Building Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews

Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that finding effective ways to generate new business can be difficult. Just trying to survive 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 web-based and social-driven economy, ignoring what consumers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!

Ignoring what clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!

By the same token, you could be doing your business a great disservice if you don’t publish the positive things your customers are saying about your services or products. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be used in your content marketing.

In this article, you will learn ways to achieve better results online with captivating user testimonials.

Testimonials And Client Reviews

The great American showman and successful promoter P.T. Barnum once stated that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”

P.T. Barnum obviously understood the power of “social proof”. Social proof-driven content is a powerful and effective way of getting your business promoted. Genuine reviews from existing users are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new customers than anything you say about your own products or services.

There is clearly an untapped source of business growth potential that most small businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … reviews from your users!

Testimonials and reviews are fantastic for building credibility for your services or products.

Research conducted by many marketing firms all seem to point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding reviews and customer testimonials to your sales information helps decrease doubts potential customers may have about buying a particular product or service, helps with product selection and helps increase conversions of visitors into 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 customer reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, consumer reviews can produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more customer reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
• 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).

(Above figures sourced from eConsultancy.com)

Adding Client Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation

Adding positive testimonials and reviews to your site from people who are delighted with the results they’ve obtained by using your services is important for helping you grow your business online and creating a solid online reputation.

Reviews and customer testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both in a positive and negative manner.

People may not be saying bad things about your business directly to you, but they could be posting negative comments on a discussion thread about an unpleasant encounter they’ve just had with one of your team members 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 being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need it) could be causing damage to your business without you even being aware of this.

See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective WordPress plugin that can help to avoid the escalation of negative reviews about your business, products or services through effective user review management:

• Managing Negative User Feedback With Power Online Reviews Plugin

Improving Your Conversions With Testimonials – Useful Tips

User reviews, testimonials, 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 marketing strategy. When you quote 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 potential customers identify and address their objections.
• Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and facilitate moving them closer to a buying decision.

Below are some practical tips on improving your sales conversions with effective user 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 keep your testimonials ‘real’.
• Use photos: Research shows that using images of people’s faces draws the attention of visitors browsing a web page. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews can help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
• Tell a powerful story: Stories are much more powerful and captivating than providing mere facts and statistics. Being able to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution came to the rescue will make a longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generic statements about excellent service 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 customer 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 will have on your visitor’s mind if you were to add a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting product pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before discussing the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are genuinely thrilled about your support when offering a risk-free guarantee or addressing objections.
• Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “As a direct result of using your services, our profits grew by $16,047 in the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ product helped us grow our business?” Whenever possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable data, like how much your solution helped to increase their profits or reduce their costs in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours 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 or have very few clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your web pages. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more user 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 target audience: 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 aspire to become can be 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 you get a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your customer service, ask them permission to reprint the content on your blog.
• Only use real client testimonials. Your prospects need to see that the testimonials published on your site are real. Don’t compromise your integrity or reputation with a false testimonial.

How To Get Testimonials From Clients

Always Ask For Testimonials

If you have just completed a service for someone, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.

Follow these useful tips for soliciting testimonials:

• Make a point of contacting clients after 30 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after completing a service.
• Include a field for testimonials in all your client surveys.
• Pull out your phone next time you visit a client or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very brief video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording the video, describe to your viewers what you have done for the client and capture the 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 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 save them time and invite them to modify what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.

Offer To Post A Link To Their Site Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial

Offer to publish a link to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great 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.

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 periodic email broadcast. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your clients have had a chance to experience your services. Use words like “I need your help” 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 is a great way to solicit testimonials for 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 recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your website (tip: offer to publish a link back to their website or profile in exchange).

Create A Customer Testimonials Page

Create a new page for customer testimonials and place a “more testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials page throughout your site.

Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of client testimonials by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. A great tool for measuring what visitors are doing on your site are “heatmaps”.

We have written an article about a heatmap technology you can add to your sites to track visitor behavior here:

• Tracking User Behavior On Your WordPress Site With Analytics Software – Heat Map Tracker Review

Using Testimonial Plugins

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

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

Check out the testimonial plugins below:

Easy Testimonials

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

The plugin also can be upgraded to a “pro” version that offers additional features and developer support.

To download this plugin, go here:

• Easy Testimonials – WordPress Plugin

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your pages and posts. You can insert 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 provides extra features via a premium version, including built-in options for better search engine results and plugin support.

Visit this site for more information about using the plugin:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This premium WP plugin 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, customize font and background colours, font types and more.

To download and use the plugin, go here:

• Testimonials Plugin

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

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Summary …

Testimonials and user reviews are powerful 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 existing customers, and start publishing these on your web site.

Resources

The articles below provide useful information about creating effective 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 easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your 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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