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 trying to generate new customers can be quite difficult. Just trying to keep your business afloat 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 web-based and social media-driven economy, you cannot afford to ignore the impact of what potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting comments about your business.

Ignoring what your customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!

By the same token, you may also be doing your business a great disservice if you are not boosting the positive things your clients are saying about your services or products. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be added throughout your content.

In this article, you will learn tips for converting more visitors into qualified leads with captivating client testimonials.

Testimonials And Client Reviews

Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum, legendary American showman and businessman, is often quoted as having said 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 promoting your business. Genuine reviews quoted directly from satisfied customers are far more persuasive for drawing new clients than anything you say about your own products or services.

There is clearly a source of untapped opportunities for generating new business that most small businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … reviews from your users!

Testimonials and customer reviews are terrific for building credibility for your services or products.

Research conducted by many marketing research firms all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: testimonials and user reviews help to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about purchasing your products or services, help with product selection and increases the number of product sales.

Here are just some of the statistics available to support this:

According to research 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 web site if it has ratings and user reviews.”
According to Reevoo.com, consumer reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can translate into a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
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 user-generated content (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 User Testimonials And Reviews – Online Reputation Management

Adding great testimonials and reviews to your website from existing clients is important for growing your business online and creating a solid online reputation.

Customer testimonials and reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can affect your business both positive and negative ways.

You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business, products or services directly to you, but they could be posting damaging feedback on a discussion group 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 a vital part of your business and content marketing strategy.

Misconceptions about engaging in online reputation management practices, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need it) may be causing damage to your business without you even realizing this.

See this article to learn more about a simple WordPress plugin that can help you avoid the escalation of negative reviews about your business through effective customer review management:

Managing Bad Customer Reviews With Power Online Reviews WordPress Plugin

Creating Standout Testimonials – Useful Tips

User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to marketing your products and services online and should be used in your content marketing. When you include responses from customers in your content, you:

Show others exactly with similar problems and pains how your products and services can help them.
Help visitors identify and address their objections.
Help potential customers connect with their motivations and this facilitates moving them closer to a buying decision.

Here are some useful tips on creating awesome testimonials:

Avoid over-editing: You should try to use your customer’s actual words as much as possible. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
Use photos: It’s a proven fact that using images of people’s faces will draw the most attention of visitors browsing 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 powerful story: Stories are much more powerful and captivating than providing mere facts and statistics. Being able 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” your customer support has been and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
Use it in context: It’s good to add testimonials in your web content where it best makes sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help to sell your point. For example, think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s mind if you were to insert a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution can be purchased for before posting your price information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before talking about the benefits of your services, or testimonials where customers are truly ecstatic about your customer service when offering guarantees or addressing objections.
Quantify the information: Which of the following statements is more powerful: “Since installing your XYZ product, we increased our sales by an additional $23,035 in the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ product has 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 market share 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.
Use different customer testimonials on your site: Although this can be a little difficult if you are just starting out or don’t have many clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial everywhere on your site. Depending on the nature of your business, 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 best customer: 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 best audience demographic.
Reprint content across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook page praising your solution, ask them permission to reprint the content on your site.
Don’t use fake testimonials. Many people can see through sites that employ copywriters to write content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your potential customers need to see that the testimonials displayed on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your integrity with ”made up” testimonials.

How To Get Client Testimonials

Always Ask For Testimonials

Getting a testimonial from a satisfied client can be as simple as just asking for it.

Here are some useful guidelines for soliciting testimonials:

Contact customers after 90 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after performing a service.
Include a text box for testimonials in all your client satisfaction surveys.
Take out your phone when you next visit clients or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very short video testimonial/feedback interview. During the video, explain to viewers what you have done for your client and record their positive reactions and responses.
Make it easy and write the testimonial for them. If 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 – don’t put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to publish it. 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 Their Site

Offer to post 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 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 requests for a testimonial in a scheduled email message. Preferably, this should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to assess the impact of using your products or services. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in the subject of your message and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking users to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to request testimonials for your account. 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 website (and offer to publish a link back to their website in exchange).

Create A Client Testimonials Page On Your Site

Create a “Testimonials” page and add a “more client testimonials …” link to your main testimonials section whenever you plan to add new testimonials on your content sections.

Useful Tip: You can measure how effective client testimonials are by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added the testimonial content. ”Heatmapping” technology is a great way to observing visitor behavior on your pages.

We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your site to track visitor behavior here:

How To Track User Behaviour On Your WordPress Site Using HeatMap Software – HeatMap Tracker Review

Testimonial Plugins

If your website or blog is built using WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages where users can submit feedback and testimonials.

Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you can then send clients to your “Testimonials” section.

Check out the testimonial plugins below:

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add customer testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into posts and pages using a shortcode. The plugin also lets you insert 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 company logo, etc.

Easy Testimonials also provides users with a “pro” version with additional features and technical support.

To learn more about the plugin, go here:

Easy Testimonials – WordPress Plugin

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your posts and pages. You can insert customer testimonials using a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and specify different display options such as random or specific ordering.

Testimonials Widget makes plenty more features available via a premium version, including built-in functions for improved search engine results and technical support.

Go here to download this plugin:

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This premium WordPress plugin provides plenty of great features right out of the box, including:

Responsive design that resizes for displaying 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 on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.

To learn more about using this plugin, visit this site:

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:

How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Conclusion …

Testimonials and user reviews are powerful 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 feedback, reviews, and testimonials from existing clients, and publish positive content about your business on your website or blog.

Additional Info

The articles below provide useful information on creating engaging users testimonials and were also helpful in providing research and information for sections of this article:

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 teach you how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating high-quality content for 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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)

Building Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews