Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? Most business owners don’t need to be told that trying to generate new customers can be very 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 online economy, it’s a mistake to ignore the significance of what your potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting comments about your business.
Ignoring what clients 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 promote the positive things your clients are saying about your services or products. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive when it comes to marketing your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content marketing.
In this article, you’ll learn how to improve your visitor-to-sales conversions using highly effective client testimonials.
User Reviews
Phineas Taylor P.T. Barnum, the great, legendary showman and successful promoter, once said that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum understood the power of “social proof”. Social proof-based content is a powerful and effective way of promoting your business. Quoting testimonials from your satisfied users is existing users are far more persuasive for drawing new clients, customers or users than anything you have to say about your own products or services.
There is clearly an untapped source of business growth potential that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … user reviews and testimonials!
Consumer reviews and testimonials are a terrific way to build credibility for your products and services.
Research conducted by many leading marketing companies all point to the same conclusion: testimonials and user reviews eliminate doubts potential customers may have about buying your products or services, help users select products and help increase conversions of visitors into sales.
Here are just some of the findings available to support this:
- According to a study by eVoc Insights, a company 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 customer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more reviews per product can translate into a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- 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 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 Reviews – Online Reputation Management
Adding great reviews and testimonials to your website from happy customers is important for helping you grow your business and creating a solid online reputation.
Reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and impact your business both negative and positive ways.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your products directly to you, but they could be posting updates on Facebook or a forum about a bad encounter they’ve just had with you or your business and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes vitally 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 to worry about it) could be seriously hurting your business without you even realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a simple WordPress plugin that allows you to legally and ethically manage user reviews:
Tips For Creating Customer Testimonials
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective when it comes to marketing your products and services online and should be used in your content marketing strategy. When you quote responses from customers in your content, you:
- Show prospects exactly what problems and pains your products and services can solve for them and how easily this can be done.
- Help your visitors identify their objections and address these.
- Help potential customers connect with their motivations and aspirations and this facilitates moving them closer to a decision to purchase.
Below are some practical tips on improving your sales conversions with testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: Try to use your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep it ‘real’.
- Use photos: It’s a proven fact that using images of people’s faces will draw the attention of visitors on a web page. Adding client photos 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 powerful and memorable than providing mere statistical facts. The ability to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution came to the rescue will make a far more lasting impression on those reading your content than using generic statements about excellent customer support and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: Add customer testimonials in your web content where it makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help you 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 sells for before posting your product or service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before discussing the benefits of your services, or testimonials where clients are truly thrilled about your customer service 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 using your services, our profits grew by $71,826 during the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ solution 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 sales or reduce their costs 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.
- Use different customer testimonials on your site: Although this can be a little difficult when you are just starting out or don’t have many clients, try to avoid displaying the same testimonial everywhere on your website. Depending on your business, 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 choose to use it.
- Appeal to your target audience: 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 can relate to is an extremely powerful motivator and influencer. People want to see and buy from “better versions” of themselves, so make sure to include testimonials that appeal directly to your best audience demographic.
- Reprint across different platforms. If you get a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your solution, ask them permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Only use genuine client testimonials. Most people can see through sites that employ copywriters to produce their content. Outsourcing content is fine, but prospective clients need to see that the testimonials published on your site are genuine. Don’t destroy your reputation with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials
Ask For Testimonials
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied customer can be as simple as just asking for it.
Follow these useful tips for soliciting testimonials:
- Contact customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 30 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after completing your service.
- Include a field for entering testimonials in all client satisfaction surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you visit clients or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very quick video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording your video, describe to your viewers what you have done for your client and make sure to record their positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy and write the testimonial for them. When clients send you positive written feedback 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 use these to create a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to publish it. Explain that you have done this to save them time and invite them to modify what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Post A Link To Their Site Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to add a link back to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive for clients to provide you with a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Include A Testimonial Request In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include requests for a testimonial in one of your newsletter broadcasts. This should be done after your customers have had a chance to experience your products or services. Use words like “I need your help” in the subject of your message and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking customers to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you obtain testimonials that become part of your account. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a positive recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your site (and offer to publish a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Page
Create a new page for customer testimonials and place a “read more client testimonials …” link to your main testimonials page whenever you add new testimonials on your content sections.
Useful Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of customer testimonials by how long visitors remain on the section of your pages or posts where you have added the testimonial content. ”Heatmapping” technology is a great way to understanding visitor behavior on your pages.
We have written an article about a heatmap analytics technology you can add to your site to predict visitor behavior here:
Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages where users can submit testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (remember to provide simple instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you then send clients to your “Testimonials” page.
Here are some testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is an easy-to-use free plugin that lets you add user testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed them into posts and pages using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you publish a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which you can use to add a photo of the testimonial author, their logo, etc.
The plugin also provides a “pro” version that offers additional features and plugin support.
To download and use this plugin, go here:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your blog. You can insert testimonials content via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and have multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.
Testimonials Widget has plenty of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in functions SEO functionality and developer support.
To download the plugin, go here:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium plugin provides many great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes to display correctly on any device or browser.
- Display options for 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 testimonial in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.
To learn more about using the plugin, go here:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
User reviews and client 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 clients or customers, and publish positive content about your business on your website.
Resources
The articles below provide useful information on creating effective customer testimonials and were also helpful in providing research and information for sections of this article:
- 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 easy-to-digest information that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content for your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!
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