Building Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain new customers, and getting the exact same results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that finding effective ways to generate new customers can be extremely hard, confusing and frustrating. Just trying to remain in business takes up 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 media-driven economy, ignoring what your customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Ignoring what your clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
You may also be doing your business a disservice if you are not promoting the positive things your clients say about your products and services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content.
In this article, you’ll learn how to improve your sales conversions using profit-boosting client testimonials.
Testimonials And Customer 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”. Social proof-based content is a powerful and effective way of promoting your business. Genuine testimonials and reviews quoted directly from existing users are far more persuasive for attracting new customers, clients or users than anything you say about your own products or services.
There is clearly an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most small businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … reviews from your previous users!
Consumer reviews and customer testimonials are great for building credibility for your services and products.
Marketing studies conducted by leading research firms all lead to the same conclusion: adding testimonials and reviews to your sales information pages helps decrease doubts potential customers may have about buying products and services, helps users select products and helps increase sales conversions.
Below are just some findings that support this:
- According to a study by eVoc Insights, a company 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 customer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, reviews play a significant role in creating an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more 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 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 Client Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding reviews to your site from clients who are thrilled with the results they’ve obtained by using your services is essential for helping you grow your business.
Customer testimonials and user reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can impact your business both in a positive and negative way.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business directly to you, but they could post disparaging remarks on Facebook about a bad encounter they’ve just had with one of your sales or customer support representatives 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 vitally important to your online business 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 seriously causing damage to your business without you even realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective plugin for WordPress users that allows you to legally and ethically manage your customer reviews:
Tips On How To Create Customer Testimonials
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be added to your content marketing. When you include your own client responses in your content, you:
- Show others exactly with similar problems and pains what your products and services can do for them.
- Help visitors identify and address their objections.
- Help prospects connect with their motivations and aspirations and this facilitates moving them closer to a buying decision.
Here are some practical tips on creating testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try using the actual words used by your customers as much as you can. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use photos: Images of people’s faces draw attention to your content. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews will help increase visitor engagement with your content.
- Use the power of storytelling: Stories are far more effective and captivating than simply providing facts and statistics. Being able 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” the customer support was and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: Add testimonials to your site copy where it makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help to sell your point. 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 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 customer service when offering a money-back guarantee or providing content that helps your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping to increase our net profit by $12,374 in the last fiscal year,” or “XYZ product has 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 of work 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 repeatedly throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult if you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, try to avoid displaying the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your site. 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 choose to use it.
- Appeal to your best customer: As every infomercial featuring a celebrity endorsement, subject expert or “busy mom” knows, if you know who your best customer is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects can relate to 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 that appeal directly to your ideal customers.
- Reprint content across different platforms. If someone publishes great feedback on your Facebook wall praising your customer service, contact them privately asking for permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Only use real testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing copy writers to write your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your prospects need to see that the testimonials you provide on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your integrity with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Your Clients
Just Ask
When you complete a service for someone, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.
Here are some useful tips for requesting testimonials:
- Make it a part of your business processes to contact clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 90 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after completing a service.
- Add a field for entering testimonials in all client surveys.
- Pull out your phone when you next visit a client or hand over a finished job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a quick video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording your video, describe to your viewers what you have done for the client and try to record your client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy and write it 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 written – never put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to use it. Explain that you have already prepared something to save them time and invite them to edit what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Post A Link Back To Their Site
Offer to publish a link to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great 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 A Testimonial Request To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder messages. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to use your products or 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 clients to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to solicit testimonials for your profile. 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 (and offer to publish a link back to their website in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Page
Create a new section for testimonials and place a “more client testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials page throughout your site.
Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your customer testimonials by how long visitors remain on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. A great tool for monitoring visitor behaviour on your pages are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap software you can add to your sites to analyze visitor behavior here:
Using Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
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 inviting users to submit testimonials.
Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (remember to provide simple instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you can then send customers to your “Testimonials” section.
Below are some great WordPress testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add user testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into your pages and posts using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you publish a list of all your 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 business logo, etc.
The plugin also provides users with a “pro” version that has additional features and developer support.
Visit this site to learn more about the plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WordPress plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with videos or images on your website. You can insert testimonials content via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and have multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.
The Testimonials Widget plugin offers a range of additional features via a premium version, including built-in options for improved search engine results and technical support.
To download the plugin, go here:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium WP plugin offers a range of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for correct display on any device or browser.
- Options to display your testimonials in a widget or as slideshows, sliders, 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 colors, font types and more.
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Summary …
Customer reviews and testimonials 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 feedback, reviews, and testimonials from existing clients or customers, and start publishing these on your site.
Additional Info
For additional information about creating engaging users testimonials see these articles:
- 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 actionable information that will show exactly 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. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!
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