Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews

Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract new customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? As most small business owners know, that finding new ways of generating new business can be very hard. Just trying to stay in business 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 online and social-driven economy, you just can’t ignore the impact of what potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting comments about your business.

Don’t ignore what your clients may be saying online about your business!

You are also doing your business a disservice if you don’t publish the positive things your customers are saying about your services or products. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be used throughout your content.

In this article, we’ll show you how to convert more visitors into qualified leads with compelling user testimonials.

Testimonials And Customer Reviews

The great, legendary showman and businessman Phineas Taylor P.T. Barnum once stated 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 and effective way of promoting your business. Reviews from your satisfied 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 clearly a source of untapped opportunities for generating new business that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … reviews from your customers!

Customer reviews and testimonials are fantastic for building credibility for your business.

Research conducted by leading marketing research companies all point to the same conclusion: testimonials and user reviews decrease doubts potential customers may have about buying your products or services, help with product selection and help increase sales.

Here are just some findings that support this:

• According to research by eVoc Insights, a company 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 consumer reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
• Website 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 Reviews And Testimonials – Managing Online Reputation

You should be adding great testimonials and reviews from happy clients to your website.

User reviews and customer testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both in a negative as well as positive manner.

You see, people may not be saying bad things about your products directly to your face, but they could post unhelpful feedback on Facebook or a discussion 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 important to your online success.

Misconceptions about engaging in online reputation management practices, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need it) may be seriously causing damage to your business without you even realizing this.

See this article to learn more about a simple WordPress plugin that can help to avoid the escalation of negative reviews about your services through effective customer review management:

• Manage Negative Customer Reviews Easily With Power Online Reviews Plugin

Improving Your Sales With Meaningful Testimonials – Useful Tips

User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be added to your content marketing strategy. When you quote responses from users in your content, you:

• Show potential customers exactly what pains and problems your products and services can solve for them and how easily it can do this.
• Help site visitors identify and address their objections.
• Help prospects connect with their motivations and this facilitates moving them further along the sales process.

Here are some useful tips on creating client testimonials:

• Don’t over edit: Try to use your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep things ‘real’.
• Use photos: Images of people’s faces draw attention to your content. Adding photos of your clients 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 effective and memorable 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 longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generic 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 web content 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 by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails 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 ecstatic about your support before offering guarantees 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 to increase our revenue by $71,075 during the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ solution helped us grow our business?” If possible, ask clients to specify quantifiable results when submitting testimonials, like how much your solution helped to increase their market share 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 business quarter, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
• Use different testimonials on your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult if you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, it’s best to avoid using the same testimonial throughout your site’s 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 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 can relate to can be an extremely 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 ideal customers.
• Reprint content across different platforms. If you get fantastic feedback on your Facebook wall praising your commitment to customer satisfaction, send them a message asking for their permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
• Only use real testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing copywriters to produce your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but prospective customers need to believe that the testimonials provided on your site are real. Don’t compromise your integrity with ”made up” testimonials.

How To Get Testimonials

Ask

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 guidelines for requesting testimonials:

• Make a point of contacting customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 30 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after completing your service.
• Include a field for testimonials in all client surveys.
• Take out your phone next time you meet with a client or hand over a finished job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a brief video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording the video, describe to your viewers what you have done for your client and make sure to record their positive reactions and feedback.
• Make it easy and write it 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 juiciest sections (only use what they have given you – don’t put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to use it. Explain that you have done this to save them time and invite them to edit what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.

Offer To Publish A Link Back To The Source

Offer to add a link to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive for clients to provide you with a testimonial. It also makes the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real 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 scheduled auto responder broadcast. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to assess the results of using your product, service or solution. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in the subject of your message and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking subscribers to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature helps you obtain testimonials for your profile. With LinkedIn, 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 their permission to reprint it on your website (you can 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 customer testimonials …” link to your main testimonials page whenever you have displayed new testimonials on your content sections.

Useful Tip: You can measure how effective customer testimonials are by how long visitors remain 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 monitor visitor behavior here:

• How To Spy On Your WordPress Site Users Using HeatMap Tools – Heat Map Tracker Review

WordPress 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 plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you can then send customers to your “Testimonials” section.

Below are a few useful testimonial plugins you can check out:

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is a free WP plugin that lets you add testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into a Page or Post using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you add a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which is great to add a photo of the testimonial author, their business logo, etc.

The Easy Testimonials plugin also comes with a “pro” version that has additional features and plugin support.

Go here to download and use the plugin:

• Easy Testimonials

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your WordPress site. 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 comes with additional features via a premium version, including built-in functions for better search engine results and plugin support.

Visit this site to download and use the plugin:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This is a premium plugin that offers a range of great features right out of the box, including:

• Responsive design that resizes for correct display on any device or browser.
• Display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, grid layout, list 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.

Visit this site to learn more about using this plugin:

• Testimonials Plugin

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

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Summary …

Customer reviews and testimonials 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 feedback, reviews, and testimonials from your customers or clients, and publish positive content about your business on your website or blog.

Resources

The articles below are a great source of information on creating engaging users 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 actionable information that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful 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 100% FREE!

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