Building Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain customers, and getting the exact same results? As most business owners know, that trying to generate new customers can be confusing, time-consuming and difficult. 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 economy, ignoring what your customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Don’t ignore what consumers may be saying online about your business!
You could be doing your business a great disservice if you don’t promote the positive things your customers say about your products or services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be included in your content.
In this article, you’ll learn how to get better results online with more effective user testimonials.
Testimonials And Client Reviews
Legendary American showman and successful promoter Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum once 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 getting your business promoted. Testimonials from your satisfied users are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new clients, customers or users than anything you have to say about your own products or services.
There is clearly a source of untapped opportunities for generating new business that most small businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … client reviews and testimonials!
Consumer reviews and customer testimonials are fantastic for building credibility for your business.
Studies conducted by leading marketing research companies all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: adding customer testimonials and reviews to your sales pages helps reduce doubts potential customers may have about buying products or solutions that you are trying to sell, helps users select products and increases conversions of visitors into sales.
Below are just some findings that support this:
- According to research by eVoc Insights, an organization known for researching and measuring 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 play a significant role in creating an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Web site 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 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 Customer Reviews And Testimonials – Online Reputation Management
Clearly, you should be adding great testimonials and reviews from customers to your website.
Customer reviews and customer testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both in a positive as well as negative way.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business directly to you, but they could have posted negative comments on a forum about an unpleasant experience they’ve just had with your business and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes important to your success.
Misconceptions about managing your reputation online, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need to worry about it) could be hurting your business without you even being aware of this.
See this article to learn more about a tool for WordPress users that lets you legally and ethically manage user reviews:
Tips For Creating Testimonials
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be included in your content marketing strategy. When you quote responses from clients in your content, you:
- Show prospects exactly what problems and pains your products and services can help 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 motivations and aspirations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Below are some practical tips on improving your sales with engaging testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: You should try to use your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use photos: It’s a proven fact that using images of people’s faces will draw the most attention of visitors browsing a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews can help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your content.
- Use the power of storytelling: Stories are much more effective and memorable than providing mere 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 presenting generic statements about how “excellent” the support has been and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: Add customer testimonials to your site copy 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 perception by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting your price 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 customer service before offering guarantees or providing content designed to help readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for increasing our sales by $50,743 during the last fiscal year,” or “XYZ product definitely 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 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.
- Avoid using the same testimonial throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult when you are just starting out or have very few clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your web pages. 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 launch discount for existing clients in exchange for an honest review and permission to publish it if you decide to use it.
- Appeal to your ideal 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 aspire to become 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 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 content on your site.
- Only use real testimonials. Prospective clients need to believe that the testimonials published on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your integrity with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Customer Testimonials
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 useful guidelines for requesting testimonials:
- Make it a part of your business processes to contact customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 30 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after performing a service.
- Add a text box for testimonials in all client surveys.
- Take out your phone next time you meet with a client or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a short video testimonial/feedback interview. During your video, explain to your viewers what you have done for the client and try to capture the client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy and write it for them. If 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 – don’t put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to use it. Explain that you have done this to help them save time and invite them to edit what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link To Their Site
Offer to post a link back to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive to get clients to provide 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 subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in one of your newsletter broadcasts. Preferably, 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 users for honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you obtain testimonials from other members for your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite 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 website (you can offer to publish 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 “read more customer testimonials …” link to your main testimonials section wherever you display new testimonials on your site.
Practical 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 observing what visitors are doing on your pages are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your website to predict visitor behaviour here:
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 testimonial plugin is installed and set up (remember to provide simple instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), all you have to do is send clients to your “Testimonials” section.
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 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 for adding a photo of the testimonial author, a logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also provides users with a “pro” version that offers 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, reviews, quotes, or text with images or videos on your posts and pages. You can insert testimonials content using a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and specify different display options such as random or specific ordering.
Testimonials Widget has plenty of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in functions for better search engine results and plugin support.
To download and use this plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium plugin offers plenty of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes to display correctly on any device or browser.
- Display options for your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid layout, etc. using a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.
Go here to download the plugin:
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 testimonials, reviews, and feedback from existing customers or clients, and publish positive content about your business on your web site.
Resources
The articles below provide useful information on creating effective 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 regular training emails with easy-to-digest information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content for your site 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!
***
***
"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)