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, only to get the exact same results? As most small business owners know, that trying to generate new customers can be hard. Just trying to remain in business takes up 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-driven economy, ignoring what consumers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Ignoring what users 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 spread the positive things your customers say about your products and services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be included as part of your content marketing strategy.
In this article, you’ll discover ways to improve your visitor-to-sales conversions using awesome user testimonials.
Customer Reviews And Testimonials
Legendary businessman and showman Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum once said that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum obviously 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 satisfied clients are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new customers than anything you have to say about your own products or services.
There is an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … customer reviews!
Customer reviews and testimonials are a fantastic way to build credibility for your business.
Research conducted by leading marketing research firms all lead to the same conclusion: testimonials and user reviews help to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about purchasing a particular product or service, help users select products and help increase sales conversions.
Below are just some of the statistics available to support this:
- According to research 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 site if it has ratings and reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, customer reviews are responsible for producing an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more reviews per product can result in a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Web 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 user-generated content (UGC). (Bazaarvoice, Conversation Index, Q2 2011).
- Customer 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 Consumer Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding positive reviews to your site from clients who are thrilled with your services is essential for helping you grow your business online.
Customer testimonials and user reviews, however, can work both ways and affect your business both positive and negative ways.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your products directly to you, but they could have posted disparaging remarks on a forum about a bad encounter they’ve just had with you or your business 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 business and content marketing strategy.
Misconceptions about managing your reputation online, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need to worry about it) may be causing damage to your business without you even being aware of this.
See this article to learn more about a WordPress plugin that lets you legally and ethically manage customer feedback:
Creating Powerful Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be included as part of your content. When you quote responses from users in your content, you:
- Show others exactly with similar problems and pains how your products and services can help them.
- Help potential customers identify their objections and address these.
- Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and facilitate moving them closer to a decision to purchase.
Here are some practical tips on improving your sales with testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: Try using your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leave little 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 draws the most attention of visitors browsing 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 story: Stories are far more effective and memorable than simply providing facts and statistics. Being able to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a far more lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generalized statements about excellent customer support and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: It’s good to add customer testimonials to your site copy where it best makes sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help you sell your point. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s mind by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting product or service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before talking about the benefits of your services, or testimonials where customers are genuinely thrilled about your customer service when offering guarantees 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 increasing our sales by $27,804 in the last fiscal year,” or “XYZ product definitely helped us grow our business?” Whenever possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable data, like how much your solution helped to increase their profits 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.
- Vary the customer testimonials throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out or don’t have many 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 client 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 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 aspire to become 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 best audience demographic.
- Reprint across different platforms. If you get fantastic feedback on your Facebook wall praising your business, send them a message asking for permission to reprint the content on your site.
- Never use fake testimonials. Your potential clients need to believe that the testimonials displayed on your site are real. Don’t compromise your integrity or reputation with false testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Clients
Just 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.
Here are some tips for requesting testimonials:
- Make a point of contacting customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 90 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after completing your service.
- Add a text box for testimonials in your client surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you meet with clients or hand over a finished job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a brief video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording the video, describe to your viewers what you have done for your client and try to record your client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy 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 – don’t put words into their mouth), and shape these into 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 Post A Link To The Source Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to post a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients providing you with a testimonial. It also makes the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real and can be verified.
Add A Testimonial Request To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include a request for a testimonial in a regularly-spaced auto responder broadcast. This should be done as soon as your customers have had a chance to assess the results of using your product, service or solution. Use words like “I need your help” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking subscribers for feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to request 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 receives a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your website (once again, you can offer to publish a link back to their website in exchange).
Create A Customer Testimonials Page
Create a new section on your web site for testimonials and add a “read more testimonials …” link to this section whenever you add single testimonials on your site.
Practical Tip: You can measure how useful client 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 understanding visitor behavior on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmaps to your site to analyze visitor behaviour here:
Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add a form to your pages where users can submit feedback and testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (make sure to provide simple instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), all you have to do is refer customers to your “Testimonials” page.
Below are some great plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add user testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials 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 you can use for adding 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 plugin support.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with videos or images on your pages and posts. You can insert testimonials 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 developer support.
Go here to download the plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium plugin provides many 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 slideshows, sliders, list layout, grid layout, etc. using a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customize font and background colors, font types and more.
Go here to download the plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Customer reviews and testimonials are powerful sources of content that 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 customers, and start publishing these on your website.
Resources
The articles below are a great source of information on creating engaging users testimonials and were also 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 show you how to drive more traffic to your website, 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 completely FREE!
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