How To Build 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 disappointing results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that trying to generate new customers can be very hard. Just trying to keep your business afloat requires a lot of your 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!
Ignoring what your customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
You could be doing your business a disservice if you don’t spread the positive things your clients are saying about your products, solutions, user support, training, etc. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be included as part of your content marketing strategy.
In this article, you will learn how to improve your visitor-to-lead conversions using more effective client testimonials.
Client Reviews
The great American showman P.T. Barnum once stated that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum 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 satisfied customers are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new customers than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is a source of untapped opportunities for generating new business that most businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … reviews and testimonials from your users!
Testimonials and customer reviews are fantastic for building credibility for your business.
Marketing studies conducted by many leading research companies all point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding customer testimonials and user reviews to your sales information pages helps to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about buying products or solutions that you are trying to sell, helps users select products and increases conversions of visitors into sales.
Below are just some findings that support this:
- According to research findings 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 site if it has ratings and reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, user reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can translate into 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).
(Above figures sourced from eConsultancy.com)
Adding Client Reviews And Testimonials – Online Reputation Management
Clearly, you should be adding great testimonials and reviews from existing clients who have experienced positive results with your business to your website.
Consumer reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and impact your business both positively and negatively.
People may not be saying bad things about your services directly to your face, but they could be posting negative comments on Facebook or a discussion thread about a bad experience they’ve just had with your business and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes important to your online business success.
Misconceptions about online reputation management, such as the process 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 realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a WordPress plugin that can help you avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your products through effective customer review management:
Creating Client Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be included as part of your content marketing. When you quote responses from clients in your content, you:
- Show other users 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 aspirations and motivations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Here are some useful tips on creating standout client testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: Try using the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leaving little grammatical errors and misspellings in the content helps preserve your testimonials’ authenticity.
- Use photos of real people: Images of people’s faces draw the most attention on a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews can help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
- Tell a story: Stories are far more powerful and captivating than just 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 service and giving “two thumbs up” product 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 makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help to 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 price information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before discussing the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are genuinely ecstatic about your support when offering guarantees 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 growing our net profit by $83,068 in the last fiscal year,” or “XYZ solution definitely helped us grow our business?” Whenever possible, ask clients to specify quantifiable results when submitting testimonials, like how much your solution helped to increase their sales or reduce their costs by in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours they have saved, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate during a specific period, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Vary the client testimonials on your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult if you are just starting out and have very few clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial throughout your site. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more customer 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 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 best customer is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects can relate to is a very 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 you get great feedback on your Facebook wall praising your commitment to customer satisfaction, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the content on your site.
- Only use real client testimonials. Your prospects need to see that the testimonials displayed on your site are genuine. Don’t destroy your reputation with a ”made up” testimonial.
How To Get Testimonials From Customers
Ask For Testimonials
Getting a testimonial from a happy client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Follow these useful tips for soliciting testimonials from your clients:
- Make a point of contacting customers after 14 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after performing a service.
- Add a field for testimonials in all client satisfaction surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you meet with clients or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a short video testimonial/feedback interview. During your video, explain to viewers what you have done for your client and make sure to capture your client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy and write it for them. If a client sends you positive written feedback 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 done this to help them save time and let them know they are completely free to edit what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link To Their Site Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to post a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients providing you with a testimonial. It also makes the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Include Testimonial Requests In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in a regularly-spaced email message. Preferably, this should be done as soon as your clients have had a chance to assess the results of using your solution. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking customers to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature allows you to solicit testimonials from other members for your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is simple and user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your website (and offer to publish a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Page
Create a new section for client testimonials and add a “read more customer testimonials …” link to your main testimonials section wherever you plan to display single testimonials on your content sections.
Tip: You can measure how useful user testimonials are by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added the testimonial content. A great tool for measuring what visitors are doing on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap analytics technology you can add to your sites to observe 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 a form to your pages where users can submit feedback and testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (remember to provide simple instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you then refer customers to your “Testimonials” section.
Here are a few useful plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is an easy-to-use free plugin that lets you add user testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed them into posts and pages using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you publish a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which can be used to add a photo of the testimonial author, their company logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also provides a “pro” version that offers additional features and developer support.
To learn more about using this plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your web site. You can insert user testimonials using a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and have multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.
Testimonials Widget has loads of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in functions SEO functionality and plugin support.
Visit this site to learn more about using this plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium 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 sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customize font and background colours, font types and more.
Go here to download the plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Summary …
User reviews and testimonials are great 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 customers, and start publishing these on your website.
Resources
The articles below are a great source of information about creating engaging users 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 actionable information and practical tips that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
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