Building Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract new customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? As most business owners know, that finding effective ways to generate new customers can be very hard and confusing. Just trying to stay in business takes a lot of your 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 simply can’t afford to ignore the impact of online consumer behavior, especially if they are posting negative comments about your business.
Don’t ignore what users may be saying online about your business!
You are also doing your business a disservice if you are not spreading the positive things your clients say about your services or products. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive when it comes to marketing your products and services online and should be added to your content marketing.
In this article, you’ll learn how to convert more visitors into prospects with sales boosting user testimonials.
Testimonials And Customer Reviews
Legendary American showman and businessman P.T. Barnum is often quoted as having said that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum understood the power of “social proof”. Social proof-based content is a powerful way of getting your business promoted effectively. Quoting testimonials and reviews from your satisfied users is satisfied clients are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new clients than anything you say about your own products or services.
There is clearly an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most small businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … client reviews and testimonials!
Reviews and testimonials are fantastic for building credibility for your services and products.
Studies conducted by marketing firms all seem to point to the same inevitable conclusion: user reviews and testimonials eliminate doubts potential customers may have about your products, help users select products and help increase sales.
Below are just some of the stats available to support this:
- According to research 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, consumer reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can result in a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Web 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 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).
(The figures above were sourced from eConsultancy.com)
Adding Client Reviews – Online Reputation Management
You should be adding positive reviews and testimonials from clients who have experienced positive results with your business to your website.
Reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both in a positive or negative manner.
People may not be saying bad things about your products directly to you, but they could be posting disparaging remarks on a forum about a bad encounter they’ve just had with one of your sales or customer support representatives 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 business 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 it) may be causing damage to your business without you even realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a tool for WordPress users that lets you legally and ethically manage your customer feedback:
Tips On How To Create Testimonials
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive 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. When you include your own customer responses in your content, you:
- Show potential customers exactly with similar problems and pains how your products and services can help them.
- Help prospects identify and address their objections.
- Help potential customers connect with their motivations and aspirations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Here are some tips on improving your sales conversions with testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: Try to use the actual words used by your customers as much as you can. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep it ‘real’.
- Use photos of real people: Marketing tests show that using images of people’s faces draws the most attention of visitors on a web page. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews can help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your content.
- Tell a story: Stories are so much more powerful and captivating 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 far more lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generalized statements about how “excellent” your service was 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 testimonials to your web content where it best makes sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help sell your point. For example, think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s perception if you were to add a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before discussing the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are genuinely thrilled about your support before offering a money-back guarantee or addressing objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would consider to be more powerful… “As a direct result of using your services, we have grown our sales by an additional $94,912 in the last fiscal year,” or “XYZ software definitely 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 profits 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 customer testimonials on your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial throughout your web pages. 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 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 ideal customer: As every infomercial featuring a celebrity endorsement, subject expert or “busy mom” knows, if you know who your ideal customer is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects can relate to is a 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 commitment to customer satisfaction, send them a message asking for their permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Only use genuine testimonials. Most people can tell if you are employing copywriters to create your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your potential clients need to see that the testimonials displayed on your site are real. Don’t compromise your integrity with false testimonials.
How To Get Customer Testimonials
Always Ask For Testimonials
If you have just completed performing a service, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.
Follow these useful guidelines for soliciting testimonials:
- Contact customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 90 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after performing a service.
- Add a field for entering testimonials in client satisfaction surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you meet with clients or hand over a completed 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 your viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to capture your client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy and write it 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 juiciest sections (only use what they have written – don’t 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 invite them to modify what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Post A Link Back To The Source Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial
Offer to add a link back to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive to get clients to provide 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 a request for a testimonial in a periodic email broadcast. Preferably, this should be done after your clients have had a chance to assess the results of using your solution. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in the subject of your email and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking them to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you solicit testimonials that become part of your account. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a positive recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your site (once again, you can offer to publish a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Section
Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “more customer testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials section throughout your site.
Practical Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your user testimonials by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added the testimonial content. A great tool for understanding what visitors are doing on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap analytics software you can add to your site to predict visitor behavior here:
Testimonial Plugins
If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add forms to your pages inviting users to submit 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 send users to your “Testimonials” section.
Here are a few useful WordPress testimonial 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 testimonials into posts and pages using a shortcode. The plugin also lets you publish a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which you can use to add a photo of the testimonial author, a company logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also provides a “pro” version that offers additional features and plugin support.
To download and use the plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with videos or images on your web 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 has loads more features available via a premium version, including built-in options for improved search engine results and plugin support.
For more information about using this plugin, visit this site:
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 for displaying correctly on any device or browser.
- Display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, grid layout, list layout, etc. via a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customize font and background colors, font types and more.
Go here for more information about this plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Summary …
Client testimonials and customer 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 your clients, and publish positive content about your business on your website or blog.
Resources
The articles below provide useful 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 and practical tips that will show exactly 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. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!
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