How To 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 customers, and getting the exact same results? As most business owners know, that generating new business can be quite difficult. Just trying to remain in business takes up 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 customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Ignoring what your clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
By the same token, you may also be doing your business a disservice if you don’t publish the positive things your clients say about your products, solutions, customer support, training, etc. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be included as part of your content marketing.
In this article, we’ll show you how to create better results online using profit-boosting user testimonials.
User Reviews And Testimonials
The great American showman and businessman Phineas Taylor P.T. Barnum once 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 reviews and testimonials quoted directly from satisfied customers are far more persuasive for drawing new customers than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is a source of untapped opportunities for generating new business that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … user reviews and testimonials!
Customer reviews and customer testimonials are fantastic for building credibility for your services or products.
Marketing studies conducted by many leading companies all lead to the same conclusion: testimonials and user reviews help to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about products or services, help users select products and help increase sales conversions.
Here are just some findings that support this:
- According to research by eVoc Insights, a company that researches and measures user experience, “In general, 63% of users indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has ratings and user reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, customer 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.
- 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).
- 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).
(Source: eConsultancy.com)
Adding Customer Testimonials And Reviews – Online Reputation Management
Clearly, you should be adding reviews from very happy clients to your site.
Customer testimonials and consumer reviews, however, can work both ways and affect your business both positively or negatively.
People may not be saying bad things about your services directly to your face, but they could be posting negative comments on Facebook or a forum about an unpleasant encounter they’ve just had with one of your sales or customer support 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 vitally important to 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) could be seriously hurting your business without you even being aware of it.
See this article to learn more about a WordPress plugin that allows you to legally and ethically manage your customer reviews:
Improving Your Conversions With Meaningful User Testimonials – Useful Tips
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 an integral part of your content marketing. When you include your own user responses in your content, you:
- Show others exactly with similar problems and pains what your products and services can do for them.
- Help visitors identify their objections and address these.
- Help prospects connect with their aspirations and motivations and facilitate moving them closer to a buying decision.
Below are some tips on improving your conversions with captivating testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: You should try using your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep things ‘real’.
- Use photos: Research shows that using images of people’s faces draws the most attention of visitors on a web page. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews can help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your site’s content.
- Use the power of storytelling: Stories are much more effective and captivating than just providing facts and statistics. The ability to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution came to the rescue will make a more lasting impression on those reading your content than using generic statements about excellent customer support and giving “two thumbs up” product 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 makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help sell your point. Think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s mind by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution can be purchased for before posting pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before presenting the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are truly thrilled about your customer service before offering guarantees or providing content designed to help readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would consider to be more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping us grow our sales by $55,863 during the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ solution has helped us grow our business?” If possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable data, like how much your solution helped to increase their profits or reduce their costs by 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 financial period, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Vary the client testimonials on your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult if you are just starting out or don’t have many clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial throughout your site’s pages. Depending on your business, 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 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 can be a very powerful motivator and influencer. People want to see and buy from “better versions” of themselves, so make sure to include testimonials that speak directly to your ideal customers.
- Reprint across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your business, send them a message asking for permission to reprint the content on your site.
- Only use genuine testimonials. Your prospects need to see that the testimonials published on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your credibility with a false testimonial.
How To Get Customer Testimonials
Ask
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 useful tips for soliciting testimonials:
- Make it a part of your business processes to contact customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 60 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after completing your service.
- Add a text box for entering testimonials in all your client satisfaction surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you meet with clients or hand over a finished project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they would be happy to record a quick video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording your video, explain to your viewers what you have done for the client and capture the client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy for them. If 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 written – never put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have done this 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 Post A Link Back To The Source Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to publish a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive to get clients providing you with 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 one of your autoresponder messages. 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 your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking subscribers to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature helps you obtain testimonials from other members for your profile. 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 positive recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your website (and offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Section
Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “more client testimonials …” link to your main testimonials section throughout your content sections.
Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your testimonials by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your 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 observe visitor behaviour here:
WordPress Plugins
If your site or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add a form to your pages where users can submit testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), all you have to do is send 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 them into your pages and posts using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you insert a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which you can use to add a photo of the testimonial author, their company logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also provides a “pro” version that has additional features and technical support.
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
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 testimonials via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and specify different display options such as random or specific ordering.
The plugin has plenty of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and developer support.
Go here to download and use the plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium plugin that provides a range 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, list layout, grid layout, etc. via a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customize font and background colours, font types and more.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Client testimonials and customer reviews are great sources of content that can 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 or clients, and publish positive content about your business on your website.
Additional Info
The articles below are a great source of information on creating effective clients testimonials and were also used when researching 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 show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful 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 100% FREE!
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