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, and getting the exact same results? Most business owners don’t need to be told that finding effective ways of generating new customers can be very difficult. Just trying to stay in business takes 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-driven economy, ignoring what consumers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Don’t ignore what users 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 customers are saying about your products or services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive when it comes to helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be added to your content.
In this article, we’ll show you how to convert more visitors into prospects using meaningful user testimonials.
Consumer Reviews And Testimonials
The great American showman Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum once 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 way of getting your business promoted effectively. Quoting genuine testimonials and reviews from existing users is existing customers are far more persuasive for drawing new customers than anything you say about your own products or services.
There is a source of untapped opportunities for generating new business that most small businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … reviews from your previous clients!
Testimonials and consumer reviews are a terrific way to build credibility for your products or services.
Research conducted by many leading marketing research firms all point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding reviews and customer testimonials to your sales information pages helps to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about purchasing products and services, helps users select products and increases sales.
Here are just some of the statistics available to support this:
- According to research findings 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 customer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, reviews can produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Site visitors who interact with both user 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 Reviews – Online Reputation Management
Adding testimonials and reviews to your website from clients who are thrilled with the results they’ve obtained by using your services is important for helping you grow your business and creating a solid online reputation.
Customer testimonials and customer reviews, however, can work both ways and affect your business both positively or negatively.
People may not be saying bad things about your products directly to your face, but they could have posted negative feedback on Facebook or a discussion thread 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 a vitally important aspect of your online success.
Misconceptions about engaging in online reputation management practices, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need it) could be seriously harming your business without you even realizing this.
See this article to learn more about a simple plugin for WordPress users that can help you avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your products through effective customer review management:
How To Create Customer Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to marketing your products and services online and should be included in your content marketing. When you quote your own customer responses in your content, you:
- Show other users 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 motivations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Here are some practical tips on creating standout testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try to use the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep things ‘real’.
- Use photos: Marketing studies show that using images of people’s faces draws the most 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 content.
- Tell a story: Stories are far more effective and memorable than just providing statistical facts. 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 how “excellent” the customer service has been and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Use 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 sell your point. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s mind if you were to add 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 products, or testimonials where customers are genuinely ecstatic about your customer service when offering guarantees or providing content designed to help your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would find more powerful: “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping us grow our profits by $86,961 during the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ solution definitely helped us grow our sales?” If 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 during a specific period, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Vary the testimonials throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult if you are just starting out and have very few clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial everywhere on your site. Depending on your business, you could try to obtain more client 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 best customer is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects aspire to become can be a really 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 best audience demographic.
- Reprint testimonials across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your solution, ask them for permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
- Only use real client testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing professional writers to create your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but prospective clients need to believe that the testimonials published on your site are real. Don’t compromise your integrity with a ”made up” testimonial.
How To Get Testimonials From Clients
Ask For Testimonials
When you complete a service for someone, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.
Follow these tips for soliciting testimonials from your customers:
- Make it a part of your business processes to contact clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 90 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after performing a service.
- Add a field for testimonials in your client surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you visit a client or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a short video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording the video, explain to your viewers what you have done for the client and try to record your client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy for them. When clients send 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 the client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have already prepared something to save them time and let them know they are completely free to modify what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Post A Link Back To The Source 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 not fake and can be verified.
Include A Testimonial Request In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in a periodic auto responder broadcast. Preferably, this should be timed to reach subscribers just after your clients have had a chance to assess the results of using your solution. 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 subscribers to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you obtain testimonials from other members for your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your site (once again, you can offer to add a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Section
Create a new page for testimonials and place a “read more customer testimonials …” link to your main testimonials page throughout your content sections.
Useful Tip: You can measure how effective customer testimonials are by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. A great tool for observing what visitors are doing on your pages are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap software you can add to your sites to understand visitor behavior here:
Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add forms to your pages inviting users to submit reviews and testimonials.
Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you then send clients to your “Testimonials” page.
Check out the plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is an easy-to-use free plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed them into a Page or Post using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you publish a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which can be used for adding a photo of the testimonial author, a business logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also provides users with a “pro” version that offers additional features and developer support.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with images or videos on your web site. You can insert testimonials content via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and specify different display options such as random or specific ordering.
The Testimonials Widget plugin provides a range of additional features via a premium version, including built-in functions for better search engine results and plugin support.
For more information about this plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium WP plugin provides many 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 slideshows, sliders, 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.
To download and use this plugin, visit this site:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
User reviews and client testimonials 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 customers, and start publishing these on your website or blog.
Additional Info
For additional information on 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 regular training emails with actionable information that will show you 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 strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
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