Building Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain customers, only to get the exact same results? As most business owners know, that finding new ways of generating new customers can be confusing, time-consuming and extremely difficult. Just trying to keep your business afloat takes a lot of time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.
In today’s online and social-driven economy, you just can’t ignore the effect of online consumer behavior, especially if they are talking about your business.
Don’t ignore what your clients may be saying online about your business!
By the same token, you may also be doing your business a disservice if you are not boosting the positive things your customers say about your services or products. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of marketing your products and services online and should be used in your content marketing.
In this article, you will learn how to improve your visitor-to-lead conversions using more effective user testimonials.
Testimonials And Customer Reviews
The great American showman and businessman Phineas Taylor P.T. Barnum once said that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum understood the power of “social proof”. Social proof-driven content is a powerful way of getting your business promoted effectively. Genuine testimonials from your satisfied customers are far more persuasive for drawing new customers than anything you can 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 … user reviews and testimonials!
Customer testimonials and reviews are a great way to build credibility for your services or products.
Research conducted by leading marketing research companies all point to the same conclusion: testimonials and user reviews help decrease doubts potential customers may have about products and services, help users select products and help increase conversions of visitors into sales.
Here are just some of the findings 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 site if it has ratings and consumer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, consumer reviews can produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can result in a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Website 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).
(The figures above were sourced from eConsultancy.com)
Adding Consumer Reviews – Online Reputation Management
You should be adding positive testimonials and reviews from existing clients who have experienced positive results with your business to your website.
Reviews and customer testimonials, however, are like double-edged swords; they can impact your business both in a positive or negative way.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your products directly to your face, but they could have posted updates on a discussion thread about an unpleasant encounter they’ve just had with one of your employees 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 vital to your online success.
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 it) could be causing damage to your business without you even realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a simple WordPress plugin that lets you legally and ethically manage user feedback:
Creating User Testimonials – Useful Tips
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be included as part of your content marketing. When you include responses from clients in your content, you:
- Show prospects exactly with similar problems and pains how your products and services can help them.
- Help potential customers identify and address their objections.
- Help potential customers connect with their motivations and aspirations and facilitate moving them closer to a decision to purchase.
Below are some tips on creating customer testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: You should try using your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use photos of real people: Images of people’s faces draw attention on a web page. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews will help increase visitor engagement with 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 saved the day will make a far longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than using generic statements about how “excellent” the support has been and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: It’s good to add testimonials to your site copy where it best makes sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help you 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 sells for before posting product or service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before discussing the benefits of your services, or testimonials where customers are truly thrilled about your support when offering a risk-free guarantee or providing content designed to help your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements is more powerful: “XYZ solution was directly responsible for increasing our revenue by $60,687 in the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ software 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 market share or reduce their costs in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours of work you have helped them save, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate during a specific financial quarter, 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 when you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your site. Depending on the nature of your business, you could try to obtain more 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 ideal customer is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects can relate to is a 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 testimonials across different platforms. If you get a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your solution, ask them permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Never use fake client testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing copywriters to create your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your prospects need to believe that the testimonials displayed on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your integrity or reputation with a ”made up” testimonial.
How To Get Testimonials
Ask
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Follow these tips for soliciting testimonials:
- Contact your customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 60 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after completing a service.
- Include a field for testimonials in your client surveys.
- Take out your phone next time you 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 quick video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording your video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and capture their positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy for them. Whenever 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 your client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have done this to save them time and invite them to change what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link Back To Their Site Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial
Offer to post a link back to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive to get clients to provide you with a testimonial. It also makes the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Add Testimonial Requests To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder messages. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to experience 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 users for honest feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you solicit testimonials from other members that become part of your account. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your website (you can offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Page
Create a new section for client testimonials and add a “read more customer testimonials …” link to your main testimonials page throughout your content sections.
Practical Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your customer testimonials by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. A great tool for monitoring visitor behaviour on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your website to observe visitor behavior here:
Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If your website or blog is built using WordPress, you can use a plugin to add, edit and display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages inviting users to submit feedback and testimonials.
Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), all you have to do is send customers to your “Testimonials” section.
Here are some WordPress testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into your pages and posts using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you add a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which you can use for adding a photo of the testimonial author, their logo, etc.
The plugin also provides users with a “pro” version with additional features and developer support.
Go here to download and use the plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your pages and posts. 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.
Testimonials Widget has plenty of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in functions SEO functionality and plugin support.
Visit this site to download the plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium WordPress plugin that offers a range of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for correct display on any device or browser.
- Options to display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid layout, etc. using 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.
For more information about the plugin, visit this site:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Summary …
Testimonials and user reviews 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 feedback, reviews, and testimonials from your customers, and publish positive content about your business on your site.
Additional Info
For additional resources about creating effective clients testimonials refer to these articles:
- 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 and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now