Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain new customers, only to get the exact same disappointing results? As most business owners know, that finding effective ways to generate new business can be difficult. 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 economy, ignoring what your clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Ignoring what your customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
By the same token, you are also doing your business a disservice if you are not boosting the positive things your customers say about your products or services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be included throughout your content.
In this article, you will learn all you need to know to start getting better results online with meaningful client testimonials.
Consumer Reviews
The great, legendary showman P.T. Barnum is often quoted as having stated 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 getting your business promoted. Genuine testimonials from your satisfied customers are far more persuasive for attracting new customers than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is a source of untapped business growth potential that most businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … testimonials and reviews from customers!
Customer reviews and testimonials are great for building credibility for your services and products.
Studies conducted by many leading research companies all seem to point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding testimonials and user reviews to your sales information eliminates doubts potential customers may have about particular products, helps users select products and helps increase sales conversions.
Below are just some of the statistics available to support this:
- According to research 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 web site if it has ratings and reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, user reviews can produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more reviews per product can translate into a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Web site visitors who interact with both 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).
(The figures above were sourced from eConsultancy.com)
Adding User Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding great reviews to your site from clients who are thrilled with your products or services is important for growing your business and creating a solid online reputation.
Consumer reviews and customer testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both positively or negatively.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business, products or services directly to you, but they could be posting unhelpful comments on a forum about a bad experience they’ve just had using your products and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes a vitally important aspect of your success.
Misconceptions about online reputation management, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need it) may be seriously hurting your business without you even being aware of this.
See this article to learn more about a simple tool for WordPress users that can help to avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your business through effective customer review management:
Improving Your Sales Conversions With Testimonials – Useful Tips
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be added to your content marketing strategy. When you quote your own user responses in your content, you:
- Show prospects exactly with similar problems and pains what your products and services can do for them.
- Help your visitors identify their objections and address these.
- Help prospects connect with their aspirations and motivations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Here are some useful tips on improving your sales with compelling user testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: Try using your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leave little 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 attention of visitors browsing a web page. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews will help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your site’s content.
- Tell a story: Stories are much more powerful and captivating than providing mere 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 using generalized statements about how “excellent” the support has been and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Keep 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 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 retails for before posting your pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before talking about the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are genuinely ecstatic about your customer service when offering a risk-free guarantee or addressing objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful: “As a direct result of using your XYZ services, we have seen an additional profit growth of $77,717 during the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ product 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 profits or reduce their costs in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours you have helped them save, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate in a recent period, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Avoid using the same testimonial throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult if you are just starting out or have very few clients, try 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 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 ideal customer: As every infomercial featuring a celebrity endorsement, subject expert or “busy mom” knows, if you know who your ideal customer 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 targeted to your ideal customers.
- Reprint testimonials across different platforms. If someone publishes a great comment on your Facebook page praising your business, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Never use fake testimonials. Prospective customers need to see that the testimonials displayed on your site are genuine. Don’t destroy your credibility with false testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials
Ask For Testimonials
When you complete performing a service, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.
Follow these tips for requesting testimonials:
- Make it a part of your business processes to contact clients after 14 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after performing a service.
- Add a text box for testimonials in client surveys.
- Take out your phone when you next meet with clients or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they would be happy to record a short video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording the video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to capture their positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy and write the testimonial for them. If a client sends you a positive email thanking you for a great service 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 shape these into 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 change what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link Back To The Source Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial
Offer to add a link back to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients to provide a testimonial. It also makes the 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 newsletter message. Preferably, this should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to measure the effect of using your products. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking users for honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you obtain testimonials for your account. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite simple and user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your site (you can offer to publish a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Section On Your Site
Create a new section for client testimonials and add a “read more client testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials page throughout your site.
Practical Tip: You can measure how effective testimonials are by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added the testimonial content. A great tool for understanding what visitors are doing on your pages are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your website to measure visitor behavior here:
Useful Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
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 a form to your pages inviting users to 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 refer customers to your “Testimonials” section.
Check out the plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is an easy-to-use free plugin that lets you add user testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into posts and pages 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 logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also provides users with a “pro” version with additional features and plugin support.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your blog. You can insert testimonials using a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and have multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.
The plugin comes with a range of additional features via a premium version, including built-in options for improved search engine results and technical support.
To download and use the plugin, visit this site:
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 for correct display on any device or browser.
- Options to display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, grid layout, list layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colors, font types and more.
Go here to download the plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Testimonials and user reviews are great sources of content that can 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 customers or clients, and publish positive content about your business on your site.
Resources
For additional information about creating engaging testimonials see the articles below:
- 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 and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality 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 100% FREE!
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