Building Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain new customers, and getting the exact same results? As most small business owners know, that trying to generate new business can be confusing, frustrating and hard. 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-driven economy, ignoring what your clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Ignoring what consumers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
By the same token, you could be doing your business a great disservice if you aren’t publishing the positive things your customers are saying about your products and services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be included in your content marketing.
In this article, you’ll discover tips for converting more visitors into qualified leads with more effective client testimonials.
User Reviews And Testimonials
P.T. Barnum, the great American showman, once stated that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum obviously understood the power of “social proof”. Using social proof as content is a powerful and effective way of promoting your business. Testimonials from your satisfied clients are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new customers than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is clearly a source of untapped opportunities for generating new business that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … testimonials and reviews from previous clients!
Reviews and testimonials are a great way to build credibility for your business.
Studies conducted by leading research companies all point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding customer reviews and customer testimonials to your sales information reduces doubts potential customers may have about purchasing a specific product or service, helps with product selection and helps increase the number of sales.
Below are just some of the statistics available to support this:
- According to research findings 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 user reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, user reviews are responsible for producing an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more 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 user-generated content (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).
(Source: eConsultancy.com)
Adding Client Testimonials And Reviews – Online Reputation Management
Adding great reviews and testimonials to your site from people who are thrilled with your products or services is essential for creating a solid online reputation.
Customer testimonials and reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can affect your business both in a positive as well as negative manner.
People may not be saying bad things about your business, products or services directly to you, but they could be posting damaging comments on Facebook or a discussion group about a bad 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 important to 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 to worry about it) could be seriously harming your business without you even realizing this.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective WordPress plugin that can help to avoid the escalation of negative reviews about your products through effective customer review management:
Creating Effective Testimonials – Useful Tips
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be used in your content marketing. When you include your own user responses in your content, you:
- Show potential customers exactly what problems and pains your products and services can help to solve for them and how easily it can do this.
- Help visitors identify their objections and address these.
- Help prospects connect with their aspirations and motivations and this facilitates moving them closer to a decision to purchase.
Here are some practical tips on how to create engaging 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 of real people: Research shows that using images of people’s faces draws the most attention of visitors browsing 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 so much more powerful and captivating than providing mere statistical facts. Being able to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a far longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generic statements about excellent customer service and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: Add testimonials in your web content 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 add a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting your product pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before talking about 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… “Since implementing your XYZ software, we have seen our profits increase by $78,383 during the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ solution has helped us grow our business?” If possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable results, like how much your solution helped to increase their market share 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 don’t have many clients, try to avoid displaying the same testimonial throughout your site’s pages. Depending on the nature of your business, you could try to obtain more customer 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 target audience is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects aspire to become is 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 across different platforms. If someone publishes a great comment on your Facebook page praising your solution, ask them permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Never use fake client testimonials. Prospective clients need to see that the testimonials you provide on your site are genuine. Don’t destroy your reputation with a ”made up” testimonial.
How To Get Client Testimonials
Ask
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied customer can be as simple as just asking for it.
Follow these useful guidelines for soliciting testimonials from your customers:
- Contact your customers after 60 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after completing a service.
- Include a text box for testimonials in client satisfaction surveys.
- Pull out your phone when you next visit clients or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a very quick video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording your video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and record the client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy for them. If 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 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 let them know they are completely free to edit what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link To The Source
Offer to add a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive for clients to provide you with a testimonial. It also makes the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Include Testimonial Requests In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include a request for a testimonial in a scheduled auto responder message. Preferably, this should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to assess the results of using your product, service or 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 customers to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you request testimonials from other members for your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your website (you can offer to add a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Page
Create a new page for client testimonials and add a “more client testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials section throughout your content sections.
Practical Tip: You can measure how effective testimonials are by how long visitors stay 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 adding heatmap analytics to your sites to observe visitor behavior here:
Testimonial Plugins
If your site or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages inviting users to submit testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you then refer customers to your “Testimonials” page.
Check out the plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed them into posts and pages using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials 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 for adding a photo of the testimonial author, their business logo, etc.
The plugin also comes with a “pro” version with additional features and technical support.
To download and use the plugin, go here:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with images or videos on your pages and posts. 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.
Testimonials Widget provides a range of additional features via a premium version, including built-in functions SEO functionality and technical support.
To download the plugin, go here:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium WordPress plugin that offers 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, grid layout, list layout, etc. using 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.
Go here to download the plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Summary …
Customer reviews and testimonials are great 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 or customers, and publish positive content about your business on your web site.
Resources
The articles below are a great source of information about creating engaging clients 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
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 teach you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your 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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