How To Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? Most business owners don’t need to be told that finding effective ways of generating new business can be extremely hard. Just trying to keep your business afloat takes a lot of time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.
In today’s online and social media-driven economy, you cannot afford to ignore the impact of what potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting negative comments about your business.
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 great disservice if you are not boosting the positive things your customers are saying about your services or products. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful ways of marketing your products and services online and should be used in your content.
In this article, you’ll discover how to turn more visitors into prospects using more effective client testimonials.
Testimonials And User Reviews
Legendary businessman and showman Phineas Taylor P.T. Barnum is often quoted as having 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 and effective way of getting your business promoted. Reviews and testimonials quoted directly from existing clients are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new clients than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is clearly an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … testimonials and reviews from their previous clients!
Customer reviews and testimonials are a powerful way to build credibility for your services and products.
Research conducted by leading marketing companies all point to the same conclusion: testimonials and user reviews help decrease doubts potential customers may have about purchasing your product, help with product selection and increases the number of product sales.
Here are just some of the statistics available to support this:
- According to research findings 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 web site if it has ratings and user reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, customer reviews result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user reviews per product can result in a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Website visitors who interact with both customer 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 Customer Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding reviews and testimonials to your website from people who are thrilled with your services is important for helping you grow your business online and creating a solid online reputation.
Customer reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both positively or negatively.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business directly to you, but they could post disparaging remarks on Facebook or a forum 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 a significant part of your online business success strategy.
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 it) could be harming your business without you even being aware of it.
See this article to learn more about a simple WordPress plugin that allows you to legally and ethically manage customer feedback:
Creating Awesome Client Testimonials – Useful Tips
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful ways of marketing your products and services online and should be included in your content marketing. When you quote responses from customers in your content, you:
- Show other users exactly what pains and problems your products and services can help solve for them and how easily this can be done.
- Help prospects identify and address their objections.
- Help prospects connect with their aspirations and motivations and this facilitates the sales process.
Here are some practical tips on how to create client testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try using the actual words used by your customers as much as you can. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use photos of real people: Marketing tests show that using images of people’s faces will draw the most attention of visitors on a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews will help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
- Tell a story: Stories are so much more effective and captivating than providing mere facts and statistics. 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 how “excellent” your service was and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: It’s good to add customer testimonials to your site copy where it best makes sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help to sell your point. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s perception if you were to add a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting price information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before presenting the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are genuinely ecstatic about your customer service before offering guarantees or addressing objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful: “As a direct result of installing XYZ software, we were able to increase our revenue by an additional $97,869 during 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 by in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours of work they have saved, 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.
- Vary the customer testimonials on your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial throughout your site. 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 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 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 that speak directly to your best audience demographic.
- Reprint across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your business, ask them for permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
- Don’t use fake client testimonials. Your prospects need to see that the testimonials provided on your site are real. Don’t compromise your integrity or reputation with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Client Testimonials
Ask
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Here are some useful guidelines for requesting testimonials from clients:
- Make a point of contacting clients after 60 days with an email request for a testimonial if you have not obtained one after performing a service.
- Add a field for entering testimonials in your client satisfaction surveys.
- Take out your phone next time you meet with a client or hand over a finished project and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a short video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording your video, explain to viewers what you have done for your client and try to record their positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy and write the testimonial for them. When clients send you positive written feedback that contains snippets of useful testimonial material interspersed with the rest of their message, grab the juiciest sections (only use what they have written – 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 already prepared something to save them time and invite them to modify what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link To Their Site
Offer to add a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients to provide you with a testimonial. It also makes the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Add Testimonial Requests To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder mailouts. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to experience your services. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in the subject of your email and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking subscribers for feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature helps you solicit 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 receives a link to their profile. If you get a positive recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your website (once again, you can offer to add a link back to their website in exchange).
Create A Customer Testimonials Section On Your Site
Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “more client testimonials …” link to this section wherever you have added single testimonials on your content sections.
Useful 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 your testimonial content. ”Heatmapping” technology is a great way to observing visitor behaviour on your pages.
We have written an article about a heatmap software you can add to your sites to track visitor behaviour here:
Testimonial Plugins
If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to 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 send users to your “Testimonials” section.
Here are a few useful testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is an easy-to-use free plugin that lets you add user testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into your pages and posts using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you add a list of all 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 logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also provides a “pro” version that has additional features and plugin support.
Go here to download the plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your blog. You can insert testimonials content 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 makes plenty more features available via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and technical support.
To learn more about using this plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium plugin offers many 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, list layout, grid layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customized font and background colors, font types and more.
To download this plugin, go here:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Summary …
Testimonials and customer reviews are powerful 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 testimonials, reviews, and feedback from your customers or clients, and start publishing these on your web site.
Resources
The articles below provide useful information about creating engaging testimonials and were used when researching 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 a comprehensive series of 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 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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