Build 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 generating new customers can be quite difficult. 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-driven economy, ignoring what your customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!

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

By the same token, you are also doing your business a disservice if you are not promoting the positive things your clients say about your products, solutions, customer support, training, etc. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective ways of marketing your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content.

In this article, you’ll learn tips for turning more visitors into prospects using powerful user testimonials.

Testimonials And Client Reviews

P.T. Barnum, the great, legendary 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 way of getting your business promoted effectively. Genuine reviews and testimonials from your existing customers are far more persuasive for drawing new clients than anything you say about your own products or services.

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

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

Research conducted by leading marketing firms all lead to the same conclusion: user reviews and testimonials decrease doubts potential customers may have about purchasing products or services that you are trying to sell, help with product selection and increases sales.

Here are just some of the findings available to 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 web site if it has ratings and consumer reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, customer reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more customer reviews per product can result in a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
• Web 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).
• 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 Client Reviews – Managing Online Reputation

You should be adding reviews and testimonials from happy customers to your website.

Reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and impact your business both negative and positive ways.

You see, people may not be saying bad things about your services directly to you, but they could post unhelpful comments on a discussion thread about a bad 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 a vitally important aspect of 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 to worry about it) could be causing damage to your business without you even realizing this.

See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective plugin for WordPress users that lets you legally and ethically manage customer reviews:

• Managing Bad Customer Reviews With Power Online Reviews WordPress Plugin

Tips For Creating Powerful Testimonials

Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive when it comes to helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be included in your content. When you quote your own client responses in your content, you:

• Show potential customers exactly what pains and problems your products and services can solve for them and how easily it can do this.
• Help site visitors identify their objections and address these.
• Help prospects connect with their aspirations and motivations and this facilitates moving them closer to a buying decision.

Below are some practical tips on improving your conversions with compelling testimonials:

• Don’t over edit: You should try using your customer’s actual words as much as possible. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
• Use photos: It’s a proven fact that using images of people’s faces will draw the attention of visitors on a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews can help increase visitor engagement with your content.
• Tell a powerful story: Stories are far more powerful and captivating than simply providing statistical facts. The ability 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 service and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
• Use it in context: It’s good to add testimonials in 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 can create 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 talking about the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are truly thrilled about your support when offering guarantees or addressing objections.
• Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would consider to be more powerful: “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping us grow our sales by $62,922 in the previous financial quarter,” or “XYZ solution 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 they have saved, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate in a recent 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 testimonial throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult if you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your website. 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 clients in exchange for an honest review and permission to publish it if you decide to use it.
• Appeal to your ideal customer: 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 a really 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 you get great feedback on your Facebook wall praising your business, send them a message asking for their 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 their content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your potential customers need to believe that the testimonials you provide on your site are real. Don’t compromise your credibility with a false testimonial.

How To Get Testimonials

Just Ask

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 soliciting testimonials from your clients:

• Make it a part of your business processes to contact customers after 30 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after completing a service.
• Include a field for entering testimonials in your client surveys.
• Take out your phone when you next visit clients or hand over a finished project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they would be happy to record a quick video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording your video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and capture their positive reactions and feedback.
• Make it easy and write the testimonial for them. When a client sends 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 – don’t put words into their mouth), and use these to create 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 help them save time and let them know they are completely free to change what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.

Offer To Post A Link To The Source Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial

Offer to post a link to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great 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 a request for a testimonial in a scheduled email broadcast. This should be done as soon as your customers have had a chance to use your products. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking users for feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature helps you obtain testimonials for your account. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite 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 (you can offer to add a link back to their profile in exchange).

Create A Testimonials Page

Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “read more testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials section wherever you are displaying single testimonials on your content sections.

Practical Tip: You can measure how useful testimonials are by how long visitors stay 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 a heatmap software you can add to your sites to monitor visitor behavior here:

• How To Measure Visitor Behavior On Your WordPress Site With HeatMap Tools – Heat Map Tracker Review

Using WordPress Plugins

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

Once your plugin is installed and set up (remember to provide simple instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you can then send users to your “Testimonials” page.

Check out the plugins below:

Easy Testimonials

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

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

Visit this site to download this plugin:

• Easy Testimonials – WordPress Testimonials Plugin

Testimonials Widget

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

Testimonials Widget makes loads more features available via a premium version, including built-in functions for better search engine results and plugin support.

Go here to download this plugin:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This premium WordPress plugin provides many great features right out of the box, including:

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

For more information about the plugin, visit this site:

• Testimonials Plugin

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

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Conclusion …

Testimonials and user reviews are powerful sources of content that can 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 existing clients or customers, and publish positive content about your business on your website.

Additional Info

The articles below are a great source of information on 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 easy-to-digest information that will show you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful 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 100% FREE!

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