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 finding new ways of generating new business can be very hard. Just trying to stay in business 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, mobile and social media-driven economy, ignoring what customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!

Don’t ignore what users may be saying online about your business!

By the same token, you could be doing your business a great disservice if you don’t publish the positive things your clients say about your services, solutions, client support, training, etc. Testimonials, user reviews, 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 tips for converting more visitors into prospects with captivating client testimonials.

Testimonials And Client Reviews

Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum, the great 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 getting your business promoted. Quoting reviews and testimonials from existing users is existing customers are far more persuasive for drawing new customers than anything you can say about your own products or services.

There is clearly an untapped source of business growth potential that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … client reviews and testimonials!

Testimonials and consumer reviews are a terrific way to build credibility for your business.

Tests conducted by leading research companies all point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding reviews and customer testimonials to your site eliminates doubts potential customers may have about buying your products or services, helps with product selection and increases sales.

Below are just some findings that support this:

• According to a study 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 consumer reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more reviews per product can result in 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).

(Above figures sourced from eConsultancy.com)

Adding Customer Reviews And Testimonials – Managing Online Reputation

Adding reviews and testimonials to your website from clients who are delighted with the results they’ve obtained by using your products or services is important for growing your business and creating a solid online reputation.

Testimonials and reviews, however, can work both ways and affect your business both positively or negatively.

People may not be saying bad things about your business, products or services directly to you, but they could post disparaging remarks on a forum about a bad encounter they’ve just had with you or your business and this could be costing you business.

This is where online reputation management becomes vitally important to your 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 to worry about it) could be seriously harming your business without you even realizing it.

See this article to learn more about a WordPress plugin that allows you to legally and ethically manage your customer feedback:

• Managing Bad Client Reviews With Power Online Reviews

Tips On Improving Your Conversions With Client Testimonials

Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be included as part of your content marketing. When you quote responses from users in your content, you:

• Show prospects exactly what problems and pains your products and services can help solve for them and how easily it can do this.
• Help site visitors identify and address their objections.
• Help potential customers connect with their motivations and aspirations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.

Below are some useful tips on improving your sales conversions with standout customer testimonials:

• Don’t over edit: Try using your customer’s actual words as much as possible. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep it ‘real’.
• Use photos of real people: Images of people’s faces draw attention to your content. Adding photos of your clients 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 far more powerful and memorable 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 far longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generic statements about excellent customer support 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 testimonials to your web content where it makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help to sell your point. Think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s mind if you were to add a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before discussing the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are genuinely ecstatic about your customer service when offering a risk-free guarantee or providing content designed to help readers overcome their objections.
• Quantify the information: Which of the following statements is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping to increase our sales by $93,449 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 during a specific period, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
• Avoid using the same customer testimonial throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out and have very few clients, it’s best to avoid using the same testimonial everywhere on your site’s pages. Depending on your business, you could try to obtain more client testimonials by offering limited review copies of your product, or a special 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 is an extremely 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 wall praising your solution, send them a message asking for permission to reprint the content on your blog.
• Don’t use fake client testimonials. Many people can see through sites that employ copywriters to write content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your prospects need to see that the testimonials you provide on your site are real. Don’t compromise your integrity or reputation with a false testimonial.

How To Get Client Testimonials

Just Ask

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

Follow these useful tips for requesting testimonials from clients:

• Make it a part of your business processes to contact customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 14 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after performing a service.
• Include a field for testimonials in your client satisfaction surveys.
• Take out your phone when you next visit a client or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a short video testimonial/feedback interview. During your video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and try to record their positive reactions and responses.
• Make it easy for them. Whenever a client sends 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 given you – never put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to use it. Explain that you have already prepared something to save them time and let them know they are completely free to edit what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.

Offer To Publish A Link To Their Site Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial

Offer to add a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive for clients to provide you with a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real and can be verified.

Add A Testimonial Request 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 timed to reach subscribers just after your clients have had a chance to assess the results of using your products. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in the subject of your email and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking them to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to request testimonials that become part of your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your site (and offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).

Create A Client Testimonials Section On Your Site

Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “read more client testimonials …” link to this page wherever you are adding new testimonials on your site.

Useful Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of testimonials by how long visitors remain on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. ”Heatmapping” technology is a great way to monitoring what visitors are doing on your pages.

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

• How To Understand User Behaviour On Your WordPress Site With HeatMap Tools – Heat Map Tracker Review

WordPress Testimonial Plugins

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

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

Below are a few useful WordPress testimonial plugins you can check out:

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed them into a Page or Post using a shortcode. The plugin also lets you insert a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which is great to add a photo of the testimonial author, their company logo, etc.

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

Go here to download the plugin:

• Easy Testimonials

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 website. You can insert testimonials content 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 offers added features via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and plugin support.

For more information about this plugin, go here:

• Testimonials Widget

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 to display correctly on any device or browser.
• Display options for your testimonials in a widget or as slideshows, sliders, grid layout, list layout, etc. via 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 to download this plugin:

• Testimonials WordPress Plugin

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

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Conclusion …

Customer reviews and 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 existing customers or clients, and publish positive content about your business on your web site.

Additional Info

The articles below provide useful information about creating engaging testimonials and were helpful in providing research and 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 a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content for your site visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

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