Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews

Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain new customers, and getting the exact same results? As most business owners know, that generating new customers can be extremely difficult and confusing. Just trying to remain in business takes up 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-driven economy, you simply can’t afford to ignore the impact of online consumer behavior, especially if they are talking about your business.

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

You are also doing your business a great disservice if you are not spreading the positive things your clients say about your products, services, user support, etc. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful ways of marketing your products and services online and should be included in your content.

In this article, you’ll discover how to improve your visitor-to-lead conversions using standout client testimonials.

Consumer Reviews

Phineas Taylor P.T. Barnum, legendary showman, once said 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. Testimonials and reviews quoted directly from satisfied customers are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new customers, clients or users than anything you can say about your own products or services.

There is clearly an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … reviews and testimonials from your satisfied users!

Customer testimonials and reviews are a powerful way to build credibility for your services or products.

Research conducted by leading marketing research firms all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: testimonials and user reviews eliminate doubts potential customers may have about purchasing products or solutions that you are trying to sell, help users select products and help increase sales conversions.

Here are just some findings that support this:

• According to a study 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 user reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, customer reviews can produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more 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).
• 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).

(The figures above were sourced from eConsultancy.com)

Adding Customer Reviews And Testimonials – Managing Online Reputation

Adding great reviews and testimonials to your website from very satisfied clients is essential for helping you grow your business online.

Customer testimonials and reviews, 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 business, products or services directly to you, but they could have posted disparaging remarks on Facebook about a bad encounter they’ve just had with one of your representatives and this could be costing you business.

This is where online reputation management becomes a vital aspect of your 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 really don’t need to worry about it) could be hurting your business without you even realizing it.

See this article to learn more about a tool for WordPress users that can help you avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your business through effective customer review management:

• Manage Bad Client Reviews Easily With Power Online Reviews Plugin

How To Create User Testimonials – Useful Tips

Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be used in your content marketing. When you include responses from clients in your content, you:

• Show other users exactly what problems and pains your products and services can solve for them and how easily this can be done.
• Help potential customers identify their objections and address these.
• Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and this facilitates moving them further along the sales process.

Here are some practical tips on how to create customer testimonials:

• Avoid over-editing: You should try to use the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leaving little grammatical errors and misspellings in the content helps preserve your testimonials’ authenticity.
• Use real photos: Research shows that using images of people’s faces will draw the 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 site’s content.
• Use the power of storytelling: Stories are so much more powerful and memorable than simply providing facts and statistics. The ability 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 generalized statements about excellent customer support and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
• Keep it in context: Add customer testimonials to your web content where it best makes sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help 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 can be purchased for before posting product or service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before discussing the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are genuinely thrilled about your support 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 increasing our net profit by $70,241 in the last fiscal year,” or “XYZ software definitely helped us grow our business?” Whenever possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable results, like how much your solution helped to increase their sales or reduce their costs by 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 in a recent financial period, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
• Use different customer testimonials throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult if you are just starting out or have very few clients, try to avoid displaying the same testimonial throughout your site’s pages. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more client testimonials by offering limited review copies of your product, or a special launch discount for clients in exchange for an honest review and permission to publish it if you decide 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 target audience 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 speak directly to your best audience demographic.
• Reprint across different platforms. If you get great feedback on your Facebook page praising your business, send them a message asking for permission to reprint the content on your blog.
• Don’t use fake client testimonials. Many people can see through sites that employ copywriters to write content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your potential customers need to see that the testimonials published on your site are real. Don’t compromise your credibility or reputation with a ”made up” 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 tips for soliciting testimonials:

• Contact clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 30 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after completing your service.
• Add a field for testimonials in all your client surveys.
• Pull out your phone when you next visit 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 very quick video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording your video, describe to your viewers what you have done for your client and capture the client’s positive reactions and responses.
• Make it easy for them. When clients send 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 the client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have done this to save them time and let them know they are completely free to change what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.

Offer To Post A Link To Their Site

Offer to post a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients to provide you with a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real and can be verified.

Add Testimonial Requests To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages

If you have a subscriber list, include a request for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder messages. This should be done after your clients have had a chance to use your product, service or solution. 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 to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to request testimonials for your account. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your website (you can offer to publish a link back to their website in exchange).

Create A Client Testimonials Page On Your Site

Create a new page for customer testimonials and add a “more testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials section wherever you plan to display new 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. ”Heatmapping” technology is a great way to understanding visitor behaviour on your site.

We have written an article about a heatmap technology you can add to your website to observe visitor behaviour here:

• Understanding User Behavior On Your WordPress Site With HeatMap Tools – HeatMap Tracker Review

Testimonial Plugins For WordPress

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

Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), all you have to do is send clients to your “Testimonials” page.

Check out the WordPress testimonial plugins below:

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add customer 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 testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which you can use 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.

For more information about this plugin, go here:

• Easy Testimonials – WordPress Plugin

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free WordPress plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with videos or images on your pages and posts. You can insert testimonials content 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 makes plenty more features available via a premium version, including built-in functions for improved search engine results and technical support.

Go here to download the plugin:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

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

• Responsive design that resizes to display correctly on any device or browser.
• Options to display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, grid layout, list layout, etc. via a shortcode
• Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.

Visit this site for more information about using this plugin:

• Testimonials WordPress Plugin

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

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Conclusion …

Customer reviews and testimonials are great 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, and publish positive content about your business on your site.

Additional Info

For additional resources about creating effective customer testimonials read the articles below:

• 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 and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your site 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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