Building Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews

Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract customers, only to get the exact same results? Most business owners don’t need to be told that generating new customers can be quite difficult. Just trying to survive in business requires a lot of your time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.

In today’s online economy, ignoring what your customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!

Don’t ignore what your clients may be saying online about your business!

By the same token, you may also be doing your business a great disservice if you don’t spread the positive things your customers are saying about your services or products. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be included as part of your content.

In this article, you’ll learn how to achieve better results online with sales boosting customer testimonials.

Testimonials And Consumer Reviews

The great American showman P.T. Barnum is often quoted as having stated that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”

P.T. Barnum obviously understood the power of “social proof”. Social proof-driven content is a powerful way of getting your business promoted effectively. Quoting genuine testimonials and reviews from existing users is existing customers are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new customers, clients or users than anything you have to say about your own products or services.

There is clearly a source of untapped business growth potential that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … reviews and testimonials from your satisfied users!

Testimonials and reviews are great for building credibility for your products or services.

Research conducted by leading marketing firms all lead to the same conclusion: adding customer testimonials and consumer reviews to your sales information pages helps decrease doubts potential customers may have about purchasing a specific product, helps users select products and increases sales.

Here are just some findings that support this:

• According to a study by eVoc Insights, a company known for researching and measuring user experience, “In general, 63% of users indicate they are more likely to purchase from a web site if it has ratings and customer reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, customer reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user reviews per product can result in a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
• Website visitors who interact with both customer reviews and customer questions and answers are 105% more likely to purchase while visiting and spend 11% more than visitors who don’t interact with UGC. (Bazaarvoice, Conversation Index, Q2 2011).
• Customer reviews are significantly more trusted (nearly 12 times more) than descriptions that come from manufacturers, according to a survey of US internet users by online video review site EXPO. (eMarketer, February 2010).

(Source: eConsultancy.com)

Adding Customer Reviews – Online Reputation Management

You should be adding positive reviews from existing clients who have experienced positive results with your business to your site.

Customer reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both positively and negatively.

You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business directly to your face, but they could post negative words on Facebook, or a forum or discussion group about a bad encounter they’ve just had with one of your sales or customer support representatives and this could be costing you business.

This is where online reputation management becomes a vital part of your business and content marketing strategy.

Misconceptions about online reputation management, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need it) may be seriously hurting your business without you even being aware of it.

See this article to learn more about a tool for WordPress users that can help you avoid the escalation of negative reviews about your business, products or services through effective user review management:

• Managing Your Online Reputation With Power Online Reviews

Improving Your Sales With Knockout Testimonials – Useful Tips

User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content marketing. When you quote your own customer responses in your content, you:

• Show prospects exactly what problems and pains your products and services can help solve for them and how easily this can be done.
• Help prospects identify and address their objections.
• Help prospects connect with their motivations and facilitate moving them closer to a buying decision.

Below are some practical tips on creating testimonials:

• Don’t over edit: Try using the actual words used by your customers as much as you can. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep things ‘real’.
• Use photos of real people: It’s a proven fact that using images of people’s faces draws the most attention of visitors browsing a web page. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews can help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
• Use the power of storytelling: Stories are much more powerful and memorable than just providing statistical facts. The ability to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a far more lasting impression on those reading your content than using generalized statements about excellent customer support and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
• Use it in context: Add testimonials in your web content where it makes the most sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help you sell your point. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s perception if you were to add a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution can be purchased for before posting product pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before discussing the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are truly ecstatic about your customer service when offering a risk-free guarantee or addressing objections.
• Quantify your information: Which of the following statements is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping us grow our net profit by $85,545 during the last fiscal year,” or “XYZ software has helped us grow our business?” Whenever possible, ask clients to specify quantifiable results when submitting testimonials, like how much your solution helped to increase their market share or reduce their costs by in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours of work you have helped them save, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
• Vary the customer testimonials on your site: Although this can be a little difficult when you are just starting out or have very few clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your site’s pages. Depending on the nature of your business, you could try to obtain more testimonials by offering limited review copies of your product, or a special launch discount for existing clients in exchange for an honest review and permission to publish it if you choose to use it.
• Appeal to your best customer: As every infomercial featuring a celebrity endorsement, subject expert or “busy mom” knows, if you know who your target audience is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects aspire to become can be a very powerful motivator and influencer. People want to see and buy from “better versions” of themselves, so make sure to include testimonials targeted to your best audience demographic.
• Reprint testimonials across different platforms. If someone publishes a great comment on your Facebook page praising your commitment to customer satisfaction, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
• Never use fake testimonials. Many people can see through sites that employ copywriters to produce their content. Outsourcing content is fine, but prospective clients need to believe that the testimonials displayed on your site are real. Don’t destroy your reputation with a ”made up” testimonial.

How To Get Testimonials From Your Clients

Always Ask For Testimonials

Getting a testimonial from a satisfied client can be as simple as just asking for it.

Follow these useful guidelines for requesting testimonials from clients:

• Make a point of contacting customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 60 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after completing your service.
• Add a text box for testimonials in your client surveys.
• Pull out your phone when you next meet with a client or hand over a finished job and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they would be happy to record a very quick video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording the video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and record your client’s positive reactions and responses.
• Make it easy and write it for them. If a client sends you a positive email thanking you for a great job that contains snippets of useful testimonial material interspersed with the rest of their message, grab the best sections (only use what they have given you – never put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have already prepared something to save them time and let them know they are completely free to modify what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.

Offer To Publish A Link To The Source Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial

Offer to post a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive for clients to provide you with a testimonial. It also makes the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.

Add Testimonial Requests To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages

If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in a scheduled email message. Preferably, this should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to experience your product, service or solution. Use words like “I need your help” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking users to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature helps you solicit testimonials from other members for your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is simple and user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your website (tip: offer to add a link back to their website in exchange).

Create A Client Testimonials Section

Create a “Testimonials” page and add a “read more customer testimonials …” link pointing to this page wherever you display new testimonials on your site.

Useful Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of testimonials by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. A great tool for observing what visitors are doing on your site are “heatmaps”.

We have written an article about adding heatmaps to your site to track visitor behavior here:

• How To Track User Behaviour On Your WordPress Site Using Heatmapping Tools – Heat Map Tracker Review

Using Testimonial Plugins For WordPress

If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add a form to your pages where users can submit testimonials.

Once your plugin is installed and set up (make sure to provide simple instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you can then refer customers to your “Testimonials” page.

Here are some great testimonial plugins you can check out:

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into a Page or Post using a shortcode. The plugin also lets you insert a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which is great to add a photo of the testimonial author, their logo, etc.

The Easy Testimonials plugin also provides a “pro” version that has additional features and technical support.

Go here to learn more about the plugin:

• Easy Testimonials – WordPress Plugin

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your website. You can insert user testimonials via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and specify different display options such as random or specific ordering.

Testimonials Widget makes plenty of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in options for improved search engine results and technical support.

Go here to learn more about this plugin:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This premium WordPress plugin offers a range of great features right out of the box, including:

• Responsive design that resizes for correct display on any device or browser.
• Display your testimonials in a widget or as slideshows, sliders, list layout, grid layout, etc. via a shortcode
• Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customized font and background colors, font types and more.

Visit this site to download this plugin:

• Testimonials WordPress Plugin

To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Summary …

Testimonials and user reviews are great sources of content that help your business add credibility, build authority, improve online reputation, and grow your sales funnel. Always ask for testimonials, reviews, and feedback from your customers, and start publishing these on your website.

Additional Info

For additional information about creating effective testimonials see these articles:

• Ecommerce Consumer Reviews: Why You Need Them And How To Use Them
• How To Create Captivating Customer Testimonials
• 5 Tips For Knockout Testimonials
• Make Customer Testimonials Meaningful
• 7 Simple But Powerful Customer Testimonial Examples You Can Steal
• Your 5-Minute Guide To Writing an Amazing LinkedIn Recommendation
• How To Get Great LinkedIn Recommendations

We also recommend subscribing to our Free Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content for your visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

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