Building Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract new customers, only to get the exact same disappointing results? Most business owners don’t need to be told that finding effective ways to generate new customers can be confusing, frustrating and difficult. 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 media-driven economy, you just can’t ignore the impact of what potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting negative comments about your business.
Ignoring what users may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
By the same token, 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. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive when it comes to helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be included in your content marketing.
In this article, you’ll learn ways to achieve better results online using sales boosting client testimonials.
Testimonials And Customer Reviews
Legendary American showman Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum is often quoted as having 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 promoting your business. Quoting reviews from satisfied customers is existing clients are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new clients than anything you have to 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!
Testimonials and user reviews are a powerful way to build credibility for your products and services.
Studies conducted by many leading firms all seem to point to the same inevitable conclusion: user reviews and testimonials help decrease doubts potential customers may have about products, help users select products and increases sales conversions.
Here are just some of the statistics available to support this:
- According to research findings 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 web site if it has ratings and user reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, reviews result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can translate into a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Site 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).
- 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 Consumer Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
You should be adding positive testimonials and reviews from satisfied clients to your website.
User reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and impact your business both negative and positive ways.
People may not be saying bad things about your products directly to you, but they could post disparaging remarks on Facebook about a bad encounter they’ve just had with you or your business and this could be costing you business.
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 it) could be causing damage to your business without you even realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a simple WordPress plugin that lets you legally and ethically manage user reviews:
Improving Your Conversions With Powerful Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be added to your content marketing strategy. When you include your own customer responses in your content, you:
- Show potential customers exactly with similar problems and pains what your products and services can do for them.
- Help potential customers identify and address their objections.
- Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and this facilitates moving them closer to a buying decision.
Below are some useful tips on how to create sales boosting user testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: Try to use the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘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 can help increase visitor engagement with your content.
- Tell a story: Stories are far more powerful and memorable than simply 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 longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than using generalized statements about excellent service and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: It’s good to add customer testimonials in your web content where it makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help to sell your point. Think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s mind if you were to insert a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting price information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before discussing the benefits of your services, or testimonials where clients are genuinely thrilled about your customer service when offering a money-back guarantee or providing content designed to help your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping to increase our revenue by $83,499 in the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ product has 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 you have helped them save, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate during a specific business quarter, 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 a little difficult when you are just starting out and have very few clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial everywhere on your site. 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 discount for clients in exchange for an honest review and permission to publish it if you choose to use it.
- Appeal to your best customer: 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 powerful motivator and influencer. People want to see and buy from “better versions” of themselves, so make sure to include testimonials targeted to your best audience demographic.
- Reprint content across different platforms. If someone posts great feedback on your Facebook page praising your products or services, send them a message asking permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
- Don’t use fake client testimonials. Your potential clients need to see that the testimonials displayed on your site are genuine. Don’t destroy your reputation with a false testimonial.
How To Get Testimonials
Ask
Getting a testimonial from a happy client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Here are some useful guidelines for requesting testimonials:
- Make a point of contacting customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 30 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after completing a service.
- Add a field for entering testimonials in all client satisfaction surveys.
- Take out your phone next time you meet with a client or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very short video testimonial/feedback interview. During your video, explain to your viewers what you have done for the client and capture the client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy for them. When 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 juiciest sections (only use what they have given you – never put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to use it. Explain that you have done this to help them save time and let them know they are completely free to edit what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link Back To The Source Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to publish a link back to their site 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 not fake and can be verified.
Include Testimonial Requests In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include a request for a testimonial in a periodic auto responder broadcast. This should be done after your clients have had a chance to experience your products or services. Use words like “I need a quick favor” 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 allows you to request testimonials from other members that become part of your profile. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite 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 site (tip: offer to publish a link back to their website in exchange).
Create A Customer Testimonials Page
Create a new page for customer testimonials and place a “read more client testimonials …” link pointing to this page throughout your content sections.
Useful Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your customer 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 site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap analytics software you can add to your site to monitor visitor behavior 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 inviting users to submit testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you can then refer users to your “Testimonials” section.
Here are a few useful 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 a Page or Post using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you insert a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which can be used for adding a photo of the testimonial author, their logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also can be upgraded to a “pro” version that has additional features and plugin support.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with images or videos on your website. You can insert testimonials content 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 offers additional features via a premium version, including built-in functions for better search engine results and developer support.
Visit this site to download and use the plugin:
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, list layout, grid layout, etc. using a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.
Go here to download this plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Customer reviews and client 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 testimonials, reviews, and feedback from existing customers, and start publishing these on your site.
Additional Info
For additional information on creating effective customer testimonials see 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 easy-to-digest information that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content for your 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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