How To Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews

Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain customers, only to get the exact same results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that trying to generate new business can be hard. Just trying to keep your business afloat 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 media-driven economy, it’s foolish to 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!

You may also be doing your business a great disservice if you don’t publish the positive things your clients are saying about your services, solutions, customer training, support, etc. 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 used in your content.

In this article, you will learn how to improve your conversions using engaging user testimonials.

Client Reviews

Legendary American showman and businessman Phineas Taylor P.T. Barnum 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 and effective way of promoting your business. Genuine reviews and testimonials from your existing customers are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new customers than anything you have to say about your own products or services.

There is an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most small businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … testimonials and reviews from satisfied users!

Customer testimonials and customer reviews are a powerful way to build credibility for your business.

Studies conducted by many leading marketing firms all seem to lead to the same inevitable conclusion: adding customer testimonials and reviews to your point of sale pages reduces doubts potential customers may have about purchasing your product, helps users select products and increases sales.

Here are just some of the findings available to support this:

• According to research by eVoc Insights, a company 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, user reviews can produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more customer reviews per product can mean 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 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).

(The figures above were sourced from eConsultancy.com)

Adding Consumer Reviews – Managing Online Reputation

You should be adding positive testimonials and reviews from very happy clients who have experienced positive results with your business to your site.

Customer reviews and customer testimonials, however, are like double-edged swords; they can affect your business both in a positive or negative manner.

You see, people may not be saying bad things about your services directly to you, but they could post negative comments on Facebook or a forum about an unpleasant encounter they’ve just had with you or your business 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 an essential part of your business and content marketing strategy.

Misconceptions about online reputation management, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need to worry about it) could be seriously hurting your business without you even realizing it.

See this article to learn more about a WordPress plugin that lets you legally and ethically manage user feedback:

• Now You Can Easily Manage Bad Client Reviews On WordPress With Power Online Reviews

Creating Awesome Testimonials – Useful Tips

User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be used in your content marketing. When you include responses from clients in your content, you:

• Show others exactly with similar problems and pains how your products and services can help them.
• Help site visitors identify and address their objections.
• Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.

Below are some useful tips on how to create captivating testimonials:

• Avoid over-editing: Try using the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leaving little grammatical errors and misspelt words in the content helps to keep it ‘real’.
• Use photos of real people: Images of people’s faces draw the most attention on a web page. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews will help increase visitor engagement with your content.
• Tell a powerful story: Stories are much more powerful and captivating than providing mere facts and statistics. 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 generic statements about excellent customer support and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
• Keep it in context: It’s good to add testimonials in your web content where it makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help you sell your point. For example, think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s perception by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution can be purchased for before posting product or service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before talking about the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are genuinely thrilled about your support when offering guarantees or providing content designed to help readers overcome their objections.
• Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “As a direct result of using your services, we were able to increase our sales by an additional $95,492 in the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ software 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 sales 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 in a recent period, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
• Avoid using the same client testimonial throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult if 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 type of business you run, you could try to obtain more user 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 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 that appeal directly to your ideal customers.
• Reprint testimonials across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook page praising your commitment to customer satisfaction, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
• Only use real testimonials. Your potential clients need to see that the testimonials displayed on your site are genuine. Don’t destroy your reputation with ”made up” testimonials.

How To Get Testimonials From Your Customers

Ask

Getting a testimonial from a happy client can be as simple as just asking for it.

Follow these useful guidelines for requesting testimonials from customers:

• Make it a part of your business processes to contact 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 performing a service.
• Include a text box for entering testimonials in client satisfaction surveys.
• Pull out your phone when you next visit a client or hand over a finished project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they would be happy to record a brief video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording the video, describe to viewers what you have done for your client and record the client’s positive reactions and feedback.
• Make it easy for them. Whenever 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 best sections (only use what they have written – never put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to publish it. Explain that you have done this to save them time and let them know they are completely free to modify what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.

Offer To Publish A Link To Their Site

Offer to add a link to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive for clients to provide a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real and can be verified.

Add Testimonial Requests To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages

If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder broadcasts. Preferably, this should be done after your customers have had a chance to assess the results of using your solution. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking them to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to obtain testimonials from other members for your account. With LinkedIn, 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 their permission to reprint it on your site (once again, you can offer to publish a link back to their website or profile in exchange).

Create A Customer Testimonials Page On Your Site

Create a new section for client testimonials and place a “read more testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials page whenever you have displayed new testimonials on your site.

Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of client testimonials by how long visitors remain on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. ”Heatmapping” technology is a great way to observing what visitors are doing on your site.

We have written an article about a heatmap technology you can add to your website to predict visitor behavior here:

• Predicting User Behavior On Your WordPress Site Using Analytics Software – Heat Map Tracker Review

Using Testimonial Plugins For WordPress

If your site or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use a plugin to add, edit and display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to 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), all you have to do is refer clients to your “Testimonials” page.

Check out the WordPress testimonial plugins below:

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add customer testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into posts and pages using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you publish a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which you can use for adding a photo of the testimonial author, their logo, etc.

The Easy Testimonials plugin also can be upgraded to a “pro” version with additional features and technical support.

Go here to download the plugin:

• Easy Testimonials

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 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 makes plenty more features available via a premium version, including built-in options for better search engine results and technical support.

Visit this site to download and use the plugin:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This premium plugin provides 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 slideshows, sliders, list layout, grid 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 colours, font types and more.

To download the plugin, go here:

• Testimonials WordPress Plugin

To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Conclusion …

Customer reviews and client 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 your clients, and publish positive content about your business on your website.

Resources

For additional information on creating engaging 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 a comprehensive series of training emails with easy-to-digest 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. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

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