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 new customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? As most small business owners know, that trying to generate new business can be difficult. Just trying to keep your business afloat takes up a lot of 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, it’s foolish to ignore the effect of what potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting comments about your business.
Ignoring what your clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
You may also be doing your business a disservice if you aren’t publishing the positive things your clients say about your services and products. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful ways of helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content.
In this article, you will learn how to convert more visitors into qualified leads with profit-boosting client testimonials.
User Reviews
The great American showman and businessman P.T. Barnum 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”. Using social proof as content is a powerful and effective way of getting your business promoted. Genuine testimonials from existing customers are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new clients than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most small businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … testimonials and reviews from their clients!
Testimonials and customer reviews are fantastic for building credibility for your services or products.
Studies conducted by many marketing research firms all point to the same inevitable conclusion: user reviews and testimonials reduce doubts potential customers may have about your products or services, help users select products and help increase sales.
Below are just some of the stats available to support this:
- According to research findings 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 site if it has ratings and customer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, consumer reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more customer reviews per product can translate into a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Web 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 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 And Testimonials – Managing Online Reputation
Clearly, you should be adding positive reviews and testimonials from delighted customers to your website.
Customer testimonials and consumer reviews, however, can work both ways and affect your business both in a positive and negative way.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business directly to your face, but they could be posting updates on Facebook, or a discussion thread or forum about a bad 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 vital to your online business success.
Misconceptions about engaging in online reputation management practices, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need it) may be seriously causing damage to your business without you even being aware of it.
See this article to learn more about a tool for WordPress users that lets you legally and ethically manage your customer reviews:
Tips For Creating Testimonials
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be used in your content. When you include responses from customers in your content, you:
- Show other users exactly what problems and pains your products and services can solve for them and how easily it can do this.
- Help potential customers identify and address their objections.
- Help prospects connect with their motivations and this facilitates moving them closer to a decision to purchase.
Below are some useful tips on creating knockout testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: Try using the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use real photos: It’s a proven fact that using images of people’s faces will draw the most attention of visitors on a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews can help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your site’s content.
- Tell a story: Stories are far more powerful and captivating than just providing facts and statistics. Being able to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a far longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than using generalized statements about excellent support and giving “two thumbs up” service 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 they can most effectively help to sell your point. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s mind by adding 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 products, or testimonials where clients are truly ecstatic about your customer service before offering a risk-free guarantee or addressing 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 bottom line by $87,095 in the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ solution definitely helped us grow our business?” 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 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 client testimonial throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult if you are just starting out or have very few clients, it’s best to avoid using the same testimonial throughout your site’s pages. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more user 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 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 can relate to can be 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 testimonials across different platforms. If someone publishes great feedback on your Facebook wall praising your products or services, ask them for permission to reprint the comment or post on your blog.
- Never use fake client testimonials. Your prospects need to believe that the testimonials you provide on your site are real. Don’t destroy your credibility with a false testimonial.
How To Get Customer Testimonials
Ask
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied customer can be as simple as just asking for it.
Here are some useful guidelines for soliciting testimonials:
- Contact customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 14 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after performing a service.
- Include a field for entering testimonials in all client surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you visit a client or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a quick video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording your video, describe to viewers what you have done for your client and record your client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy and write it for them. Whenever clients send 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 written – never 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 already prepared something to help them save time and invite them to edit what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link Back To The Source Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to add a link back to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive for clients to provide 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 requests for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder broadcasts. Preferably, this should be done as soon as your customers have had a chance to experience your products or services. Use words like “I need your help” in the subject of your email and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking clients for feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature allows you to solicit testimonials that become part of your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is 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 (tip: offer to add a link back to their website in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Section
Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “more testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials page wherever you plan to add small blocks of testimonials on your site.
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 the testimonial content. ”Heatmapping” technology is a great way to observing what visitors are doing on your pages.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your sites to predict visitor behavior here:
Testimonial Plugins
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 inviting users to submit reviews and testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you can then refer clients to your “Testimonials” page.
Check out the WordPress testimonial plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is an easy-to-use free plugin that lets you add testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into your pages and posts using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you insert a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which you can use to add a photo of the testimonial author, their company logo, etc.
The plugin also provides a “pro” version that has additional features and plugin support.
Visit this site to download this plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your site. You can insert client 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 Testimonials Widget plugin provides added features via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and plugin support.
To download and use this plugin, go here:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium plugin that provides plenty of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for displaying correctly on any device or browser.
- Options to display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.
Go here for more information about this plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Client testimonials and user reviews are powerful sources of content that can help your business add credibility, build authority, improve online reputation, and grow your sales funnel. Always ask for testimonials, reviews, and feedback from your clients, and publish positive content about your business on your web site.
Resources
For additional resources on creating engaging 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 web site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
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