Building 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 new ways of generating new customers can be difficult. Just trying to stay in business 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 web-based economy, it’s foolish to ignore the effect of online consumer behavior, especially if they are posting comments about your business.

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

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, solutions, user support, etc. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be included in your content.

In this article, you’ll learn all you need to know to get better results online using powerful customer testimonials.

Testimonials And User Reviews

Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum, the great American showman and businessman, is often quoted as having 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 way of getting your business promoted effectively. Quoting testimonials and reviews directly from satisfied customers is satisfied clients are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new clients 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 … testimonials and reviews from their existing clients!

Consumer reviews and testimonials are fantastic for building credibility for your business.

Research conducted by many marketing research companies all lead to the same conclusion: adding user reviews and customer testimonials to your site helps decrease doubts potential customers may have about buying a specific product or service, helps users select products and helps increase conversions of visitors into sales.

Here are just some of the findings 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 site if it has ratings and customer reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, customer reviews result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more customer 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).

(Above figures sourced from eConsultancy.com)

Adding Customer Testimonials And Reviews – Online Reputation Management

Adding great testimonials and reviews to your site from happy clients is essential for creating a solid online business reputation.

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

People may not be saying bad things about your business directly to you, but they could be posting updates on Facebook, or a discussion thread or forum about an unpleasant encounter they’ve just had with you or your business and this could be costing you business.

This is where online reputation management becomes a vital aspect of your business success.

Misconceptions about online reputation management, 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 seriously hurting your business without you even realizing this.

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

• Managing Your Online Reputation With Power Online Reviews Plugin For WordPress

How To Create Customer Testimonials – Useful Tips

Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective ways of marketing your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content marketing. When you quote your own user responses in your content, you:

• Show potential customers exactly what problems and pains your products and services can help to solve for them and how easily it can do this.
• Help site visitors identify their objections and address these.
• Help potential customers connect with their motivations and this facilitates moving them closer to a buying decision.

Below are some useful tips on creating testimonials:

• Don’t over edit: You should try to use the actual words used by your customers as much as you can. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep it ‘real’.
• Use photos: Marketing studies show that using images of people’s faces draws the attention of visitors browsing a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews can help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your content.
• Use the power of storytelling: Stories are so much more effective and memorable than just providing statistical facts. Being able to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generalized statements about how “excellent” the customer service was and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
• Use it in context: Add testimonials to your site copy where it makes the most sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help to sell your point. For example, think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s perception 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 products, or testimonials where customers are genuinely ecstatic about your support when offering guarantees or providing content that helps readers overcome their objections.
• Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping to increase our sales by $61,172 in the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ product helped us grow our sales?” If possible, ask clients to specify quantifiable results when submitting testimonials, like how much your solution helped to increase their sales or reduce their costs by in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours of work you have helped them save, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate in a recent financial quarter, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
• Use different customer testimonials throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult if you are just starting out or don’t have many clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial everywhere on your web pages. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more customer testimonials by offering limited review copies of your product, or a special launch 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 target audience is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects can relate to is a really 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 testimonials across different platforms. If someone publishes fantastic feedback on your Facebook wall praising your commitment to customer satisfaction, ask them for permission to reprint the comment or post on your blog.
• Never use fake testimonials. Many people can see through sites that employ copywriters to produce their content. Outsourcing content is fine, but prospective customers need to believe that the testimonials published on your site are real. Don’t compromise your credibility with false testimonials.

How To Get Testimonials From Your Customers

Always Ask For Testimonials

When you complete performing a service, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.

Follow these useful guidelines for soliciting testimonials:

• Contact clients after 90 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you have not obtained one after completing a service.
• Add a field for entering testimonials in your client surveys.
• Take out your phone when you next meet with clients or hand over a finished project and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a very brief video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording your video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and try to record your client’s positive reactions and feedback.
• Make it easy for them. If 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 given you – never put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have done this to save them time and let them know they are completely free to modify what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.

Offer To Post A Link To The Source

Offer to add a link to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive to get clients providing 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 list of subscribers, include requests for a testimonial in a regularly-spaced auto responder broadcast. Preferably, this should be done as soon as 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 users to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature allows you to request testimonials for your profile. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your website (tip: offer to add a link back to their profile in exchange).

Create A Client Testimonials Page On Your Site

Create a new section on your website or blog for customer testimonials and add a “more testimonials …” link to your main testimonials section wherever you have added single testimonials on your site.

Useful Tip: You can measure how effective client testimonials are by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added the testimonial content. ”Heatmapping” technology is a great way to monitoring what visitors are doing on your pages.

We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your sites to observe visitor behavior here:

• Spy On Your WordPress Site Visitors Using Analytics Software – HeatMapTracker Review

Useful WordPress Testimonial Plugins

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use a plugin to add, edit and display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages where users can submit testimonials.

Once your plugin is installed and set up (make sure to provide simple instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you can then send customers to your “Testimonials” page.

Check out the WordPress testimonial plugins below:

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add client testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into a Page or Post using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you publish a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which is great to add a photo of the testimonial author, their business logo, etc.

Easy Testimonials also comes with a “pro” version that has additional features and technical support.

To download and use the plugin, go here:

• Easy Testimonials

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free WordPress plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your site. You can insert testimonials content using 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 has plenty of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and technical support.

Go here to download and use this plugin:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

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

• Responsive design that resizes to display correctly on any device or browser.
• Options to 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 the testimonial, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customize font and background colours, font types and more.

Visit this site for more information about this plugin:

• Testimonials WordPress Plugin

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

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Conclusion …

Customer reviews and testimonials are powerful sources of content that help your business add credibility, build authority, improve online reputation, and grow your sales funnel. Always ask for feedback, reviews, and testimonials from existing clients or customers, and publish positive content about your business on your web site.

Additional Info

For additional information on creating engaging testimonials read the articles below:

• 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 actionable information and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content for 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 100% FREE!

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