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 customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that finding new ways of generating new customers can be difficult. Just trying to survive in business requires 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 media-driven economy, you cannot afford to ignore the impact of what potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting negative comments about your business.
Don’t ignore what your clients may be saying online about your business!
You may also be doing your business a great disservice if you don’t promote the positive things your clients say about your services and products. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be used in your content marketing strategy.
In this article, we’ll show you how to create better results online using more effective client testimonials.
Testimonials And Consumer Reviews
The great American businessman and showman Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum 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 and effective way of getting your business promoted. Reviews and testimonials from your satisfied users are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new clients, customers or users than anything you have to say about your own products or services.
There is a source of untapped opportunities for generating new business that most small businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … consumer testimonials and reviews!
Testimonials and reviews are terrific for building credibility for your business.
Studies conducted by many leading marketing firms all lead to the same conclusion: adding customer testimonials and reviews to your sales information helps decrease doubts potential customers may have about buying your products or services, helps users select products and increases sales conversions.
Here are just some of the findings available to support this:
- According to a study 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 web site if it has ratings and user reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, customer reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Site visitors who interact with both user 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).
(Source: eConsultancy.com)
Adding User Testimonials And Reviews – Online Reputation Management
You should be adding testimonials and reviews from clients who have experienced positive results with your business to your website.
Customer testimonials and reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can impact your business both negative and positive ways.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business, products or services directly to your face, but they could be posting disparaging remarks on Facebook or a forum thread about an unpleasant experience they’ve just had with your business and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes an important aspect of your online success.
Misconceptions about online reputation management, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need it) may be seriously hurting your business without you even being aware of it.
See this article to learn more about a simple plugin for WordPress users that allows you to legally and ethically manage user feedback:
Tips For Creating Testimonials
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be added to your content marketing. When you include your own user responses in your content, you:
- Show potential customers exactly what problems and pains your products and services can help to solve for them and how easily it can do this.
- Help prospects identify their objections and address these.
- Help potential customers connect with their motivations and aspirations and facilitate the sales process.
Here are some tips on improving your conversions with user testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: Try to use your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leaving grammatical errors and misspelt words in the content helps preserve your testimonials’ authenticity.
- Use photos of real people: Marketing studies 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 can help increase visitor engagement with your content.
- Tell a story: Stories are so much more effective and captivating than simply providing facts and statistics. The ability to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution came to the rescue will make a more lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting 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: It’s good to add testimonials in your site copy 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 mind by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution can be purchased for before posting your pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before discussing the benefits of your services, or testimonials where customers are genuinely ecstatic about your support when offering a risk-free guarantee or addressing objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would find more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping us grow our profits by $94,541 during the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ solution has helped us grow our business?” Whenever possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable data, like how much your solution helped to increase their sales 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, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Use different client testimonials on your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out or don’t have many clients, try to avoid displaying the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your site’s pages. Depending on your business, 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 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 is a really 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 best audience demographic.
- Reprint testimonials across different platforms. If someone publishes a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your customer service, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
- Only use genuine client testimonials. Many people can see through sites that employ copywriters to create content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your prospects need to see that the testimonials published on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your credibility or reputation with false testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Your Clients
Just Ask
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied customer can be as simple as just asking for it.
Here are some useful guidelines for requesting testimonials from your clients:
- Contact clients after 60 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after performing a service.
- Add a field for testimonials in all your client surveys.
- Take out your phone when you next meet with clients or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a quick video testimonial/feedback interview. During your video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and try to capture the client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy and write it for them. If 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 best sections (only use what they have given you – never put words into their mouth), and use these to create 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 edit what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Post A Link Back To Their Site
Offer to publish a link back 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.
Add Testimonial Requests To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in one of your newsletter messages. Preferably, this should be done after your customers have had a chance to experience your products or services. 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 customers for honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you obtain testimonials from other members that become part of 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 positive recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your website (you can offer to publish a link back to their website in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Page
Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “read more customer testimonials …” link to this page throughout your content sections.
Useful Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of user 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 a heatmap technology you can add to your website to observe visitor behavior here:
Using WordPress Plugins
If your site or blog is built using WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add a form to your pages inviting users to submit feedback and testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you then refer clients to your “Testimonials” section.
Below are some great plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed them into your pages and posts using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you insert a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which can be used for adding a photo of the testimonial author, a business logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also provides users with a “pro” version with additional features and plugin support.
Go here to download the plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WordPress plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, 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 plugin offers added features via a premium version, including built-in functions SEO functionality and technical support.
For more information about using this plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium plugin offers plenty of 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, list layout, grid layout, etc. via a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customized font and background colors, font types and more.
To download and use the plugin, go here:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Client 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 web site.
Resources
For additional information about creating engaging testimonials see these useful 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 actionable information that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
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