Building Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews

Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain customers, and getting the exact same results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that trying to generate new business can be quite hard. Just trying to stay in business 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-driven economy, you cannot afford to ignore the effect of what your potential customers are doing online, especially if they are talking about your business.

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

You may also be doing your business a great disservice if you aren’t publishing the positive things your clients are saying about your services or products. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be used in your content marketing strategy.

In this article, you’ll learn how to improve your sales using captivating customer testimonials.

User Reviews

The great American showman and successful promoter P.T. Barnum once said that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”

P.T. Barnum obviously understood the power of “social proof”. Social proof-based content is a powerful way of getting your business promoted effectively. Testimonials and reviews from satisfied users are far more persuasive for attracting new customers, clients or users than anything you can say about your own products or services.

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

Customer testimonials and reviews are a terrific way to build credibility for your business.

Research conducted by leading marketing research firms all lead to the same conclusion: adding consumer reviews and customer testimonials to your sales information pages helps to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about buying a particular product, helps users select products and helps increase sales conversions.

Below are just some of the findings available to support this:

• According to research 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 produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
• Website 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 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).

(Above figures sourced from eConsultancy.com)

Adding Customer Reviews – Online Reputation Management

Adding great testimonials and reviews to your site from clients who are thrilled with the results they’ve obtained by using your services is essential for helping you grow your business online.

Testimonials and consumer reviews, however, can work both ways and affect your business both positive and negative ways.

You see, people may not be saying bad things about your products directly to your face, but they could post negative feedback on Facebook about an unpleasant experience they’ve just had with your business 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 important to your online success.

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

See this article to learn more about a plugin for WordPress users that can help you avoid the escalation of negative reviews about your products through effective user review management:

• Manage Your Online Reputation Easily With Power Online Reviews Plugin

Improving Your Conversions With User Testimonials – Useful Tips

User reviews, testimonials, 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 responses from users in your content, you:

• Show others exactly what problems and pains your products and services can solve for them and how easily it can do this.
• Help 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 practical tips on creating compelling testimonials:

• Don’t over edit: You should try using your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leaving grammatical errors and misspelt words in the content helps to keep it ‘real’.
• Use real photos: Marketing tests show that using images of people’s faces draws the most attention of visitors on a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews will help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your content.
• Tell a powerful story: Stories are far more powerful and memorable than simply providing facts and statistics. Being able to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution came to the rescue will make a longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than using generalized statements about excellent support and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
• Use it in context: It’s good to add customer testimonials to your web content where it makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help you sell your point. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s perception by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution can be purchased for before posting pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before discussing the benefits of your services, or testimonials where clients are truly thrilled about your customer service before offering guarantees or addressing objections.
• Quantify the information: Which of the following statements is more powerful… “Since installing your XYZ solution, we were able to grow our profits by an additional $12,416 in the previous financial quarter,” or “XYZ product helped us grow our sales?” Whenever possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable results, like how much your solution helped to increase their profits 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 in a recent 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 a little difficult when you are just starting out or have very few clients, it’s best to avoid using the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your site. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more 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 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 can relate to can be 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 content across different platforms. If you get great feedback on your Facebook page praising your products or services, contact them privately asking for permission to reprint the content on your site.
• Never use fake client testimonials. Your potential customers need to believe that the testimonials provided on your site are real. Don’t compromise your credibility with a ”made up” testimonial.

How To Get Testimonials From Clients

Always Ask For Testimonials

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

Here are some tips for requesting testimonials:

• Contact your clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 14 days with an email request for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after completing your service.
• Include a field for entering testimonials in all your client satisfaction surveys.
• Take out your phone next time you meet with a client or hand over a finished job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very quick video testimonial/feedback interview. During your video, explain to your viewers what you have done for the client and capture their positive reactions and feedback.
• Make it easy for them. If 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 use these to create a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to publish it. Explain that you have already prepared something to save them time and invite them to change what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.

Offer To Post A Link Back To Their Site

Offer to add a link to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive to get clients to provide a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real and can be verified.

Include Testimonial Requests In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages

If you have a list of subscribers, include a request for a testimonial in a regularly-spaced email broadcast. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to use your product, service or solution. Use words like “I need your help” in the subject of your message and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking users for honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to request testimonials for your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your website (and offer to add a link back to their website in exchange).

Create A Testimonials Section

Create a new page for client testimonials and add a “more client testimonials …” link to your main testimonials page throughout 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. A great tool for observing what visitors are doing on your pages are “heatmaps”.

We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your sites to predict visitor behavior here:

• Understanding User Behavior On Your WordPress Site Using Analytics Software – HeatMap Tracker Review

Testimonial Plugins For WordPress

If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to add, edit and display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add a form to your pages where users can submit testimonials.

Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (remember to provide simple instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), all you have to do is refer users to your “Testimonials” section.

Check out the plugins below:

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is an easy-to-use free plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into posts and pages using a shortcode. The plugin also lets you add a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which you can use to add a photo of the testimonial author, a logo, etc.

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

To download and use the plugin, visit this site:

• Easy Testimonials – WordPress Testimonials Plugin

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your website. You can insert testimonials via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and have multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.

The plugin makes plenty of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in functions SEO functionality and technical support.

To download and use the plugin, go here:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This is a premium WP plugin that provides plenty of great features right out of the box, including:

• Responsive design that resizes to display correctly on any device or browser.
• Display your testimonials in a widget or as slideshows, sliders, list layout, grid layout, etc. via a shortcode
• Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customize font and background colours, font types and more.

Go here to download the plugin:

• Testimonials WordPress Plugin

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

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Summary …

Client testimonials and customer 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 website.

Additional Info

The articles below are a great source of information on creating effective testimonials and were also 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 easy-to-digest information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful 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 completely FREE!

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