Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract customers, only to get the exact same results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that finding new ways of generating new customers can be very difficult, confusing and frustrating. Just trying to keep your business afloat takes up 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 and social media-driven economy, ignoring what your clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Don’t ignore what your clients may be saying online about your business!
By the same token, you may also be doing your business a disservice if you don’t promote the positive things your clients are saying about your services and products. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of marketing your products and services online and should be used in your content.
In this article, you’ll learn how to convert more visitors into qualified leads with more effective client testimonials.
Customer Reviews And Testimonials
Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum, the great American showman, 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 and effective way of getting your business promoted. Quoting genuine testimonials directly from existing users 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 clearly an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … customer reviews and testimonials!
Customer reviews and testimonials are effective for building credibility for your business.
Marketing studies conducted by many leading research companies all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: adding customer testimonials and user reviews to your sales pages helps reduce doubts potential customers may have about products and services, helps users select products and helps increase the number of product sales.
Here are just some of the stats available to 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, reviews are responsible for producing an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user reviews per product can translate into a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Web site visitors who interact with both consumer 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).
(The figures above were sourced from eConsultancy.com)
Adding Customer Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding positive reviews to your site from delighted clients is important for growing your business online and creating a solid online reputation.
Customer testimonials and reviews, however, can work both ways and affect your business both in a positive or negative way.
People may not be saying bad things about your services directly to you, but they could be posting disparaging remarks on Facebook about a bad experience they’ve just had with your business and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes important to your online business success.
Misconceptions about managing your reputation online, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need it) could be causing damage to your business without you even realizing this.
See this article to learn more about a simple WordPress plugin that can help you avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your services through effective customer review management:
Tips For Creating Testimonials
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be used in your content marketing strategy. When you quote your own client responses in your content, you:
- Show potential customers exactly what pains and problems your products and services can solve for them and how easily this can be done.
- Help potential customers identify and address their objections.
- Help prospects connect with their motivations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Here are some tips on how to create profit boosting testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try using the actual words used by your customers as much as you can. Leaving grammatical errors and misspellings in the content helps to keep it ‘real’.
- Use photos of real people: 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 site’s content.
- Tell a story: Stories are so much more powerful and captivating than simply providing statistical facts. The ability 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 presenting generalized statements about how “excellent” the service was and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: Add testimonials in your site copy where it best makes sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help sell your point. For example, think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s mind if you were to display a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting your service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before presenting the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are truly ecstatic about your support when offering guarantees or addressing objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for growing our profits by $10,398 during the last fiscal year,” or “XYZ product 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 by in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours they have saved, 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 client testimonials on 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 everywhere on your site’s pages. Depending on the nature of your business, you could try to obtain more client 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 best customer 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 speak directly to your ideal customers.
- Reprint content across different platforms. If someone publishes great feedback on your Facebook page praising your business, send them a message asking for permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
- Never use fake testimonials. Your prospects need to believe that the testimonials displayed on your site are real. Don’t compromise your integrity with false testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Clients
Ask
Getting a testimonial from a happy client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Here are some useful guidelines for soliciting testimonials from your customers:
- Contact clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 60 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after completing a service.
- Add a text box for testimonials in client satisfaction surveys.
- Pull out your phone when you next meet with a client or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a quick video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording the video, describe to your viewers what you have done for the client and try to record your client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy and write the testimonial for them. When a client sends you positive written feedback 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 – 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 already prepared something to help them save time and invite them to edit what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Post A Link To Their Site Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to post a link to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive for clients to provide you with a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Add A Testimonial Request To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include a request for a testimonial in a periodic email broadcast. 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 the subject of your email and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking users for feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature helps you obtain testimonials from other members for your account. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is simple and 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 (you can offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Page
Create a new section on your website or blog for testimonials and add a “more customer testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials section throughout your content sections.
Practical Tip: You can measure how useful 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 observing visitor behavior on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your site to observe 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 let you add forms to your pages where users can submit testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you then send customers to your “Testimonials” section.
Check out the plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed them into your pages and posts using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials 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 for adding a photo of the testimonial author, their logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also provides users with a “pro” version with additional features and technical support.
For more information about using this plugin, go here:
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 web site. You can insert customer 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 loads more features available via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and technical support.
To learn more about the plugin, go here:
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 to display correctly on any device or browser.
- Options to display your testimonials in a widget or as slideshows, sliders, list layout, grid layout, etc. via 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.
Visit this site to download this plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Summary …
User reviews and testimonials are great sources of content that help your business in terms of adding credibility, building authority, improving online reputation, and growing your sales funnel. Always ask for testimonials, reviews, and feedback from existing clients or customers, and start publishing these on your website.
Resources
The articles below provide useful information on creating effective testimonials and were used when researching information for sections of this article:
- 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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