Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract new customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that trying to generate new business can be extremely difficult, time consuming and frustrating. 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 digital, mobile and social-driven economy, ignoring what your clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Don’t ignore what clients may be saying online about your business!
You could be doing your business a disservice if you don’t publish the positive things your customers are saying about your services and products. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be added to your content.
In this article, you’ll discover ways to achieve better results online with captivating customer testimonials.
Consumer Reviews And Testimonials
P.T. Barnum, the great American showman and successful promoter, once 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 way of getting your business promoted effectively. Reviews quoted directly from existing clients are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new clients, customers or users than anything you 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 … testimonials and reviews from clients!
Reviews and customer testimonials are terrific for building credibility for your business.
Tests conducted by many leading firms all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: user reviews and testimonials help decrease doubts potential customers may have about buying certain products, help with product selection and help increase sales conversions.
Below are just some of the statistics available to support this:
- According to a study 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 reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, reviews can produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more customer reviews per product can translate into 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).
- 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).
(Source: eConsultancy.com)
Adding Client Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding great reviews and testimonials to your site from delighted clients is essential for creating a solid online business reputation.
User reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both in a negative as well as positive way.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business, products or services directly to your face, but they could post negative comments on a forum about an unpleasant encounter they’ve just had with one of your sales or customer support representatives and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes an important aspect of your online business success.
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) could be seriously harming your business without you even realizing this.
See this article to learn more about a simple tool for WordPress users that allows you to legally and ethically manage user reviews:
Tips For Creating Awesome Testimonials
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be added to your content. When you quote responses from users in your content, you:
- Show others exactly what pains and problems your products and services can solve for them and how easily it can do this.
- Help prospects identify and address their objections.
- Help potential customers connect with their motivations and aspirations and facilitate the sales process.
Below are some useful tips on improving your sales with user testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try using your customer’s actual words as much as possible. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use 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 increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
- Use the power of storytelling: Stories are so much more effective and captivating than just providing facts and statistics. The ability to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution came to the rescue will make a more lasting impression on those reading your content than using generic statements about excellent 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 sell your point. Think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s perception if you were to present a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting your product or service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before talking about the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are truly ecstatic about your customer service before offering guarantees or addressing objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would consider to be more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping to increase our sales by $66,466 in the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ software helped us grow our business?” If possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable results, like how much your solution helped to increase their profits 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.
- Vary the client testimonials throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out and have very few clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial everywhere on your web pages. Depending on the nature of your business, you could try to obtain more 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 ideal 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 that speak directly to your ideal customers.
- Reprint across different platforms. If you get fantastic feedback on your Facebook page praising your customer service, ask them permission to reprint the comment or post on your blog.
- Only use real testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing copy writers to write your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your potential clients need to see that the testimonials published on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your integrity with a ”made up” testimonial.
How To Get Testimonials
Just Ask
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied customer can be as simple as just asking for it.
Here are some tips for soliciting testimonials from your clients:
- Make it a part of your business processes to contact clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 30 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after performing a service.
- Include a text box for entering testimonials in your client surveys.
- Take out your phone next time you visit a client 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. If they agree, while recording your video, describe to your viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to capture the client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy and write the testimonial for them. When clients send 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 written – don’t put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact your 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 edit what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link Back To The Source Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to publish a link to their website 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.
Include A Testimonial Request In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in a periodic newsletter broadcast. This should be done after your clients have had a chance to use your services. Use words like “I need your help” in the subject of your email and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking subscribers to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature allows you to solicit testimonials that become part of your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your website (and offer to add a link back to their website in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Section
Create a “Testimonials” page and add a “more customer testimonials …” link pointing to this page throughout your content sections.
Practical Tip: You can measure how useful user testimonials are by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. A great tool for measuring what visitors are doing on your pages are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your sites to observe visitor behaviour here:
Useful Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If your website or blog is built using WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages where users can submit reviews and testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (make sure to provide simple instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you then send clients to your “Testimonials” page.
Check out the WordPress testimonial plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free WP plugin that lets you add user testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into your pages and posts using a shortcode. The plugin also lets you add a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which is great for adding a photo of the testimonial author, their business logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also can be upgraded to a “pro” version with additional features and developer 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 website. You can insert testimonials content using 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 has plenty more features available via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and technical support.
Go here for more information about this plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium WordPress plugin provides a range of 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 sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid 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, customize font and background colors, font types and more.
Go here for more information about using the plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Testimonials and user reviews 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 existing clients or customers, and start publishing these on your website.
Resources
For additional information on creating effective 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
We also recommend subscribing to our Free Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to 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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