How To Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract customers, only to get the exact same disappointing results? Most business owners don’t need to be told that generating new business can be extremely difficult. Just trying to keep your business afloat 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 digital, mobile and social-driven economy, it’s a mistake to ignore the significance of what potential customers are doing online, especially if they are talking about your business.
Ignoring what customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
By the same token, you are also doing your business a great disservice if you are not spreading the positive things your customers are saying about your products and services. 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 added throughout your content.
In this article, we’ll show you how to turn more visitors into prospects using highly effective user testimonials.
Testimonials And Client Reviews
The great American showman and successful promoter Phineas Taylor P.T. Barnum is often quoted as having stated 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. Quoting genuine reviews from your existing clients is existing users are far more persuasive for attracting new clients than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is clearly a source of untapped opportunities for generating new business that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … testimonials and reviews from their users!
Reviews and testimonials are fantastic for building credibility for your business.
Research conducted by many leading marketing companies all seem to point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding reviews and customer testimonials to your sales pages decreases doubts potential customers may have about buying your products or services, helps users select products and helps increase sales conversions.
Here are just some statistics that support this:
- According to research by eVoc Insights, a company 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 consumer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, consumer reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more 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 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 Customer Testimonials And Reviews – Online Reputation Management
Clearly, you should be adding reviews from existing clients who have experienced positive results with your business to your site.
Customer testimonials and reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can impact your business both positively and negatively.
People may not be saying bad things about your business directly to your face, but they could post unhelpful comments on a discussion group about an unpleasant experience they’ve just had with 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 vital to your business success.
Misconceptions about managing your reputation online, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need to worry about it) may be harming your business without you even being aware of this.
See this article to learn more about a simple plugin for WordPress users that lets you legally and ethically manage customer reviews:
Tips On How To Create Client Testimonials
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective when it comes to helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be included as part of your content marketing strategy. When you include responses from clients in your content, you:
- Show others exactly with similar problems and pains what your products and services can do for them.
- Help your visitors identify their objections and address these.
- Help potential customers connect with their motivations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Here are some tips on improving your conversions with effective user testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try using your customer’s actual words as much as possible. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use photos: Marketing tests show that using images of people’s faces draws the attention of visitors on a web page. Adding client photos 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 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 far longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than using generic statements about how “excellent” the support was and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: Add customer testimonials in your site copy where it best makes sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help sell your point. For example, 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 your service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before discussing the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are genuinely ecstatic about your customer service when offering guarantees or addressing objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for increasing our bottom line by $22,911 in the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ solution definitely 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 market share or reduce their costs in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours 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.
- Use different customer testimonials on your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out or have very few clients, it’s best 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 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 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 best audience demographic.
- Reprint testimonials across different platforms. If you get fantastic feedback on your Facebook wall praising your commitment to customer satisfaction, contact them privately asking for permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
- Only use genuine client testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing copy writers to write your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your potential customers need to see that the testimonials provided on your site are genuine. Don’t destroy your credibility with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Your Customers
Ask
Getting a testimonial from a happy client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Follow these useful guidelines for soliciting 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 reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after completing a service.
- Add a text box for entering testimonials in all client surveys.
- Pull out your phone when you next visit a client or hand over a finished project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they would be happy to record a very quick video testimonial/feedback interview. During your video, describe to your viewers what you have done for your client and try to record the client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy for them. Whenever a client sends you a positive email thanking you for a great service 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 change what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link To Their Site
Offer to add a link back 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 real and can be verified.
Add A Testimonial Request To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include requests for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder messages. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your clients have had a chance to assess the impact of using your services. Use words like “I need your help” in the subject of your message and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking subscribers to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you obtain testimonials from other members that become part of your profile. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a positive recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your site (once again, you can offer to publish a link back to their website in exchange).
Create A Customer Testimonials Section
Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “read more customer testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials page wherever you have added single testimonials on your site.
Useful Tip: You can measure how effective testimonials are by how long visitors remain 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 site.
We have written an article about a heatmap technology you can add to your sites to track visitor behaviour here:
Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add a form to your pages inviting users to submit testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (remember to provide simple instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you can then refer users to your “Testimonials” section.
Below are some testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is an easy-to-use free plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into posts and pages using a shortcode. The plugin also lets you insert a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which can be used to add a photo of the testimonial author, a logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also provides users with a “pro” version that offers additional features and plugin support.
Visit this site to download and use the plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your WordPress site. You can insert testimonials 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 makes plenty more features available via a premium version, including built-in functions for better search engine results and technical support.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium WordPress 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.
- Display your testimonials in a widget or as slideshows, sliders, list layout, grid layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.
Visit this site to download and use 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 your customers or clients, and start publishing these on your website or blog.
Additional Info
For additional sources of information and resources about creating engaging users testimonials read 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
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