Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews

Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain customers, only to get the exact same disappointing results? Most business owners don’t need to be told that trying to generate new business can be quite hard. Just trying to survive in business takes 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, ignoring what clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!

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

By the same token, you could be doing your business a great disservice if you are not spreading the positive things your clients say about your services or products. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be added to your content.

In this article, you’ll learn tips for creating better results online with knockout client testimonials.

Testimonials And Client Reviews

The great, legendary showman and successful promoter P.T. Barnum is often quoted as having 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. Quoting genuine testimonials from satisfied customers is existing clients are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new customers, clients or users than anything you have to say about your own products or services.

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

Reviews and customer testimonials are great for building credibility for your services and products.

Studies conducted by many leading companies all lead to the same conclusion: user reviews and testimonials help to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about buying your products or services, help with product selection and increases sales.

Below are just some statistics that support this:

• According to research by eVoc Insights, an organization 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 are responsible for producing an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can translate into 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).

(The figures above were sourced from eConsultancy.com)

Adding Consumer Reviews And Testimonials – Online Reputation Management

Clearly, you should be adding great reviews and testimonials from very happy clients who have experienced positive results with your business to your site.

Reviews and customer testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both negative and positive ways.

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

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

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

• Manage Negative Client Feedback On WordPress With Power Online Reviews

How To Create Client 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 used in your content marketing. When you include your own customer responses in your content, you:

• Show prospects exactly what pains and problems your products and services can help to solve for them and how easily this can be done.
• Help visitors identify their objections and address these.
• Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and this facilitates moving them closer to a buying decision.

Below are some useful tips on creating standout testimonials:

• Avoid over-editing: You should try using your customer’s actual words as much as possible. Leaving little grammatical errors and misspellings in the content helps keep your testimonials sounding authentic.
• Use photos of real people: Research shows that using images of people’s faces draws 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 content.
• Tell a story: Stories are far more powerful and memorable 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 more lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generalized 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: Add 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. 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 service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before discussing the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are genuinely ecstatic about your customer service when offering a money-back guarantee or providing content designed to help readers overcome their objections.
• Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful: “Since installing your XYZ product, we we were able to grow our net profit by $73,293 in the previous financial quarter,” or “XYZ solution helped us grow our sales?” Whenever 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 in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours they have saved, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate in a recent period, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
• Avoid using the same customer testimonial throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult when you are just starting out or have very few clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial throughout your web pages. Depending on the nature of your business, you could try to obtain more 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 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 target audience is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects can relate to can be a powerful motivator and influencer. People want to see and buy from “better versions” of themselves, so make sure to include testimonials targeted to your best audience demographic.
• Reprint across different platforms. If you get great feedback on your Facebook page praising your products or services, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
• Only use genuine client testimonials. Prospective clients need to believe that the testimonials published on your site are real. Don’t destroy your credibility with ”made up” testimonials.

How To Get Customer Testimonials

Just Ask

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.

Follow these useful guidelines for requesting testimonials:

• Contact your customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 14 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after completing your service.
• Add a text box for entering testimonials in all your client satisfaction surveys.
• Pull out your phone next time you visit a client or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a quick video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording the video, describe to your viewers what you have done for the client and record the client’s positive reactions and responses.
• Make it easy and write the testimonial for them. Whenever 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 best sections (only use what they have given you – don’t put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact your 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 edit what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.

Offer To Publish A Link 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 A Testimonial Request In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages

If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in a periodic email broadcast. Preferably, this should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to assess the results of using your products. 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 customers to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature allows you to solicit testimonials from other members that become part of your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a positive recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your site (you can offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).

Create A Client Testimonials Section

Create a new section on your website or blog for customer testimonials and place a “more client testimonials …” link to your main testimonials page throughout your content sections.

Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your testimonials by how long visitors remain 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 pages.

We have written an article about adding heatmaps to your sites to monitor visitor behaviour here:

• Spy On Your WordPress Site Users Using Analytics Software – Heat Map Tracker Review

Testimonial Plugins For WordPress

If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to add, edit and display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add a form to your pages inviting users to submit feedback and testimonials.

Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you can then refer clients to your “Testimonials” page.

Check out the testimonial plugins below:

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add customer testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into posts and pages using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you publish a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which you can use to add a photo of the testimonial author, a company logo, etc.

Easy Testimonials also provides users with a “pro” version that offers additional features and plugin support.

To download this plugin, visit this site:

• Easy Testimonials

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with videos or images on your posts and pages. You can insert user 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 provides additional features via a premium version, including built-in options for better search engine results and plugin support.

Visit this site to download the plugin:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

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

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

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

• 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 powerful 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 your clients, and publish positive content about your business on your website.

Resources

The articles below are a great source of information about creating effective customer testimonials and were also 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 regular training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content for your visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

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