Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract customers, only to get the exact same disappointing results? As most business owners know, that trying to generate new business can be difficult. Just trying to keep your business afloat takes a lot of your time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.
In today’s web-based and social-driven economy, ignoring what your clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Don’t ignore what clients may be saying online about your business!
You could be doing your business a great disservice if you are not boosting the positive things your clients say about your products or services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content.
In this article, you will learn how to achieve better results online using meaningful client testimonials.
Consumer Reviews And Testimonials
P.T. Barnum, the great American showman and businessman, is often quoted as having said 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 and effective way of getting your business promoted. Genuine reviews from your existing users are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new customers than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is clearly an untapped source of business growth potential that most small businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … testimonials and reviews from your satisfied customers!
Testimonials and reviews are effective for building credibility for your business.
Research conducted by many leading marketing companies all seem to point to the same conclusion: adding reviews and testimonials to your sales pages eliminates doubts potential customers may have about products and services, helps with product selection and increases sales.
Here are just some findings that support this:
- According to research findings by eVoc Insights, an organization that researches and measures user experience, “In general, 63% of users indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has ratings and consumer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, customer reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Web site visitors who interact with both consumer 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).
- Consumer 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).
(Above figures sourced from eConsultancy.com)
Adding Consumer Reviews – Online Reputation Management
You should be adding reviews from happy customers to your site.
Customer testimonials and reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can affect your business both positive and negative ways.
People may not be saying bad things about your business directly to your face, but they could have posted unhelpful words on Facebook or a discussion group about an unpleasant encounter they’ve just had with one of your employees and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes important to your online business success.
Misconceptions about managing your reputation online, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need it) may be seriously harming your business without you even realizing this.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective tool for WordPress users that can help to avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your services through effective customer review management:
Improving Your Conversions With Compelling Testimonials – Useful Tips
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be included in your content marketing. When you include your own customer responses in your content, you:
- Show other users exactly what pains and problems 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 aspirations and this facilitates the sales process.
Below are some tips on how to create powerful testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: You should try using your customer’s actual words as much as possible. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use photos: Research shows that using images of people’s faces will draw the most attention of visitors on a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews will help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your content.
- Tell a story: Stories are much more effective and captivating than providing mere facts and statistics. The ability to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution came to the rescue will make a longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generalized statements about excellent customer support and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: Add testimonials in your site copy where it best makes sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help to sell your point. For example, think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s perception if you were to add a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting product or service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before discussing the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are truly thrilled about your customer service before offering a money-back guarantee or providing content designed to help your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements is more powerful: “As a direct result of installing your XYZ software, our profits have grown by $23,871 in the previous financial quarter,” or “XYZ product has helped us grow our sales?” If 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 you have helped them save, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate during a specific business quarter, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Avoid using the same client testimonial throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out and have very few clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial everywhere on your site’s pages. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more client testimonials by offering limited review copies of your product, or a special discount for clients in exchange for an honest review and permission to publish it if you decide to use it.
- Appeal to your ideal customer: As every infomercial featuring a celebrity endorsement, subject expert or “busy mom” knows, if you know who your best customer is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects aspire to become can be an extremely powerful motivator and influencer. People want to see and buy from “better versions” of themselves, so make sure to include testimonials targeted to your ideal customers.
- Reprint content across different platforms. If you get great feedback on your Facebook page praising your business, contact them privately asking for permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Don’t use fake client testimonials. Prospective clients need to see that the testimonials provided on your site are real. Don’t destroy your credibility with false testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Clients
Ask
If you have just completed performing a service, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.
Follow these useful guidelines for requesting testimonials:
- Make a point of contacting customers after 30 days with an email request for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after performing a service.
- Include a text box for entering testimonials in your client surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you meet with a client or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they would be happy to record a very brief video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording the video, describe to your viewers what you have done for your client and try to record the client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy for them. Whenever a client sends you a positive email thanking you for a great service that contains snippets of useful testimonial material interspersed with the rest of their message, grab the juiciest sections (only use what they have given you – never put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to publish it. Explain that you have already prepared something to help them save time and invite them to modify what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link Back To The Source
Offer to post a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients providing you with a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Add A Testimonial Request To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder broadcasts. This should be done as soon as your clients have had a chance to measure the impact of using your services. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in the subject of your email and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking them for honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature allows you to obtain testimonials from other members for your account. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is simple and user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a positive recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your website (you can offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Page
Create a “Testimonials” page and add a “more customer testimonials …” link to your main testimonials page whenever you are displaying blocks of testimonials on your site.
Useful Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your customer testimonials by how long visitors remain on the section of your pages or posts where you have added the testimonial content. A great tool for measuring visitor behavior on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your site to analyze visitor behaviour here:
Useful WordPress Testimonial Plugins
If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add forms to your pages where users can submit testimonials.
Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you then refer clients to your “Testimonials” page.
Check out the WordPress testimonial plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into a Page or Post using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you insert a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which you can use for adding a photo of the testimonial author, a company logo, etc.
The plugin also provides a “pro” version that offers additional features and developer support.
Visit this site to download this plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your blog. You can insert user testimonials via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and have multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.
The Testimonials Widget plugin offers additional features via a premium version, including built-in functions for better search engine results and technical support.
Visit this site to download this plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium plugin offers many great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for displaying correctly on any device or browser.
- Display your testimonials in a widget or as slideshows, sliders, grid layout, list layout, etc. via a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customize font and background colours, font types and more.
Visit this site to learn more about using this plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Summary …
Testimonials and user reviews are powerful sources of content that can help your business in terms of adding credibility, building authority, improving online reputation, and growing your sales funnel. Always ask for testimonials, reviews, and feedback from your clients, and publish positive content about your business on your web site.
Additional Info
For additional resources about creating engaging testimonials read 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
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