leverage Buyer’s Guides to target new prospects in a few ways.

First, they can be licensed. For your targeting and top-of-funnel activities, you can use Buyer’s Guides as demand gen assets: trusted, authoritative, and  fresh content to offer your prospects to get them in the door (since you can’t be endlessly creating new content yourself, and vendor-produced content is less trusted and less impactful anyway.)

Buyer’s Guides draw an audience to TrustRadius and serve as a jumping off point to explore reviews and comparisons. As a TrustRadius customer, you can tune into that audience: You can know who they are and what they’re looking at, and you can retarget them later to make sure they see your message.

Many of these buyers are early stage — they aren’t yet considering your product specifically, and aren’t yet willing to share their contact info with you. You want the chance at early access.

Accelerate

You’re working hard to get your buyers to commit. Trusted third-party reports like the Buyer’s Guide can help push potential buyers over the line. Support and accelerate your pipeline by sharing the industry facts and external validation they need to be confident in their decision.

You can license the guide as a sales enablement asset. But the first step is to ensure you’re included in your category’s report so you can refer your later stage prospects to it.

How to make sure your story is told in a Buyer’s Guide

The content of our Buyer’s Guides is not influenced by vendors. That’s what makes them valuable to your potential customers. But your organization can take steps towards inclusion in your category’s guide.

In short:

1. Make sure your product has enough recent reviews on TrustRadius, and
2. Talk to our Research team to make sure we have the information we need from you about your product’s capabilities.

Our Buyer’s Guides are largely based on reviews—feedback from your customers, published on our site. We supplement that data with surveys to buyers in the category, as well as conversations with vendors and influencers to help us understand the market.

Products are included in a Buyer’s Guide based on the following criteria:

• Presence in the category: The product must meet the feature requirements to be considered a product in the category. Feature requirements are defined on each category’s page on TrustRadius.
• Number of reviews: The product must meet a minimum threshold in terms of number of reviews on TrustRadius. Depending on the category, this will range from 10 to 50 reviews.
• Recency of reviews: We may require products in the category to have at least 10 recent reviews (from the past year).

We also encourage you to talk to our Research team as the report is being produced, to ensure we accurately represent your product’s capabilities, and to ensure you meet the criteria for the guide in your category. Get in touch with us here if you’d like to share your perspective.

The deadline for your product to meet the review count threshold is generally one month prior to the publication date of the guide.

Need help generating more reviews so you can be featured in an upcoming guide? We know how to get your customers on the record with full-service campaigns, and we’ll help you keep that content updated over time. Talk to us about a review management program and maximize your influence with buyers.