Building Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain new customers, only to get the exact same results? As most business owners know, that finding new ways of generating new business can be hard, confusing and frustrating. Just trying to keep your business afloat 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 digital, mobile and social media-driven economy, ignoring what clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Ignoring what customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
You could be doing your business a great disservice if you are not spreading the positive things your customers are saying about your solutions, client training, support, etc. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to marketing your products and services online and should be used throughout your content.
In this article, you will learn how to achieve better results online using meaningful customer testimonials.
Client Reviews
Phineas Taylor P.T. Barnum, the great American showman and successful promoter, is often quoted as having stated 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. Reviews quoted directly from existing clients are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new clients than anything you 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 … customer testimonials and reviews!
Testimonials and reviews are effective for building credibility for your services and products.
Studies conducted by marketing firms all seem to lead to the same conclusion: user reviews and testimonials eliminate doubts potential customers may have about buying your products, help with product selection and increases conversions of visitors into sales.
Here are just some of the findings available to support this:
- According to a study by eVoc Insights, an organization known for researching and measuring 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 are responsible for producing an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Website 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).
- 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).
(Above figures sourced from eConsultancy.com)
Adding Consumer Reviews And Testimonials – Online Reputation Management
Adding reviews to your site from delighted clients is essential for creating a solid online reputation.
User reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both negative and positive ways.
People may not be saying bad things about your products directly to you, but they could be posting disparaging remarks on Facebook about a bad encounter they’ve just had with you or your business 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 vital to your online success.
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 it) may be hurting your business without you even realizing this.
See this article to learn more about a simple plugin for WordPress users that can help to avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your business, products or services through effective user review management:
How To Create Awesome Client Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be included as part of your content. When you quote responses from clients in your content, you:
- Show potential customers exactly with similar problems and pains what your products and services can do for them.
- Help visitors identify and address their objections.
- Help prospects connect with their motivations and aspirations and facilitate moving them closer to a decision to purchase.
Below are some useful tips on creating testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try using the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leaving little grammatical errors and misspellings in the content helps preserve your testimonials’ authenticity.
- Use photos: Research shows that using images of people’s faces draws the attention of visitors browsing a web page. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews can help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
- Tell a powerful story: Stories are much more effective and captivating than just providing statistical facts. Being able 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 presenting generic statements about how “excellent” the customer support was 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 best makes sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help you sell your point. For example, think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s mind if you were to present a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution can be purchased for before posting your product pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before talking about the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are truly thrilled about your customer service before offering guarantees or providing content that helps readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping us grow our sales by $57,881 during the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ software has 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 sales or reduce their costs in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours of work you have helped them save, 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 testimonial repeatedly throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult when you are just starting out or have very few clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial repeatedly throughout 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 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 aspire to become can be a 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 testimonials across different platforms. If you get a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your solution, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Don’t use fake client testimonials. Most people can see through sites that employ copywriters to produce their content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your prospects need to believe that the testimonials provided on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your credibility or reputation with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Your Clients
Ask For Testimonials
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied customer can be as simple as just asking for it.
Here are some useful guidelines for requesting testimonials:
- Contact your clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 30 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after performing a service.
- Add a text box for entering testimonials in client satisfaction surveys.
- Take out your phone when you next meet with a client or hand over a finished project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very quick video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording the video, describe to viewers what you have done for your client and try to record their positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy for them. When 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 given you – don’t put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact the 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 see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Post A Link Back To Their Site Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to publish a link to their site 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 scheduled auto responder broadcast. This should be done after your customers have had a chance to assess the results of using your product, service or solution. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in the subject of your message and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking users to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature allows you to request testimonials that become part of your account. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your website (and offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Section
Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “read more customer testimonials …” link to your main testimonials page wherever you plan to display blocks of testimonials on your site.
Useful Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of client 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 understanding visitor behavior on your pages are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmaps to your sites to measure visitor behavior here:
Useful WordPress 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 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.
Here are a few useful testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free WP plugin that lets you add customer testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into posts and pages using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you publish a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which is great for adding a photo of the testimonial author, a business logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also can be upgraded to a “pro” version that has additional features and developer 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 posts and pages. You can insert user 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 functions for improved search engine results and plugin support.
To download this plugin, go here:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium WordPress plugin that 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, grid layout, list layout, etc. via a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.
To download and use this plugin, go here:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
User reviews and testimonials are powerful sources of content that help your business add credibility, build authority, improve online reputation, and grow your sales funnel. Always ask for feedback, reviews, and testimonials from your customers, and publish positive content about your business on your site.
Resources
The articles below provide useful information about creating effective testimonials and were 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 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 useful 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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