How To Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract new customers, only to get the exact same results? As most small business owners know, that generating new business can be very hard. 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, it’s foolish to ignore the impact of online consumer behavior, especially if they are posting comments about your business.
Don’t ignore what your customers may be saying online about your business!
You are also doing your business a great disservice if you are not boosting the positive things your clients are saying about your services and products. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective when it comes to helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be included in your content.
In this article, you’ll discover how to improve your visitor-to-lead conversions with highly effective customer testimonials.
Testimonials And User Reviews
P.T. Barnum, the great, legendary businessman and showman, once stated that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum understood the power of “social proof”. Social proof-driven content is a powerful way of getting your business promoted effectively. Testimonials and reviews from your existing customers are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new customers than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is clearly an untapped source of business growth potential that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … consumer reviews and testimonials!
Customer testimonials and reviews are terrific for building credibility for your products or services.
Studies conducted by leading companies all lead to the same conclusion: adding reviews and testimonials to your sales pages decreases doubts potential customers may have about buying products, helps with product selection and helps increase conversions of visitors into sales.
Here are just some of the findings available to support this:
- According to research findings 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 user reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, reviews can produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can result in 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).
- 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 User Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding great testimonials and reviews to your site from very satisfied clients is important for growing your business online and creating a solid online reputation.
Testimonials and reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can affect your business both negatively or positively.
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 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 an important aspect of your online success.
Misconceptions about online reputation management, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need it) may be causing damage to your business without you even being aware of this.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective WordPress plugin that can help you avoid the escalation of negative reviews about your business, products or services through effective user review management:
How To Create Standout Testimonials – Useful Tips
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive when it comes to marketing 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 prospects exactly what problems and pains your products and services can help to solve for them and how easily this can be done.
- Help visitors identify their objections and address these.
- Help prospects connect with their motivations and aspirations and this facilitates moving them closer to a buying decision.
Here are some useful tips on creating testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: Try using your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep it ‘real’.
- Use photos: Marketing tests show that using images of people’s faces draws the most attention of visitors 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 effective and captivating 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 more lasting impression on those reading your content than using generalized statements about excellent support and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: Add customer testimonials to your site copy where it best makes sense to place them, and where you believe these 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 sells for before posting pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before talking about the benefits of your services, or testimonials where clients are genuinely ecstatic about your customer service when offering guarantees or addressing objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would find more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for growing our profits by $30,775 during the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ software definitely helped us grow our business?” If 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 they have saved, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate in a recent financial quarter, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Avoid using the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out or have very few clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial everywhere on your website. 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 best customer: 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 aspire to become can be an extremely 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 publishes fantastic feedback on your Facebook page praising your products or services, ask them permission to reprint the content on your site.
- Never use fake client testimonials. Most people can see through sites that employ copywriters to write their content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your prospects need to believe that the testimonials you provide on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your integrity with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Client Testimonials
Ask
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Follow these useful tips 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 request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after completing a service.
- Add a field for entering testimonials in client surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you visit a client or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they would be happy to record a short video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording your video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to record the client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy for them. Whenever 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 best sections (only use what they have written – don’t 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 already prepared something to help them save time and invite them to edit what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Post A Link Back To The Source Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial
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 an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Add Testimonial Requests To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include requests for a testimonial in a scheduled email message. Preferably, this should be done after your clients have had a chance to assess the results of using your solution. Use words like “I need your help” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking users for honest feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature allows you to request testimonials that become part of your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is simple and user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation receives 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 add a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Customer Testimonials Section
Create a new page on your web site for client testimonials and place a “read more customer testimonials …” link to this section throughout your site.
Practical Tip: You can measure how effective customer 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 visitor behavior on your pages are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap technology you can add to your sites to measure visitor behaviour here:
Testimonial Plugins
If your site or blog is built using WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages where users can submit feedback and testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (remember to provide simple instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you can then refer users to your “Testimonials” page.
Check out the testimonial plugins below:
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. The plugin also lets you insert a list of all 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, their business logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also provides users with a “pro” version that has additional features and technical support.
Visit this site to download and use this plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, 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 Testimonials Widget plugin makes loads of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in options for improved search engine results and plugin support.
To download and use this plugin, go here:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium WordPress plugin that offers many 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, grid layout, list layout, etc. via a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colors, font types and more.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
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 add credibility, build authority, improve online reputation, and grow your sales funnel. Always ask for feedback, reviews, and testimonials from existing customers, and start publishing these on your web site.
Resources
For additional resources about creating effective testimonials read the articles below:
- 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 web site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to 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 completely FREE!
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