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 disappointing results? As most business owners know, that finding effective ways of generating new customers can be very difficult, time consuming and frustrating. 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 digital, mobile and social-driven economy, you simply can’t afford to ignore the significance of what potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting comments about your business.
Ignoring what your clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
You could be doing your business a disservice if you aren’t publishing the positive things your clients say about your products or services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be added to your content.
In this article, you’ll learn how to achieve better results online with profit-boosting client testimonials.
Customer Reviews
P.T. Barnum, legendary showman and businessman, once 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 way of getting your business promoted effectively. Quoting genuine testimonials directly from existing customers is existing clients are far more persuasive for attracting new clients, customers or users than anything you have to say about your own products or services.
There is clearly an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … client reviews and testimonials!
Testimonials and reviews are a powerful way to build credibility for your services or products.
Studies conducted by leading companies all seem to point to the same inevitable conclusion: user reviews and testimonials help to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about purchasing your products or services, help users select products and help increase the number of sales.
Here are just some of the findings available to support this:
- According to a study by eVoc Insights, an organization 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 customer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, user 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 customer 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 Client Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding testimonials and reviews to your website from people who are delighted with your services is essential for creating a solid online business reputation.
Testimonials and user reviews, however, can work both ways and affect your business both positive and negative ways.
People may not be saying bad things about your business, products or services directly to your face, but they could be posting updates on a forum about an unpleasant experience they’ve just had using your products 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 a vitally important aspect of your online success.
Misconceptions about online reputation management, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need to worry about it) could be harming your business without you even being aware of it.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective tool for WordPress users that can help you avoid the escalation of negative reviews about your business, products or services through effective customer review management:
Improving Your Sales Conversions With User Testimonials – Useful Tips
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content marketing. When you quote responses from customers in your content, you:
- Show prospects exactly with similar problems and pains what your products and services can do for them.
- Help potential customers identify their objections and address these.
- Help prospects connect with their motivations and facilitate the sales process.
Below are some useful tips on creating testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try to use the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep things ‘real’.
- Use real photos: Images of people’s faces draw the most attention to your content. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews can help increase visitor engagement with your content.
- Tell a story: Stories are much more effective and memorable than just providing statistical facts. The ability 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 excellent customer support and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: Add customer 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. For example, think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s mind if you were to insert a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting your price 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 before offering guarantees or providing content that helps your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “As a direct result of using your XYZ software, we have grown our revenue by an additional $70,649 in the previous financial quarter,” or “XYZ solution has helped us grow our business?” If possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable results, 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.
- Avoid using the same client testimonial repeatedly throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult if you are just starting out or have very few clients, it’s best to avoid using the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your web pages. Depending on your business, you could try to obtain more testimonials by offering limited review copies of your product, or a special launch 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 aspire to become can be a really 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 ideal customers.
- Reprint testimonials across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your commitment to customer satisfaction, contact them privately asking for permission to reprint the content on your site.
- Only use real testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing professional writers to produce 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 integrity or reputation with false testimonials.
How To Get Client Testimonials
Ask
Getting a testimonial from a happy client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Here are some tips for soliciting testimonials:
- Make a point of contacting customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 90 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after completing a service.
- Include a text box for entering testimonials in your client satisfaction surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you visit clients or hand over a finished project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very short video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording the video, describe to your viewers what you have done for your client and make sure to record your client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy for them. Whenever clients send you positive written feedback that contains snippets of useful testimonial material interspersed with the rest of their message, grab the best sections (only use what they have written – never put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have already prepared something to save them 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 Post A Link Back To The Source
Offer to publish 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.
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 mailouts. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to assess the effect of using your products or services. 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 allows you to request testimonials from other members for your profile. With LinkedIn, 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 site (once again, you can offer to add a link back to their website in exchange).
Create A Customer Testimonials Section
Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “read more testimonials …” link to your main testimonials page wherever you have added new testimonials on your content sections.
Useful Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your client 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 observing what visitors are doing on your pages.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your site to measure visitor behavior here:
Testimonial Plugins
If you use 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 adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), all you have to do is refer users to your “Testimonials” page.
Below are some testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add customer testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed them into posts and pages using a shortcode. The plugin 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 a “pro” version that offers additional features and technical support.
Visit this site to download and use this plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with videos or images on your WordPress site. 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 provides a range of additional features via a premium version, including built-in options for improved search engine results and plugin support.
Visit this site to download and use this plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium plugin provides 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 sliders, slideshows, grid layout, list layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colors, font types and more.
To download this plugin, go here:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Testimonials and user reviews are great 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 testimonials, reviews, and feedback from your customers, and start publishing these on your site.
Resources
For additional resources on creating engaging testimonials refer to the articles below:
- 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 you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content for 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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