Building Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract customers, and getting the exact same results? As most small business owners know, that finding effective ways to generate new business can be extremely hard and time-consuming. Just trying to survive in business takes a lot of time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.
In today’s online and social-driven economy, it’s foolish to ignore the significance of what potential customers are doing online, especially if they are talking about your business.
Don’t ignore what customers may be saying online about your business!
By the same token, you may also be doing your business a disservice if you are not promoting the positive things your customers say about your products or services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be included throughout your content.
In this article, you’ll discover how to improve your sales using meaningful user testimonials.
Testimonials And Client Reviews
Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum, the great, legendary showman and successful promoter, once stated that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum understood the power of “social proof”. Using social proof as content is a powerful way of getting your business promoted effectively. Testimonials and reviews from your existing clients are far more persuasive for attracting new customers, clients or users than anything you have to say about your own products or services.
There is clearly an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … consumer reviews!
Customer testimonials and consumer reviews are a powerful way to build credibility for your products or services.
Studies conducted by leading research firms all lead to the same conclusion: user reviews and testimonials decrease doubts potential customers may have about purchasing your product, help with product selection and increases the number of sales.
Below are just some of the findings available to support this:
- According to a study 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 reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, reviews play a significant role in creating an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user reviews per product can result in 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 UGC. (Bazaarvoice, Conversation Index, Q2 2011).
- Consumer 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).
(The figures above were sourced from eConsultancy.com)
Adding Customer Reviews – Online Reputation Management
Clearly, you should be adding reviews from happy clients to your site.
Reviews and customer testimonials, however, can work both ways and impact your business both positive and negative ways.
People may not be saying bad things about your services directly to you, but they could post updates on Facebook about a bad experience they’ve just had with your business and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes an important part of your success strategy.
Misconceptions about online reputation management, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need to worry about it) may be hurting your business without you even realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective WordPress plugin that can help you avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your services through effective user review management:
How To Create Engaging Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful 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 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 site visitors identify and address their objections.
- Help prospects connect with their aspirations and motivations and facilitate the sales process.
Below are some useful tips on how to create testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: 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 to keep things ‘real’.
- Use photos of real people: Images of people’s faces draw attention to your content. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews can help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your content.
- Tell a powerful story: Stories are far more effective and memorable than just providing facts and statistics. Being able to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution came to the rescue will make a longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generalized statements about how “excellent” your customer support was and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: It’s good to add testimonials in your site copy where it best makes sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help to sell your point. Think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s perception by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting price information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before discussing the benefits of your services, or testimonials where clients are truly ecstatic about your customer service before offering guarantees or providing content that helps readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would consider to be more powerful… “Since using your XYZ services, we have noticed our net profit increase by $27,606 during the previous financial quarter,” or “XYZ product definitely helped us grow our business?” If possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable results, like how much your solution helped to increase their profits or reduce their costs by 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.
- Vary the customer testimonials throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult if you are just starting out and have very few clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial repeatedly 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 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 is a really powerful motivator and influencer. People want to see and buy from “better versions” of themselves, so make sure to include testimonials targeted to your best audience demographic.
- Reprint content across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook page praising your products or services, send them a message asking for their permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
- Only use genuine client testimonials. Most people can see through sites that employ copywriters to write content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your potential clients need to see that the testimonials provided on your site are genuine. Don’t destroy your credibility with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Customer Testimonials
Always Ask For Testimonials
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied customer can be as simple as just asking for it.
Follow these useful guidelines for requesting testimonials:
- Make a point of contacting customers after 90 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after completing your service.
- Add a field for testimonials in client surveys.
- Pull out your phone when you next 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 brief video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording your video, describe to viewers what you have done for your client and try to capture your client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy and write the testimonial 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 juiciest sections (only use what they have given you – don’t put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have done this 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 Post A Link To The Source 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 real and can be verified.
Add A Testimonial Request To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include a request for a testimonial in one of your newsletter mailouts. Preferably, this should be timed to reach subscribers just after your clients have had a chance to use 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 users to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a 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 who provides 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 (once again, you can offer to add a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Customer Testimonials Section On Your Site
Create a new page for customer testimonials and place a “more customer testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials section throughout your site.
Useful Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of user testimonials by how long visitors remain on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. ”Heatmapping” technology is a great way to monitoring what visitors are doing on your pages.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your sites to track visitor behavior here:
Useful WordPress Plugins
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 forms to your pages where users can submit testimonials.
Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (make sure to provide simple instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you then refer clients to your “Testimonials” page.
Below are some WordPress testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free WP plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed them into a Page or Post using a shortcode. The plugin also lets you publish a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which is great to add a photo of the testimonial author, their logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also can be upgraded to a “pro” version that has additional features and plugin support.
To download this plugin, go here:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your web site. You can insert testimonials content 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 provides added features via a premium version, including built-in options for better search engine results and developer support.
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium WordPress plugin that offers plenty of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes to display correctly on any device or browser.
- Display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, grid layout, list layout, etc. using a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colors, font types and more.
Visit this site for more information about using the plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Customer reviews and testimonials are powerful 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 feedback, reviews, and testimonials from your customers, and start publishing these on your website or blog.
Resources
For additional sources of information and resources on creating effective users testimonials refer to these useful 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 that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site 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 completely FREE!
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