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? As most business owners know, that trying to generate new customers can be extremely difficult. Just trying to stay in business takes 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, ignoring what customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Don’t ignore what clients may be saying online about your business!
By the same token, you may also be doing your business a great disservice if you are not promoting the positive things your clients say about your products, services, customer support, training, etc. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be added throughout your content.
In this article, you’ll discover how to turn more visitors into qualified leads using meaningful client testimonials.
Customer Reviews And Testimonials
P.T. Barnum, legendary businessman and showman, is often quoted as having said 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. Reviews and testimonials from your satisfied users are far more persuasive for drawing new customers, clients or users than anything you have to 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 testimonials and reviews!
Reviews and testimonials are effective for building credibility for your products or services.
Studies conducted by leading research companies all point to the same conclusion: adding reviews and customer testimonials to your sales information helps decrease doubts potential customers may have about products or services that you are trying to sell, helps with product selection and helps increase the number of sales.
Here are just some findings that support this:
- According to a study 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 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 consumer reviews per product can result in a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Site visitors who interact with both user 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).
(Above figures sourced from eConsultancy.com)
Adding Client Reviews And Testimonials – Online Reputation Management
You should be adding positive reviews from extremely satisfied clients who have experienced positive results with your business to your site.
Customer reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and impact your business both positive and negative ways.
People may not be saying bad things about your services directly to your face, but they could be posting disparaging remarks on Facebook about a bad encounter they’ve just had with one of your employees 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 a vitally important aspect of your online success.
Misconceptions about engaging in online reputation management practices, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need to worry about it) could be hurting your business without you even realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective WordPress plugin that can help to avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your products through effective customer review management:
Creating Customer 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 an integral part of your content. When you quote 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 prospects identify their objections and address these.
- Help potential customers connect with their motivations and aspirations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Below are some useful tips on creating profit boosting customer testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: You should try to use your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leaving little grammatical errors and misspellings in the content helps preserve the authenticity of your testimonials.
- Use real photos: Images of people’s faces draw attention to your content. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews will help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
- Tell a powerful story: Stories are far more powerful and memorable than simply providing facts and statistics. Being able to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a far 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.
- Keep it in context: It’s good to add customer testimonials in your web content 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 can create on your visitor’s mind by adding 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 discussing the benefits of your services, or testimonials where customers are truly thrilled about your customer service before offering guarantees or addressing 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 profits by $33,748 during the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ product has 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 sales or reduce their costs by 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 during a specific financial period, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Vary the client testimonials on your site: Although this can be a little difficult if you are just starting out or don’t have many clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial throughout your site. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more 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 aspire to become can be a very 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 content across different platforms. If someone publishes fantastic feedback on your Facebook page praising your products or services, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Don’t use fake client testimonials. Most people can see through sites that employ copywriters to produce 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 credibility or reputation with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Your Customers
Just Ask
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied customer can be as simple as just asking for it.
Here are some useful guidelines for requesting testimonials from customers:
- Contact clients after 90 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after performing a service.
- Add a text box for entering testimonials in client surveys.
- Pull out your phone when you next meet with clients or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they would be happy to record a very quick video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording your video, describe to your viewers what you have done for your client and try to capture the client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy for them. When a client sends 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 juiciest sections (only use what they have written – don’t put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to publish it. 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 Back To The Source Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to add a link to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive to get clients providing a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real and can be verified.
Include A Testimonial Request In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include requests for a testimonial in one of your newsletter mailouts. Preferably, this should be done after your customers have had a chance to use your product, service or solution. Use words like “I need your help” in the subject of your email and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking subscribers to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you request testimonials from other members for your profile. 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 recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your site (tip: offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Section
Create a new section for testimonials and add a “more customer testimonials …” link pointing to this page whenever you add new testimonials on your site.
Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your testimonials by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added the testimonial content. A great tool for observing visitor behaviour on your pages are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your sites to track visitor behaviour here:
Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add a form to your pages inviting users to submit testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (make sure to provide simple instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), all you have to do is refer customers to your “Testimonials” page.
Check out the testimonial plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed them into posts and pages using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you add a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which you can use to add a photo of the testimonial author, a logo, etc.
The plugin also provides a “pro” version with additional features and developer support.
Visit this site to download and use this plugin:
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 pages and posts. You can insert testimonials content using a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and have multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.
Testimonials Widget comes with a range of additional features via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and technical support.
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium plugin provides plenty of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for correct display on any device or browser.
- Display options for your testimonials in a widget or as slideshows, sliders, grid layout, list layout, etc. using a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customize font and background colors, font types and more.
To download and use the plugin, visit this site:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Summary …
Testimonials and user reviews are great sources of content that help your business add credibility, build authority, improve online reputation, and grow your sales funnel. Always ask for testimonials, reviews, and feedback from existing customers, and start publishing these on your web site.
Resources
For additional sources of information and resources on creating engaging 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 and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content for 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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