Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews

Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain customers, only to get the exact same disappointing results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that generating new business can be quite hard. Just trying to keep your business afloat takes up a lot of 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 simply can’t afford to ignore the effect of what your potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting comments about your business.

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

You are also doing your business a disservice if you aren’t publishing the positive things your clients are saying about your products or services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of marketing your products and services online and should be included in your content marketing.

In this article, we’ll show you ways to improve your conversions using sales boosting user testimonials.

Testimonials And Customer Reviews

Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum, legendary showman, once stated that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”

P.T. Barnum understood the power of “social proof”. Using social proof as content is a powerful way of getting your business promoted effectively. Reviews and testimonials from your existing clients are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new customers than anything you have to say about your own products or services.

There is clearly an untapped source of business growth potential that most small businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … reviews from happy customers!

Consumer reviews and testimonials are fantastic for building credibility for your services or products.

Studies conducted by marketing companies all point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding reviews and customer testimonials to your sales information pages helps reduce doubts potential customers may have about your products or services, helps with product selection and helps increase sales conversions.

Below are just some findings that 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 web site if it has ratings and customer reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, reviews are responsible for producing 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 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).

(Above figures sourced from eConsultancy.com)

Adding User Reviews – Online Reputation Management

You should be adding great reviews from happy customers to your site.

Customer testimonials and user reviews, however, can work both ways and impact your business both in a negative as well as positive way.

You see, people may not be saying bad things about your products directly to you, but they could be posting updates on Facebook, or a discussion thread or 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 an integral part of your online success strategy.

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

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 services through effective customer review management:

• Managing Your Online Reputation With Power Online Reviews Plugin

Tips On Improving Your Conversions With Awesome Testimonials

Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective 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 quote your own customer responses in your content, you:

• Show others exactly what pains and problems your products and services can 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 facilitate moving them closer to a buying decision.

Here are some practical tips on improving your sales with profit boosting testimonials:

• Don’t over edit: Try using the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
• Use photos of real people: It’s a proven fact that using images of people’s faces will draw the most attention of visitors on 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 far more powerful and memorable than providing mere facts and statistics. 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 presenting generalized statements about how “excellent” the service was and giving “two thumbs up” product 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. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s mind if you were to present a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting product pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before presenting the benefits of your services, or testimonials where customers are genuinely ecstatic about your customer service before offering a money-back guarantee or providing content that helps readers overcome their objections.
• Quantify your information: Which of the following statements is more powerful: “XYZ solution was directly responsible for growing our net profit by $37,213 during the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ product has helped us grow our business?” If 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 by 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 testimonial repeatedly 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 repeatedly throughout your site. Depending on the type of business you run, 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 choose 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 very 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 you get fantastic feedback on your Facebook wall praising your customer service, ask them permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
• Don’t use fake testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing professional writers to write your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but prospective customers need to believe that the testimonials published on your site are real. Don’t compromise your credibility with a false testimonial.

How To Get Testimonials

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.

Here are some tips for requesting testimonials from customers:

• Make a point of contacting customers after 30 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after completing your service.
• Include a text box for entering testimonials in client satisfaction surveys.
• Pull out your phone when you next meet with clients or hand over a finished job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very brief video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording your video, describe to viewers what you have done for your client and record their positive reactions and feedback.
• Make it easy and write the testimonial 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 juiciest sections (only use what they have given you – don’t put words into their mouth), and shape these into 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 let them know they are completely free to change what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.

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

Offer to post a link back to their site 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 not fake and can be verified.

Include A Testimonial Request In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages

If you have a subscriber list, include a request for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder messages. Preferably, this should be done as soon as your customers have had a chance to experience your products or services. 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 users to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature allows you to solicit testimonials from other members for your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is simple and user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your website (and offer to add a link back to their website or profile in exchange).

Create A Testimonials Page

Create a new page for customer testimonials and add a “more customer testimonials …” link pointing to this section wherever you have added small blocks of testimonials on your content sections.

Useful Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your customer testimonials by how long visitors remain on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. A great tool for observing visitor behaviour on your pages are “heatmaps”.

We have written an article about a heatmap software you can add to your sites to monitor visitor behavior here:

• Analyzing User Behaviour On Your WordPress Site With Heat Mapping Software – Heat Map 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 let you add a form 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 then refer customers to your “Testimonials” section.

Check out the plugins below:

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into your pages and posts 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 you can use for adding a photo of the testimonial author, their logo, etc.

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

To download the plugin, go here:

• Easy Testimonials – WordPress Plugin

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with images or videos on your blog. You can insert testimonials content using 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 offers extra features via a premium version, including built-in functions for better search engine results and plugin support.

Go here to learn more about using this plugin:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This is a premium plugin that offers a range 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, list layout, grid layout, etc. using a shortcode
• Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customized font and background colors, font types and more.

Visit this site to download and use the 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 client testimonials are powerful sources of content that 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 your customers, and publish positive content about your business on your site.

Resources

The articles below are a great source of information on creating effective users 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 regular training emails with easy-to-digest information that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site 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!

***

***