How To Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews

Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that finding new ways of generating new customers can be quite difficult. Just trying to keep your business afloat 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 web-based and social-driven economy, you cannot afford to ignore the impact of online consumer behavior, especially if they are talking about your business.

Don’t ignore what clients may be saying online about your business!

You could be doing your business a disservice if you are not boosting the positive things your customers are saying about your products or services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be used throughout your content.

In this article, you will learn how to achieve better results online using powerful customer testimonials.

Customer Reviews And Testimonials

P.T. Barnum, the great American showman and successful promoter, once 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 getting your business promoted. Quoting genuine testimonials and reviews from your satisfied customers is existing users are far more persuasive for attracting new clients, customers or users 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 … customer reviews and testimonials!

Customer testimonials and consumer reviews are effective for building credibility for your business.

Studies conducted by leading companies all point to the same conclusion: user reviews and testimonials eliminate doubts potential customers may have about products that you are trying to sell, help with product selection and help increase sales conversions.

Here are just some of the findings available to support this:

• According to a study 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 site if it has ratings and consumer reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more customer reviews per product can translate into a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
• Site visitors who interact with both consumer 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).

(Source: eConsultancy.com)

Adding Consumer Reviews And Testimonials – Managing Online Reputation

You should be adding great testimonials and reviews from really happy clients to your site.

Testimonials and user reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can affect your business both positively or negatively.

People may not be saying bad things about your products directly to you, but they could post damaging comments on Facebook or a discussion thread 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 a vitally important aspect of your online business success.

Misconceptions about engaging in online reputation management practices, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need to worry about it) may be hurting your business without you even being aware of 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 feedback:

• Manage Negative Client Reviews Easily With Power Online Reviews

Creating Awesome Client Testimonials – Useful Tips

User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be used in your content marketing strategy. When you quote responses from clients in your content, you:

• Show other users exactly what pains and problems your products and services can solve for them and how easily it can do this.
• Help your visitors identify their objections and address these.
• Help prospects connect with their aspirations and motivations and this facilitates moving them further along the sales process.

Below are some tips on improving your conversions with testimonials:

• Avoid over-editing: You should try to use the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep things ‘real’.
• Use photos of real people: Images of people’s faces draw the most attention on 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 so much more effective and memorable than simply providing statistical facts. 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 excellent support and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
• Keep it in context: It’s good to add customer testimonials in your site copy 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 if you were to present a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution can be purchased for before posting your product or service 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 support when offering a risk-free guarantee or addressing objections.
• Quantify your information: Which of the following statements is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping us grow our net profit by $44,335 in the last fiscal year,” or “XYZ software helped us grow our sales?” If possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable results, 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 customer testimonial throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult when you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, try to avoid displaying the same testimonial throughout your site. 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 existing 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 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 you get great feedback on your Facebook page praising your business, ask them permission to reprint the content on your blog.
• Never use fake client testimonials. Your potential clients need to believe that the testimonials published on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your credibility or reputation with a false testimonial.

How To Get 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.

Here are some useful tips for requesting testimonials:

• Contact clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 30 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after completing a service.
• Include a field for testimonials in your client surveys.
• Pull out your phone next time you visit clients or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very short video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording the video, describe to viewers what you have done for your client and try to capture their positive reactions and feedback.
• Make it easy and write the testimonial for them. Whenever a client sends 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 the client and ask them for permission to publish it. 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 see fit before replying with their approval.

Offer To Post A Link To The Source

Offer to post a link back to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive for clients to provide 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 a request for a testimonial in a scheduled auto responder broadcast. This should be done after your customers have had a chance to assess the results of using your services. Use words like “I need your help” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking clients for honest feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature allows you to obtain testimonials from other members that become part of your account. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite simple and user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation gets 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 Client Testimonials Page

Create a new section for client testimonials and place a “more customer testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials section wherever you display new testimonials on your site.

Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of user testimonials by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. A great tool for understanding visitor behaviour on your pages are “heatmaps”.

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

• How To Spy On Your WordPress Site Visitors With Analytics Software – HeatMapTracker Review

Using WordPress Plugins

If your website or blog is built using WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages where users can submit feedback and testimonials.

Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you then send users to your “Testimonials” page.

Below are some testimonial plugins you can check out:

Easy Testimonials

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

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

Go here to download this plugin:

• Easy Testimonials

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 web site. 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 plugin makes loads more features available via a premium version, including built-in functions SEO functionality and plugin support.

To learn more about this plugin, go here:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This is a premium plugin that provides plenty 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, grid layout, list layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
• Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customize font and background colours, font types and more.

Visit this site to learn more about this plugin:

• Testimonials Plugin

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

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Conclusion …

Client 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 testimonials, reviews, and feedback from your customers, and start publishing these on your web site.

Resources

For additional resources on creating engaging customer testimonials read these useful 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 regular training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content for your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

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