Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain new customers, only to get the exact same disappointing results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that finding new ways of generating new business can be quite hard. Just trying to remain in business takes a lot of 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 users may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Don’t ignore what clients may be saying online about your business!
By the same token, you are also doing your business a disservice if you don’t spread the positive things your clients say about your products and services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be included in your content marketing.
In this article, you’ll learn how to achieve better results online using sales boosting client testimonials.
Consumer Reviews
P.T. Barnum, legendary showman and businessman, is often quoted as having 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 way of getting your business promoted effectively. Reviews and testimonials from satisfied clients are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new clients, customers or users than anything you have to say about your own products or services.
There is clearly an untapped source of business growth potential that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … user reviews!
Customer reviews and testimonials are effective for building credibility for your services or products.
Research conducted by many leading marketing research firms all point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding customer testimonials and reviews to your sales pages helps to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about products, helps users select products and increases sales conversions.
Below are just some of the findings available to 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 reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, 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.
- Web site visitors who interact with both consumer 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).
(Source: eConsultancy.com)
Adding Consumer Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
You should be adding testimonials and reviews from satisfied customers to your website.
Testimonials and customer reviews, however, can work both ways and impact your business both negative and positive ways.
People may not be saying bad things about your products directly to your face, but they could have posted updates on a forum about a bad experience they’ve just had with your business 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 part of your business and content marketing strategy.
Misconceptions about online reputation management, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need it) may be hurting your business without you even realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a tool for WordPress users that can help to avoid the escalation of negative reviews about your products through effective customer review management:
Tips On Improving Your Sales Conversions With Awesome Client Testimonials
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful ways of marketing your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content. When you quote your own client responses in your content, you:
- Show other users exactly what pains and problems your products and services can help to solve for them and how easily this can be done.
- Help potential customers identify their objections and address these.
- Help prospects connect with their aspirations and motivations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Here are some practical tips on creating testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: Try to use your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leaving little grammatical errors and misspellings in the content helps preserve your testimonials’ authenticity.
- Use photos: Images of people’s faces draw the most 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 site’s content.
- Use the power of storytelling: Stories are far more powerful and captivating than just providing statistical facts. The ability 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 generalized statements about how “excellent” the customer service was and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: Add testimonials in your web content where it makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help 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 retails for before posting pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before talking about the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are truly thrilled about your support before offering guarantees or providing content that helps your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements is more powerful: “XYZ solution was directly responsible for increasing our sales by $84,596 during the previous financial quarter,” or “XYZ software has helped us grow our business?” Whenever possible, ask clients to specify quantifiable results when submitting testimonials, like how much your solution helped to increase their sales or reduce their costs 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, 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 somewhat difficult when you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your website. 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 discount for clients in exchange for an honest review and permission to publish it if you decide 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 aspire to become can be a very powerful motivator and influencer. People want to see and buy from “better versions” of themselves, so make sure to include testimonials targeted to your ideal customers.
- Reprint content across different platforms. If you get a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your solution, contact them privately asking for permission to reprint the comment or post on your blog.
- Only use genuine client testimonials. Most people can see through sites that employ copywriters to produce their content. Outsourcing content is fine, but prospective clients need to see that the testimonials you provide on your site are genuine. Don’t destroy your credibility with false testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Clients
Ask For Testimonials
If you have just completed performing a service, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.
Here are some useful tips for soliciting testimonials:
- Make a point of contacting customers after 90 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after performing a service.
- Add a field for entering testimonials in all your client satisfaction surveys.
- Pull out your phone when you next visit clients or hand over a completed job 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 the video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to record their positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy 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 given you – never put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to use it. 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 The Source
Offer to add a link to their site 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.
Include A Testimonial Request In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include requests for a testimonial in a periodic newsletter message. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your clients have had a chance to experience your 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 for feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you request testimonials from other members for your account. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is simple and 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 add a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Section
Create a “Testimonials” page and add a “read more client testimonials …” link pointing to this page throughout your site.
Tip: You can measure how effective 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 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 site to monitor visitor behavior here:
Using Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If you use 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 reviews and testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (make sure to provide simple instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you then refer customers to your “Testimonials” page.
Check out the plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed them into posts and pages using a shortcode. The plugin also lets you publish a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which can be used to add a photo of the testimonial author, a company logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also provides users with a “pro” version with additional features and technical support.
To learn more about 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 site. 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 Testimonials Widget plugin has plenty more features available via a premium version, including built-in options for improved search engine results and plugin support.
Go here to download and use the plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium WordPress plugin offers plenty of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for displaying correctly on any device or browser.
- Options to display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customize font and background colours, font types and more.
Go here for more information about this plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Client testimonials and user reviews are great 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 feedback, reviews, and testimonials from existing clients, and start publishing these on your web site.
Resources
For additional resources about creating effective 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 regular training emails with easy-to-digest information that will show you how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating high-quality content for 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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