How To Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract new customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? Most business owners don’t need to be told that generating new customers can be very hard, confusing 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, it’s a mistake to ignore the effect of online consumer behavior, especially if they are talking about your business.
Ignoring what your clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
You could be doing your business a great disservice if you are not promoting the positive things your customers are saying about your products or services. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content.
In this article, you’ll discover tips for turning more visitors into prospects using awesome customer testimonials.
Testimonials And Consumer Reviews
Legendary showman and businessman P.T. Barnum once 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 promoting your business. Testimonials quoted directly from satisfied customers are far more persuasive for attracting new customers, clients 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 businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … customer reviews and testimonials!
Customer testimonials and user reviews are great for building credibility for your business.
Marketing studies conducted by many leading companies all seem to lead to the same inevitable conclusion: adding testimonials and reviews to your sales pages helps reduce doubts potential customers may have about particular products or services, helps users select products and increases the number of product sales.
Below are just some findings that support this:
- According to research findings by eVoc Insights, an organization that researches and measures user experience, “In general, 63% of users indicate they are more likely to purchase from a web site if it has ratings and consumer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, customer reviews are responsible for producing an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more customer reviews per product can mean 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 Customer Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding reviews and testimonials to your website from people who are thrilled with the results they’ve obtained by using your products or services is important for helping you grow your business and creating a solid online reputation.
Consumer reviews and testimonials, however, are like double-edged swords; they can affect your business both in a negative and positive manner.
People may not be saying bad things about your products directly to you, but they could have posted negative comments on Facebook, or a forum or discussion thread about an unpleasant experience they’ve just had with your services 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 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 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 plugin for WordPress users that allows you to legally and ethically manage user reviews:
How To Create Effective Client Testimonials – Useful Tips
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be included in your content marketing. When you include responses from customers in your content, you:
- Show potential customers exactly what problems and pains your products and services can help solve for them and how easily this can be done.
- Help your visitors 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 creating testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try to use the actual words used by your customers as much as you can. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep things ‘real’.
- Use photos of real people: Marketing studies 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 your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your site’s content.
- Tell a story: Stories are much more powerful and captivating than providing mere 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 service and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: Add testimonials in your site copy where it makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help you sell your point. Think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s perception if you were to insert a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting your product pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before talking about the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are truly thrilled about your customer service before offering a risk-free guarantee or providing content designed to help readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful: “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping us grow our sales by $77,501 during the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ software 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 profits 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, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Use different customer testimonials throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial throughout your website. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more user testimonials by offering limited review copies of your product, or a special discount for existing clients in exchange for an honest review and permission to publish it if you decide 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 targeted to your ideal customers.
- Reprint testimonials across different platforms. If you get a great comment on your Facebook page praising your business, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
- Don’t use fake testimonials. Your prospects need to see that the testimonials published on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your integrity or reputation with false testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Clients
Just Ask
Getting a testimonial from a happy client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Follow these useful guidelines for requesting testimonials:
- Contact clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 90 days with an email request for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after completing your service.
- Include a text box for testimonials in all client surveys.
- Take out your phone when you next meet with clients or hand over a finished project and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a very quick video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording the video, explain to viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to record their positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy for them. If clients send 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 – don’t put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have done this 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
Offer to post a link back to their website 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.
Include A Testimonial Request In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include a request for a testimonial in one of your newsletter broadcasts. This should be done as soon as your customers have had a chance to use your product, service or solution. Use words like “I need your help” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking clients to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to solicit testimonials for your profile. 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 website (you can offer to publish a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Section
Create a new page on your website for testimonials and place a “more customer testimonials …” link to your main testimonials section wherever you plan to display single testimonials on your site.
Practical 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 your testimonial content. A great tool for measuring what visitors are doing on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap technology you can add to your website to predict visitor behavior here:
Useful WordPress Plugins
If your site or blog is built using WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add forms to your pages inviting users to submit testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (remember to provide simple instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you then refer clients to your “Testimonials” section.
Below are a few useful WordPress testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add client testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into a Page or Post using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you publish a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which you can use for adding a photo of the testimonial author, a business logo, etc.
The plugin also provides a “pro” version that offers additional features and plugin support.
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with videos or images on your website. You can insert testimonials via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and have multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.
Testimonials Widget has plenty more features available via a premium version, including built-in functions for better search engine results and technical support.
Visit this site to download the plugin:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium plugin that provides a range of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for displaying correctly on any device or browser.
- Display options for your testimonials in a widget or as slideshows, sliders, list layout, grid layout, etc. using a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customize 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 powerful sources of content that can help your business add credibility, build authority, improve online reputation, and grow your sales funnel. Always ask for testimonials, reviews, and feedback from existing clients, and start publishing these on your site.
Resources
For additional sources of information and resources on creating effective customer testimonials refer to 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 easy-to-digest information that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content for your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!
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