G2 Presents: Your Guide to G2 Discussions

When you think of your G2 Profile, what comes to mind?

I’m going to take a wild guess and say that reviews immediately come into view and for a very good reason! Reviews are the backbone of a G2 Profile page and they’re a big reason so many folks visit G2.com every month. Reviews give in-market buyers direct, trusted insights into how people like them (aka your customers) really feel about you and your product.

But, what if I told you that G2 Reviews had a new partner in crime, that could not only help you capture more of your customers’ voice and insights, but also help you have conversations between you, your customers, and your prospects? Based on the title of this blog, you’ve probably figured out that I’m talking about G2 Discussions.

G2 Discussions sound pretty sweet, right? What’s more, you already have access to it if you’ve claimed your G2 Profile! Haven’t claimed your profile yet? Click here.

By the end of this, you’ll be a G2 Discussions pro! With that, I present to you a fitting guide of all things G2 Discussions that is both experimental in structure, but practical in content. Let’s get started.

About G2 Discussions

Already embedded on your G2 Profile and accessible in my.G2, G2 Discussions enables G2 visitors to ask questions about your products and receive responses to them. There are three answer sources that can be leveraged to provide responses to questions in your G2 Discussions.

#1: Your In-House Experts

Anyone on your team that can answer questions from G2 visitors can do so. In my.G2, you can see an overview of all questions on your G2 Discussions page and if they have a response. If you decide to provide an answer, you can respond as yourself or represent your company. We recommend responding as your company when possible to drive trust in your answers, especially those specific to product functionality.

#2: Your Customers

If a customer has written a review and/or marked your product within their tech stack under their G2 user profile, they may receive email notifications from our team, encouraging them to provide a response to an open question.

#3: G2 Visitors

G2 Discussions allows any G2 visitors the ability to participate in a conversation, if they’re logged in. This can be especially valuable if you choose to leverage G2 Discussions to drive engagement in your non-customer base. (We’ll talk more about that in a moment!)

For a step-by-step on how to respond to G2 Discussions, check out our Help Guide.

3 Reasons to Use G2 Discussions...Right Now!

Now that you have an idea of what G2 Discussions is and how it works, let’s talk about why you should think about integrating it into your current marketing efforts, related to G2. We know you’re busy and already have a million priorities, so we promise we’ll make this good!

#1. Customers Who Ask Questions Are Already Engaged

Whether you’re receiving a question from a potential customer or a new customer, if someone spent time submitting a thoughtful question through your G2 Discussions page about your product, they’re indicating a pretty high level of engagement.

Getting these folks the answers they need and starting a dialogue with them when they’re showing interest in your product could help strengthen a relationship with a recently-signed customer or build a positive foundation for a relationship before a prospect reaches out to your team for a demo.

#2. It's an easy way to highlight your power users and give them a platform to share their knowledge

As we mentioned previously, G2 Discussions enables your customers to provide responses to those folks asking the questions. G2 Discussions can be a tool to get answers to questions from prospects or even newly signed customers, but it can also be a way to celebrate your top customers and provide a channel to share their knowledge with their peers. Encourage your best users to visit G2 Discussions on your page and join in the conversation if there’s something they think they can provide guidance for.

G2 Discussions can also be a great way to create and identify brand advocates for future initiatives like case studies, customer advisory boards, and more.

#3. Help your sales support teams refine their content and documentation

G2 Discussions can also be a direct vantage point into what’s going on in the heads of your prospects (and maybe even customers) while they’re in their decision making and consideration stages.

Use the questions you collect through G2 Discussions to inform your sales cycle, marketing materials, and product development.

Are you getting questions that can easily be answered through a new help center article? Are you seeing the same use cases pop up that would be valuable for your sales team to know about? Are customers confused about a part of your offering that a quick update to language on your website might solve?

Like reviews, make sure you pay attention to what your prospects are asking and also how your users might be answering! It can inform a wealth of content, information, and resources to support every facet of your business.

3 Ways to Start Leveraging G2 Discussions...Right Now!

We’ve talked about the what, how, and why of G2 Discussions at a conceptual level. The next step is getting questions and topics from G2 visitors (specifically your prospects and maybe your customers if that is of interest to you). Let’s spend a few moments discussing how you can kickstart momentum of G2 Discussions. Below are a couple simple ways to introduce the G2 Discussions platform to your current customers and prospects.

#1. Leverage G2 Discussions as an engagement hub for your next product launch

Not only can G2 Discussions be a place to get hot topic questions related to your launch answered quickly, but it can also be a tool to drive engagement, conversation, and feedback from in-market buyers.

Leverage a CTA on your launch landing page or in an email campaign to encourage customers to ask any questions around product functionality or encourage them to start a discussion around a specific use case they’re thinking about and ask for their peers’ thoughts on your G2 Discussions page.

You can also submit your own G2 Discussions prompt like; ‘How do you see your team using New Product X’ and encourage your customers to join in on the conversation and share their thoughts to get candid feedback and initial thoughts about your recent launch.

You’ll not only get valuable interactions from your customers, but you’ll also suss out any concerns they might have and get the opportunity to mitigate in real time with responses. Additionally, your product and product marketing teams will have all the questions and comments related to the launch in one place for easy access and review.

It’s a win-win-win for everyone! 

#2. Use G2 Discussions for your next webinar to collect post-show questions

It’s safe to say webinars have become one of the top channels for marketers in 2020, so why not find ways to keep the discussion going?

In your next webinar, encourage customers to head to your G2 Discussions page and pose any questions that they weren’t able to ask during the live session. Again, you’ll have a chance to engage with prospects (and maybe even customers), but you’ll also be guiding them to your G2 Profile page where a ton more information about your offering lives (including reviews!).

#3. Create an engagement campaign to boost momentum

At the end of the day, G2 Discussions can be an awesome tool to use to engage your future and current customers, so why not create a mini recurring event around it?

One campaign idea could look like this: Simply choose a day of the month when you post on social encouraging anyone with burning questions about your product functionality or specific use cases to come ask them. Have your product experts on standby to provide responses in real time.

Eventually, if the campaign sees success you could activate a few of your key customers to spend an hour or so offering their thoughts, kind of like an AMA (Ask Me Anything).

Any type of campaign leveraging any channel could work for an engagement-focused campaign, it will depend on the goals you have and also how you best want to leverage G2 Discussions!

Congrats! You're on Your Way to Becoming a G2 Discussions Power User 

We hope you got some ideas on how you can integrate and use G2 Discussions within your current efforts. If you have any questions or would like a sounding board for any of the potential ways you’re thinking about getting more folks to ask questions through G2 Discussions or ways to engage your customer base to participate in the conversation, head over to OUR G2 Discussion page (see what we did there?) and we’ll be happy to help!