Building Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews

Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract new customers, and getting the exact same results? As most business owners know, that finding new ways of generating new business can be difficult. Just trying to keep your business afloat 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 digital and social-driven economy, ignoring what customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!

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

By the same token, you are also doing your business a disservice if you don’t promote 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 market and promote your products and services online and should be included throughout your content.

In this article, you will learn ways to improve your sales with profit-boosting client testimonials.

Consumer Reviews And Testimonials

Legendary businessman and showman P.T. Barnum 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. Quoting genuine reviews and testimonials from your satisfied customers is existing users are far more persuasive for drawing new clients, customers or users than anything you say about your own products or services.

There is a source of untapped business growth potential that most small businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … reviews and testimonials from your users!

Customer testimonials and reviews are a great way to build credibility for your business.

Marketing studies conducted by leading research firms all point to the same conclusion: testimonials and user reviews eliminate doubts potential customers may have about particular products, help users select products and increases the number of sales.

Below are just some of the statistics available to support this:

• According to research 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, user reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more reviews per product can translate into a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
• Website 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 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).

(Source: eConsultancy.com)

Adding User Reviews – Online Reputation Management

Adding testimonials and reviews to your website from delighted clients is important for growing your business and creating a solid online reputation.

Testimonials and user reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can impact your business both negatively or positively.

People may not be saying bad things about your business directly to your face, but they could have posted negative comments on Facebook, or a discussion group or forum about an unpleasant experience they’ve just had with your services 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 vital aspect of your business success.

Misconceptions about online reputation management, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need it) could be harming your business without you even being aware of this.

See this article to learn more about a simple WordPress plugin that lets you legally and ethically manage customer feedback:

• Easily Manage Bad Customer Reviews In WordPress With Power Online Reviews Plugin

Improving Your Sales Conversions With Engaging Testimonials – Useful Tips

User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content. When you include responses from users in your content, you:

• Show others exactly what problems and pains your products and services can help to solve for them and how easily it can do this.
• Help your visitors identify their objections and address these.
• Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and this facilitates the sales process.

Here are some practical tips on improving your sales with testimonials:

• Don’t over edit: Try to use your customer’s actual words as much as possible. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep it ‘real’.
• Use photos: Marketing studies show that using images of people’s faces will draw the attention of visitors browsing a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews can help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
• Use the power of storytelling: Stories are much more effective and memorable than just 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 more lasting impression on those reading your content than using generalized statements about excellent support and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
• Keep 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 they can most effectively help you sell your point. Think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s perception by adding 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 clients solve before talking about the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are truly ecstatic about your support when offering guarantees or addressing objections.
• Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would consider to be more powerful… “As a direct result of installing your XYZ solution, we were able to increase our net profit by $62,487 during the last fiscal year,” or “XYZ solution helped us grow our sales?” Whenever possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable data, like how much your solution helped to increase their market share or reduce their costs by 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 business quarter, 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 a little difficult when you are just starting out or have very few clients, try to avoid displaying the same testimonial everywhere on your website. 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 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 ideal customer is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects can relate to is a very 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 across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook page praising your customer service, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the comment or post on your blog.
• Don’t use fake client testimonials. Most people can tell if you are employing copy writers to produce your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but prospective clients need to believe that the testimonials published on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your credibility with a ”made up” testimonial.

How To Get Client Testimonials

Ask

When you complete a service for someone, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.

Here are some useful guidelines for requesting testimonials from your clients:

• Contact your clients after 90 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after performing a service.
• Include a field for entering testimonials in client satisfaction surveys.
• Pull 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 wouldn’t mind recording a very brief video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording your video, explain to viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to record your 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 best sections (only use what they have given you – never put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to publish it. 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 Publish A Link Back To The Source

Offer to post a link back to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great 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 Testimonial Requests In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages

If you have a list of subscribers, include a request for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder messages. This should be done as soon as your clients have had a chance to experience your solution. Use words like “I need your help” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking users for honest feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.

Use LinkedIn

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

Create A Customer Testimonials Page

Create a new section for customer testimonials and add a “read more testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials section throughout your content sections.

Tip: You can measure how useful testimonials are by how long visitors remain 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 pages are “heatmaps”.

We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your site to predict visitor behavior here:

• How To Analyze User Behavior On Your WordPress Site Using Heat Mapping Tools – HeatMapTracker Review

Testimonial Plugins For WordPress

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add forms to your pages inviting users to submit reviews and testimonials.

Once your plugin is installed and set up (remember to provide simple instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you can 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 testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed them into your pages and posts using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you insert a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which is great for adding a photo of the testimonial author, their logo, etc.

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

To download this plugin, go here:

• Easy Testimonials

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your web site. You can insert testimonials via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and have multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.

The plugin comes with a range of additional features via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and technical support.

To learn more about using the plugin, visit this site:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This is a premium plugin that provides 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 sliders, slideshows, grid layout, list layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
• Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customize font and background colors, font types and more.

Visit this site to download the plugin:

• Testimonials Plugin

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

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Conclusion …

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

Resources

For additional information on creating effective users testimonials see 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 that will show you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, 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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