Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User 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 disappointing results? Most business owners don’t need to be told that generating new business can be confusing, time-consuming and quite hard. 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 online and social-driven economy, you cannot afford to ignore the impact of online consumer behavior, especially if they are posting negative comments about your business.

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

By the same token, you may also be doing your business a great disservice if you don’t publish the positive things your customers are saying about your products and services. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be included in your content.

In this article, you will learn how to create better results online with compelling client testimonials.

Customer Reviews

P.T. Barnum, the great American businessman and showman, once stated 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 and effective way of getting your business promoted. Quoting genuine reviews and testimonials from existing clients is satisfied customers are far more persuasive for attracting new clients than anything you have to say about your own products or services.

There is clearly an untapped source of business growth potential that most small businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … testimonials and reviews from your satisfied clients!

Testimonials and consumer reviews are fantastic for building credibility for your services and products.

Marketing studies conducted by many leading research firms all seem to point to the same inevitable conclusion: testimonials and user reviews eliminate doubts potential customers may have about products or services that you are trying to sell, help with product selection and increases conversions of visitors into sales.

Below are just some of the stats 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 customer reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, user reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user reviews per product can mean 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).
• 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).

(Source: eConsultancy.com)

Adding Client Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation

Adding positive reviews and testimonials to your site from people who are thrilled with the results they’ve obtained by using your services is important for growing your business and creating a solid online reputation.

Customer testimonials and user reviews, however, can work both ways and affect your business both positively or negatively.

You see, people may not be saying bad things about your services directly to your face, but they could be posting negative comments on Facebook, or a discussion group or forum about a bad experience they’ve just had with your business and this could be costing you business.

This is where online reputation management becomes vital to your online 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 just don’t need to worry about it) may be harming your business without you even being aware of this.

See this article to learn more about a WordPress plugin that allows you to legally and ethically manage user reviews:

• Manage Your Online Reputation Easily With Power Online Reviews WordPress Plugin

How To Create Testimonials – Useful Tips

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

• Show prospects exactly with similar problems and pains how your products and services can help them.
• Help your visitors identify and address their objections.
• Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and this facilitates moving them closer to a decision to purchase.

Here are some useful tips on how to create powerful client 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 things ‘real’.
• Use photos: Marketing tests show that using images of people’s faces will draw the attention of visitors on a web page. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews can help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your content.
• Tell a powerful story: Stories are much more effective and captivating than simply 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 generic statements about how “excellent” your customer support was and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
• Use it in context: Add customer testimonials to your site copy where it makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help you sell your point. Think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s mind if you were to present a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting your product or service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before discussing the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are genuinely ecstatic about your customer service when offering a money-back guarantee or providing content that helps your readers overcome their objections.
• Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping us grow our revenue by $42,417 in the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ software helped us grow our business?” Whenever possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable results, like how much your solution helped to increase their profits 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, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
• Avoid using the same client testimonial repeatedly throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult if you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial throughout your website. Depending on the nature of your business, you could try to obtain more customer 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 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 an extremely 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 commitment to customer satisfaction, contact them privately asking for permission to reprint the comment or post on your blog.
• Don’t use fake client testimonials. Most people can see through sites that employ copywriters to create their content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your prospects need to see that the testimonials displayed on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your credibility or reputation with ”made up” testimonials.

How To Get Testimonials From Customers

Ask

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 a point of contacting clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 90 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after performing a service.
• Add a field for entering testimonials in all your client satisfaction surveys.
• Take out your phone when you next visit clients or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very short video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording the video, describe to your viewers what you have done for your client and record their positive reactions and feedback.
• Make it easy and write it 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 juiciest 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 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 Back 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 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 a request for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder broadcasts. Preferably, this should be done after your clients have had a chance to measure the results of using your products. Use words like “I need your help” in the subject of your message and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking subscribers to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.

Use LinkedIn

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

Create A Client Testimonials Page On Your Site

Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “more customer testimonials …” link to your main testimonials section throughout your content sections.

Useful 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 your testimonial content. A great tool for measuring what visitors are doing on your site are “heatmaps”.

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

• Predicting User Behavior On Your WordPress Site With Heatmapping Tools – Heat Map Tracker Review

Testimonial Plugins

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

Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you can then refer customers 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 your sidebar as a widget, or embed them into posts and pages using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you add 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, a logo, etc.

The plugin also can be upgraded to a “pro” version that has additional features and developer support.

Go here to download the plugin:

• Easy Testimonials

Testimonials Widget

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

The plugin comes with a range of additional features via a premium version, including built-in functions for better search engine results and technical support.

For more information about using the plugin, go here:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This premium WordPress plugin provides plenty of great features right out of the box, including:

• Responsive design that resizes for displaying correctly on any device or browser.
• Display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid layout, etc. via 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.

To download the plugin, go here:

• Testimonials WordPress Plugin

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

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Conclusion …

Testimonials and customer reviews 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 clients, and publish positive content about your business on your site.

Resources

The articles below are a great source of information on creating effective users 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 easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content that will add value to 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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