Building Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews

Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain customers, only to get the exact same results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that trying to generate new business can be very hard, time consuming and frustrating. Just trying to keep your business afloat requires a lot of time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.

In today’s digital, mobile and social-driven economy, ignoring what your customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!

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

You may also be doing your business a disservice if you don’t promote the positive things your clients say about your services and products. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be added throughout your content.

In this article, you’ll learn how to improve your conversions with engaging client testimonials.

Testimonials And User Reviews

The great American businessman and showman P.T. Barnum is often quoted as having 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 getting your business promoted. Quoting genuine testimonials and reviews from existing customers is satisfied users are far more persuasive for drawing new clients, customers or users than anything you have to say about your own products or services.

There is clearly an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most small businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … reviews from their users!

Customer testimonials and customer reviews are fantastic for building credibility for your business.

Marketing studies conducted by leading companies all lead to the same conclusion: adding customer testimonials and consumer reviews to your sales pages reduces doubts potential customers may have about some products or services, helps with product selection and helps increase the number of product sales.

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

• According to research 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 user reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, consumer reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user reviews per product can translate into a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
• Website visitors who interact with both 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 Reviews And Testimonials – Managing Online Reputation

You should be adding great reviews and testimonials from delighted clients to your website.

Reviews and customer testimonials, however, are like double-edged swords; they can affect your business both negatively and positively.

You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business, products or services directly to you, but they could have posted updates on Facebook, or a forum or discussion group about an unpleasant experience they’ve just had with your services 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 vital 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) may be hurting your business without you even realizing it.

See this article to learn more about a plugin for WordPress users that allows you to legally and ethically manage customer feedback:

• Manage Your Online Reputation In WordPress With Power Online Reviews

Tips For Creating Client Testimonials

Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be included in your content marketing strategy. When you quote responses from customers in your content, you:

• Show potential customers exactly with similar problems and pains what your products and services can do for them.
• Help your visitors identify and address their objections.
• Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and this facilitates moving them further along the sales process.

Below are some useful tips on how to create testimonials:

• Don’t over edit: You should try to use your customer’s actual words as much as possible. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep things ‘real’.
• Use real photos: Images of people’s faces draw attention on a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews will help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your site’s content.
• Tell a story: Stories are far more effective and captivating than just providing facts and statistics. Being able to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution came to the rescue will make a far more lasting impression on those reading your content than using generic 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.
• Use it in context: It’s good to add 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. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s perception if you were to present a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting price information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before presenting the benefits of your services, or testimonials where clients are truly thrilled about your support when offering guarantees or providing content that helps your readers overcome their objections.
• Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful: “As a direct result of installing your XYZ software, we were able to increase our revenue by an additional $47,023 during the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ product 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 profits 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, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
• Vary the client testimonials throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult when you are just starting out or have very few clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial throughout your site. 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 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 target audience is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects aspire to become is a really powerful motivator and influencer. People want to see and buy from “better versions” of themselves, so make sure to include testimonials targeted to your ideal customers.
• Reprint content across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your commitment to customer satisfaction, ask them for permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
• Never use fake client testimonials. Your prospects need to see that the testimonials displayed on your site are real. Don’t compromise your credibility or reputation with a false testimonial.

How To Get Customer Testimonials

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.

Here are some tips for soliciting testimonials:

• Contact your customers after 90 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after completing a service.
• Add a field for entering testimonials in all your client surveys.
• Pull out your phone when you next visit clients or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they would be happy to record a brief video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording the video, describe 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. Whenever a client sends you a positive email thanking you for a great job 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 shape these into a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to publish it. Explain that you have done this to help them save time and invite them to change what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.

Offer To Post A Link To The Source

Offer to publish a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive to get clients to provide a testimonial. It also makes the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real and can be verified.

Include Testimonial Requests In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages

If you have a list of subscribers, include requests for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder mailouts. Preferably, this should be timed to reach subscribers just after your clients have had a chance to assess the results of using your services. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking users to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature allows you to solicit testimonials from other members for your profile. 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 for permission to reprint it on your website (tip: offer to add a link back to their website in exchange).

Create A Testimonials Section

Create a new section on your website or blog for client testimonials and place a “read more testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials page whenever you have added small blocks of testimonials on your site.

Useful Tip: You can measure how effective customer testimonials are 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 understanding what visitors are doing on your pages.

We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your website to monitor visitor behavior here:

• How To Spy On Your WordPress Site Users With Heat Map Software – HeatMapTracker Review

Useful 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 forms to your pages where users can submit testimonials.

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

Below are a few useful plugins you can check out:

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is an easy-to-use free plugin that lets you add testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into your pages and posts using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you add a list of all 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.

The Easy Testimonials plugin also comes with a “pro” version that offers additional features and developer support.

Go here to download the plugin:

• Easy Testimonials

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with videos or images on your WordPress 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 has loads more features available via a premium version, including built-in functions SEO functionality and developer support.

To download the plugin, visit this site:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This premium WP plugin offers many 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, grid layout, list layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
• Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customized font and background colors, font types and more.

Go here to download this plugin:

• Testimonials Plugin

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

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Conclusion …

User reviews and testimonials are great 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 your customers or clients, and start publishing these on your website or blog.

Resources

For additional resources on creating effective clients testimonials refer to 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 a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful 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 100% FREE!

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