How To Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract new customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? As most business owners know, that trying to generate new customers can be extremely difficult, time consuming and frustrating. Just trying to remain 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 web-based and social media-driven economy, it’s a mistake to ignore the effect of what your potential customers are doing online, especially if they are talking about your business.
Don’t ignore what clients may be saying online about your business!
You may also be doing your business a disservice if you are not promoting the positive things your clients say about your products, services, user support, etc. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive ways of marketing your products and services online and should be included as part of your content marketing strategy.
In this article, you’ll learn how to improve your sales conversions with effective customer testimonials.
Testimonials And Customer Reviews
The great, legendary showman and successful promoter Phineas Taylor P.T. Barnum once said that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum understood the power of “social proof”. Social proof-driven content is a powerful way of getting your business promoted effectively. Reviews and testimonials from 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 a source of untapped opportunities for generating new business that most businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … user testimonials and reviews!
Testimonials and customer reviews are a terrific way to build credibility for your services and products.
Studies conducted by leading companies all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: adding customer reviews and testimonials to your sales pages helps to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about buying products and services, helps users select products and helps increase sales.
Below are just some statistics 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, user reviews play a significant role in creating an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can result in 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 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 User Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
You should be adding positive reviews from happy clients who have experienced positive results with your business to your website.
User reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both negatively or positively.
People may not be saying bad things about your services directly to your face, but they could be posting negative comments on Facebook, or a discussion group or forum about an unpleasant encounter they’ve just had with one of your representatives 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 an important part of your business and content marketing strategy.
Misconceptions about managing your reputation online, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need to worry about it) may be seriously hurting your business without you even being aware of this.
See this article to learn more about a WordPress plugin that can help to avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your business through effective user review management:
How To Create Client Testimonials – Useful Tips
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful ways of marketing your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content marketing. When you quote responses from clients in your content, you:
- Show potential customers exactly what problems and pains your products and services can solve for them and how easily it can do this.
- Help prospects identify their objections and address these.
- Help potential customers connect with their motivations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Below are some tips on improving your sales with customer testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: Try to use 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 the most attention on a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews will help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
- Tell a powerful story: Stories are so much more effective and memorable than just providing facts and statistics. 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 excellent customer support and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: It’s good to add customer testimonials in your web content where it best makes 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 perception by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before discussing the benefits of your services, or testimonials where customers are truly ecstatic about your support before offering guarantees or addressing objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for growing our profits by $38,062 in the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ product helped us grow our sales?” If possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable data, 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 in a recent financial quarter, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Vary the client testimonials throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult if you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, it’s best to avoid using the same testimonial everywhere on your web pages. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more customer 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 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 can relate to is a 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 ideal customers.
- Reprint across different platforms. If you get a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your business, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the content on your site.
- Only use genuine client testimonials. Most people can see through sites that employ copywriters to produce content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your prospects need to see that the testimonials you provide on your site are real. Don’t compromise your credibility with a false testimonial.
How To Get Customer Testimonials
Just Ask
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Follow these useful guidelines for soliciting testimonials from customers:
- Make it a part of your business processes to contact customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 90 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after completing your service.
- Include a text box for entering testimonials in all client 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 would be happy to record a quick video testimonial/feedback interview. During your video, describe to your viewers what you have done for your client and try to capture your client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy and write it for them. Whenever 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 – don’t 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 done this to save them time and invite them 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 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 real and can be verified.
Add Testimonial Requests To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include a request for a testimonial in a regularly-spaced auto responder broadcast. This should be done as soon as your customers have had a chance to use your solution. 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 customers for feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature helps you request testimonials that become part of your profile. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is simple and user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your website (you can offer to publish a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Customer Testimonials Page
Create a new section on your website or blog for testimonials and add a “more client testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials section throughout your site.
Useful Tip: You can measure how useful testimonials are 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 observing visitor behavior on your pages.
We have written an article about a heatmap analytics technology you can add to your sites to track visitor behavior here:
Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and 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 (with instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), all you have to do is refer customers to your “Testimonials” page.
Check out the WordPress testimonial plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add user testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed them into a Page or Post using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you add a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which is great for adding a photo of the testimonial author, their logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also comes with a “pro” version that offers additional features and plugin support.
For more information about this plugin, go here:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your website. You can insert 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 plugin has plenty more features available via a premium version, including built-in functions for improved search engine results and technical support.
Visit this site for more information about using the plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium WordPress plugin provides plenty of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes to display correctly 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 the testimonial, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customize font and background colors, 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 …
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 existing customers or clients, and start publishing these on your site.
Additional Info
The articles below are a great source of information about creating engaging testimonials and were used when researching 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 regular training emails with actionable information that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful 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!
***
***
"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya