How To Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain new customers, only to get the exact same results? As most small business owners know, that finding effective ways to generate new business can be confusing, frustrating and extremely hard. Just trying to keep your business afloat 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, it’s foolish to ignore the impact of what potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting comments about your business.
Ignoring what users may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
You may also be doing your business a disservice if you don’t spread the positive things your customers are saying about your products, services, customer training, support, etc. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of marketing your products and services online and should be included throughout your content.
In this article, we’ll show you how to improve your visitor-to-lead conversions using sales boosting customer testimonials.
Customer Reviews
Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum, the great, legendary showman and successful promoter, 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. Reviews from your existing clients 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 an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … consumer testimonials and reviews!
Customer testimonials and user reviews are a great way to build credibility for your services or products.
Research conducted by many marketing companies all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: adding consumer reviews and testimonials to your sales information pages decreases doubts potential customers may have about purchasing your products, helps users select products and increases the number of product sales.
Below are just some of the statistics 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 web site if it has ratings and user reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, user reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more customer reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Web site visitors who interact with both 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).
(Source: eConsultancy.com)
Adding Customer Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding great testimonials and reviews to your website from clients who are thrilled with your products or services is essential for helping you grow your business.
Customer testimonials and user reviews, however, can work both ways and affect your business both negatively and positively.
People may not be saying bad things about your business directly to you, but they could be posting unhelpful feedback on a discussion group about a bad experience they’ve just had with your services and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes a vitally important aspect of your business success.
Misconceptions about engaging in online reputation management practices, 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 being aware of this.
See this article to learn more about a simple WordPress plugin that can help to avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your business, products or services through effective user review management:
How To Create Client Testimonials – Useful Tips
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content. When you quote responses from clients in your content, you:
- Show prospects exactly what pains and problems 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 aspirations and motivations and facilitate the sales process.
Here are some tips on improving your sales with meaningful testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try using the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep things ‘real’.
- Use photos of real people: Images of people’s faces draw attention to your content. 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 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 far longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generic statements about how “excellent” the support was and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: It’s good to add customer testimonials in your web content 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 perception by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting product pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before discussing the benefits of your services, or testimonials where customers are truly thrilled about your support when offering a risk-free guarantee or providing content designed to help your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify the 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 bottom line by $75,588 in the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ solution helped us grow our business?” Whenever possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable results, like how much your solution helped to increase their market share 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 during a specific 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 repeatedly throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial throughout your website. Depending on the nature of your business, you could try to obtain more testimonials by offering limited review copies of your product, or a special 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 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 targeted to your best audience demographic.
- Reprint across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook page praising your customer service, contact them privately asking for permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Only use genuine client testimonials. Prospective clients need to believe that the testimonials provided on your site are real. Don’t compromise your credibility with false testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Customers
Ask
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 tips for requesting testimonials:
- Make it a part of your business processes to contact clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 60 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after completing your service.
- Add a field for testimonials in client satisfaction surveys.
- Take out your phone next time you visit clients or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a very brief video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording the video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to capture the client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy for them. When 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 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 let them know they are completely free to edit 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 add a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients providing a testimonial. It also makes the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Include A Testimonial Request In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in a scheduled auto responder broadcast. Preferably, this should be done after your clients have had a chance to measure the impact of using your 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 users for feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to request testimonials that become part of your profile. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is simple and user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a positive recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your site (and offer to add a link back to their website in exchange).
Create A Customer Testimonials Section
Create a “Testimonials” page and add a “more client testimonials …” link to this section whenever you are adding small blocks of testimonials on your content sections.
Tip: You can measure how effective customer 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 observing what visitors are doing on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap software you can add to your website to analyze visitor behaviour here:
Using Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If your site or blog is built using WordPress, you can use a plugin to add, edit and display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add forms to your pages where users can submit testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you then send customers to your “Testimonials” page.
Below are some great plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add customer testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into your pages and posts using a shortcode. The plugin also lets you add a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which you can use for adding a photo of the testimonial author, a business logo, etc.
The plugin also provides a “pro” version that has additional features and developer support.
Visit this site to download this plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your WordPress site. You can insert customer testimonials using a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and specify different display options such as random or specific ordering.
Testimonials Widget makes loads of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in functions for improved search engine results and plugin support.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium plugin that offers 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 on top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Customer reviews and client testimonials are great sources of content that 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 start publishing these on your website or blog.
Additional Info
The articles below are a great source of information on creating engaging customer 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 regular training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site 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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