Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain new customers, only to get the exact same disappointing results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that finding effective ways to generate new business can be difficult. Just trying to keep your business afloat 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 web-based economy, ignoring what consumers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Don’t ignore what consumers may be saying online about your business!
You could be doing your business a disservice if you don’t promote the positive things your clients are saying about your products, services, client support, training, etc. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be used in your content.
In this article, you’ll learn how to achieve better results online using compelling client testimonials.
Client Reviews And Testimonials
Legendary American showman and businessman Phineas Taylor 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 genuine testimonials and reviews from existing clients is existing customers are far more persuasive for attracting new clients, customers or users than anything you 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 … customer reviews!
Customer reviews and customer testimonials are fantastic for building credibility for your services or products.
Marketing studies conducted by leading research firms all point to the same inevitable conclusion: testimonials and user reviews reduce doubts potential customers may have about products, help users select products and increases conversions of visitors into sales.
Below are just some statistics that support this:
- According to research 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 web site if it has ratings and consumer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, consumer reviews play a significant role in creating an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user reviews per product can translate into a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Site 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 Consumer Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding positive testimonials and reviews to your site from customers who are thrilled with your services is essential for growing your business online.
User reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and 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 be posting updates on Facebook or a forum group about an unpleasant experience they’ve just had using your products 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 important to your online business success.
Misconceptions about engaging in online reputation management practices, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need it) could be causing damage to your business without you even realizing this.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective tool for WordPress users that lets you legally and ethically manage your customer reviews:
How To Create Meaningful Customer Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be added to your content marketing. When you include responses from clients in your content, you:
- Show others exactly with similar problems and pains what your products and services can do for them.
- Help your visitors identify their objections and address these.
- Help potential customers connect with their motivations and this facilitates moving them closer to a buying decision.
Below are some useful tips on creating customer testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: Try using your customer’s actual words as much as possible. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep things ‘real’.
- Use photos of real people: Images of people’s faces draw attention to your content. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews can help increase visitor engagement with your content.
- Tell a powerful story: Stories are much more powerful and captivating than just providing statistical facts. The ability to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a more lasting impression on those reading your content than using generalized statements about how “excellent” your service has been and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: It’s good to add customer testimonials to your web content where it best makes sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help sell your point. For example, think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s mind if you were to present a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting your pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before talking about the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are truly thrilled about your support when offering a risk-free guarantee or providing content that helps your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping us grow our net profit by $51,228 in the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ product helped us grow our sales?” 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 they have saved, 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.
- Avoid using the same customer testimonial throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out or have very few clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your website. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more 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 choose 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 target audience is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects aspire to become is 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 across different platforms. If someone publishes great feedback on your Facebook wall praising your business, ask them permission to reprint the content on your site.
- Only use genuine testimonials. Your potential clients need to believe that the testimonials displayed on your site are genuine. Don’t destroy your reputation with false testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials
Ask For Testimonials
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 tips for soliciting testimonials from customers:
- Make it a part of your business processes to contact clients after 60 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after performing a service.
- Include a text box for testimonials in client surveys.
- Pull out your phone when you next visit a client or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a very short video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording the video, explain to viewers what you have done for your client and record the client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy for them. When clients send 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 best sections (only use what they have written – don’t put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have done this to help them save time and let them know they are completely free to change what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link To The Source Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial
Offer to add a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive for clients to provide a testimonial. It also makes the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real and can be verified.
Include Testimonial Requests In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include a request for a testimonial in a regularly-spaced newsletter message. This should be done as soon as your customers have had a chance to measure the results of using 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 subscribers to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature helps you obtain testimonials from other members for your account. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite 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 (and offer to add a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Page
Create a new section for client testimonials and place a “read more customer testimonials …” link pointing to this page whenever you have added single testimonials on your site.
Useful 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 monitoring visitor behaviour on your pages are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap technology you can add to your website to understand visitor behaviour here:
Useful Testimonial Plugins
If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages inviting users to submit feedback and testimonials.
Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), all you have to do is refer users to your “Testimonials” section.
Check out the WordPress testimonial plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add client 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 testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which can be used to add a photo of the testimonial author, their business logo, etc.
The plugin also can be upgraded to a “pro” version that has additional features and developer support.
Visit this site to download this plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with images or videos on your website. You can insert customer testimonials via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and specify different display options such as random or specific ordering.
The Testimonials Widget plugin has loads more features available via a premium version, including built-in options for improved search engine results and plugin support.
Visit this site to download the plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium WP plugin provides many great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for correct display on any device or browser.
- Options to display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid layout, etc. using a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customize font and background colors, font types and more.
Visit this site to download this plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Customer reviews and testimonials are great sources of content that 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 existing customers or clients, and publish positive content about your business on your website.
Additional Info
For additional information about creating engaging users 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 a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site 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!
***
***
"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now