How To Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain new customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? Most business owners don’t need to be told that finding effective ways of generating new customers can be quite hard and frustrating. Just trying to remain in business requires a lot of time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.
In today’s digital and social-driven economy, it’s foolish to ignore the significance of online consumer behavior, especially if they are posting negative comments about your business.
Don’t ignore what clients may be saying online about your business!
By the same token, you could be doing your business a great disservice if you are not promoting the positive things your clients are saying about your services and products. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be included as part of your content.
In this article, we’ll show you how to improve your visitor-to-sales conversions with highly effective client testimonials.
Testimonials And Consumer Reviews
Legendary American 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”. Using social proof as content is a powerful way of getting your business promoted effectively. Reviews quoted directly from satisfied clients are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new customers than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is an untapped source of business growth potential that most businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … reviews from your existing users!
User reviews and testimonials are a great way to build credibility for your business.
Research conducted by many leading marketing firms all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: testimonials and user reviews decrease doubts potential customers may have about purchasing products or services, help with product selection and help increase sales.
Below are just some statistics 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 site if it has ratings and consumer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, consumer reviews result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user 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 Customer Reviews And Testimonials – Online Reputation Management
You should be adding positive testimonials and reviews from satisfied clients who have experienced positive results with your business to your site.
Reviews and customer testimonials, however, can work both ways and impact your business both positively or negatively.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your products directly to your face, but they could be posting negative comments on Facebook or a forum about a bad encounter they’ve just had with one of your staff members and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes an integral part of your success strategy.
Misconceptions about online reputation management, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need to worry about it) could be harming your business without you even being aware of it.
See this article to learn more about a tool for WordPress users that lets you legally and ethically manage user feedback:
Improving Your Sales With Client Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive when it comes to marketing your products and services online and should be included as part of your content. When you include responses from clients in your content, you:
- Show potential customers exactly with similar problems and pains what your products and services can do for them.
- Help site visitors identify and address their objections.
- Help potential customers connect with their motivations and facilitate moving them closer to a decision to purchase.
Below are some practical tips on how to create sales boosting testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: Try using 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 real photos: Marketing studies show that using images of people’s faces will draw the most attention of visitors on a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews will help increase visitor engagement with your content.
- Use the power of storytelling: Stories are far more powerful and memorable than providing mere statistical facts. Being able 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 generic statements about excellent customer support and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: It’s good to add customer testimonials in your web content where it best makes sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help sell your point. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s mind if you were to insert a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting your product or service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before presenting the benefits of your services, or testimonials where customers are truly ecstatic about your customer service when offering guarantees or providing content designed to help readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping us grow our revenue by $65,465 during the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ product has 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 profits 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, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Vary the testimonials throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult when you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial everywhere on your site. Depending on the nature of your business, you could try to obtain more user 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 choose to use it.
- Appeal to your best 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 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 appeal directly to your best audience demographic.
- Reprint testimonials across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook page praising your products or services, contact them privately asking for permission to reprint the comment or post on your blog.
- Only use real client testimonials. Your potential customers need to believe that the testimonials published on your site are real. Don’t destroy your reputation with a ”made up” testimonial.
How To Get Testimonials From Clients
Ask
Getting a testimonial from a happy client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Follow these tips for soliciting testimonials:
- Make a point of contacting customers after 60 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after completing a service.
- Add a text box for testimonials in client surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you visit a client or hand over a finished job and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they would be happy to record a very brief video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording your video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to capture the client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy for them. If clients send you a positive email thanking you for a great service 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 shape these into a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have already prepared something to help them save time and let them know they are completely free to modify what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Post A Link To Their Site
Offer to add a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive for clients to provide a testimonial. It also makes an 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 one of your newsletter messages. This should be done after your clients have had a chance to experience your services. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking them for feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you solicit testimonials that become part of your account. 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 site (once again, you can offer to add a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Customer Testimonials Page On Your Site
Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “more customer testimonials …” link to this section wherever you have added single testimonials on your site.
Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your customer 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 monitoring what visitors are doing on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap analytics technology you can add to your website to understand visitor behavior here:
- How To Measure User Behaviour On Your WordPress Site With Analytics Software – HeatMapTracker Review
Useful WordPress Testimonial Plugins
If your website or blog is built using WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages where users can submit testimonials.
Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you then refer users to your “Testimonials” page.
Check out the plugins below:
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 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 images with testimonials, which is great to add a photo of the testimonial author, their logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also provides users with a “pro” version that offers additional features and technical support.
To download the plugin, go here:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your website. You can insert testimonials via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and specify different display options such as random or specific ordering.
The plugin makes plenty of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and developer support.
To download this plugin, visit this site:
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 displaying correctly on any device or browser.
- Display options for 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 testimonials, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customize font and background colours, font types and more.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Summary …
Customer reviews and testimonials are great sources of content that help your business add credibility, build authority, improve online reputation, and grow your sales funnel. Always ask for feedback, reviews, and testimonials from existing customers, and publish positive content about your business on your site.
Additional Info
The articles below are a great source of 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 actionable information that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
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