How To Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain customers, and getting the exact same results? As most small business owners know, that generating new customers can be difficult. Just trying to survive in business takes up a lot of your time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.
In today’s digital, mobile and social media-driven economy, you cannot afford to ignore the effect of what your potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting comments about your business.
Ignoring what customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
You are also doing your business a great disservice if you don’t spread the positive things your customers are saying about your services, solutions, user support, training, etc. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content marketing.
In this article, we’ll show you ways to improve your sales conversions with standout user testimonials.
Testimonials And User Reviews
The great American showman P.T. Barnum 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 way of getting your business promoted effectively. Quoting reviews and testimonials from your satisfied clients is existing customers are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new customers, clients or users than anything you say about your own products or services.
There is an untapped source of business growth potential that most small businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … reviews from customers!
Testimonials and reviews are a fantastic way to build credibility for your services and products.
Studies conducted by many leading marketing research companies all point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding customer testimonials and customer reviews to your sales information pages helps reduce doubts potential customers may have about buying your product, helps with product selection and helps increase sales conversions.
Here are just some of the stats available to support this:
- According to research findings 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 site if it has ratings and customer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can mean 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 user-generated content (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 Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Clearly, you should be adding great reviews from customers to your site.
Customer testimonials and user reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can impact your business both positively or negatively.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your services directly to your face, but they could have posted negative comments on Facebook, or a forum or discussion thread about a bad experience they’ve just had with your services and this could be doing far more damage to your business than all the good work you’ve been putting into building it.
This is where online reputation management becomes a vital aspect of your 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 causing damage to your business without you even being aware of it.
See this article to learn more about a WordPress plugin that lets you legally and ethically manage customer feedback:
Tips For Creating Knockout Testimonials
User reviews, testimonials, 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 strategy. When you quote responses from clients in your content, you:
- Show prospects exactly what pains and problems your products and services can solve for them and how easily it can do this.
- Help your visitors identify their objections and address these.
- Help prospects connect with their motivations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Below are some useful tips on creating sales boosting testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try using the actual words used by your customers as much as you can. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use photos of real people: Images of people’s faces draw attention 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 site’s content.
- Use the power of storytelling: Stories are so much more effective 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 presenting generic statements about how “excellent” your customer service was and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: It’s good to add testimonials in your web content where it makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help sell your point. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s mind if you were to add a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before presenting the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are genuinely thrilled about your support when offering guarantees or addressing objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful: “As a direct result of implementing XYZ product, we have noticed our net profit increase by $49,346 in the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ software has helped us grow our business?” 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 in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours of work they have saved, 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 testimonial throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult if you are just starting out or have very few clients, it’s best to avoid using the same testimonial throughout your web 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 existing clients in exchange for an honest review and permission to publish it if you decide 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 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 solution, send them a message asking permission to reprint the comment or post on your blog.
- Only use real client testimonials. Prospective clients need to believe that the testimonials published on your site are real. Don’t compromise your credibility or reputation with a false testimonial.
How To Get Testimonials From Clients
Always Ask For Testimonials
When you complete a service for someone, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.
Here are some useful tips for soliciting testimonials from your customers:
- Make a point of contacting clients after 90 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you have not obtained one after performing a service.
- Include a text box for entering testimonials in your client satisfaction surveys.
- Pull out your phone when you next visit a client or hand over a completed project 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 your video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to capture the client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy for them. If a client sends you positive written feedback that contains snippets of useful testimonial material interspersed with the rest of their message, grab the best sections (only use what they have written – don’t put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact your 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 change what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link Back To Their Site Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial
Offer to post a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients providing a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Include Testimonial Requests In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in a periodic auto responder broadcast. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your clients have had a chance to assess the results of using your solution. Use words like “I need your help” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking clients to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you request testimonials that become part of your account. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite simple and user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation gets 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 website in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Section On Your Site
Create a new page for customer testimonials and add a “read more client testimonials …” link pointing to this page throughout your site.
Practical Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your testimonials by how long visitors remain on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. A great tool for measuring what visitors are doing on your pages are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap analytics technology you can add to your website to predict visitor behavior here:
Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use a plugin to add, edit and display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add a form to your pages inviting users to submit testimonials.
Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (remember to provide simple instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you can then send users to your “Testimonials” page.
Below are a few useful testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed them into your pages and posts using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you publish a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which can be used to add a photo of the testimonial author, their logo, etc.
The plugin also provides a “pro” version that offers additional features and developer support.
To learn more about using the plugin, go here:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with videos or images on your site. You can insert testimonials using a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and specify different display options such as random or specific ordering.
The plugin makes loads of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in options for improved search engine results and developer support.
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium WordPress plugin offers plenty of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for correct display on any device or browser.
- Display options for your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.
To download this plugin, visit this site:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Client testimonials and user reviews are powerful 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 or clients, and publish positive content about your business on your website or blog.
Resources
For additional information on creating effective clients 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
We also recommend subscribing to our Free Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
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