Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract customers, only to get the exact same results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that trying to generate new customers can be difficult. Just trying to keep your business afloat takes a lot of time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.
In today’s web-based 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!
You may also be doing your business a disservice if you don’t publish the positive things your clients say about your services and products. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful ways of helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be included as part of your content.
In this article, you’ll learn how to convert more visitors into qualified leads with meaningful user testimonials.
Testimonials And Consumer Reviews
Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum, the great, legendary businessman and showman, once stated that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum obviously understood the power of “social proof”. Social proof-based content is a powerful way of getting your business promoted effectively. Genuine reviews and testimonials from satisfied clients are far more persuasive for attracting new clients, customers or users than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is an untapped source of business growth potential that most businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … consumer reviews!
Consumer reviews and customer testimonials are effective for building credibility for your business.
Research conducted by marketing companies all point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding testimonials and consumer reviews to your point of sale pages helps decrease doubts potential customers may have about products that you are trying to sell, helps with product selection and helps increase sales conversions.
Here are just some of the stats 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 customer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can translate into a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Website visitors who interact with both 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).
(Source: eConsultancy.com)
Adding Customer Reviews – Online Reputation Management
Adding reviews to your site from satisfied customers is essential for creating a solid online reputation.
Reviews and customer testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both negative and positive ways.
People may not be saying bad things about your products directly to your face, but they could post negative words on a forum about an unpleasant experience they’ve just had using your products and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes an important part of your online success strategy.
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 it) may be seriously causing damage to your business without you even realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective WordPress plugin that lets you legally and ethically manage customer feedback:
Improving Your Conversions With Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective when it comes to marketing your products and services online and should be included as part of 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 potential customers identify their objections and address these.
- Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and facilitate moving them closer to a decision to purchase.
Here are some practical tips on creating testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: You should try to use your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use real photos: 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 will help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your content.
- Use the power of storytelling: Stories are so much more effective and captivating than simply providing statistical facts. 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 presenting generalized statements about how “excellent” your customer support has been and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Keep it in context: Add testimonials in your site copy where it makes the most sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help to sell your point. For example, think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s mind if you were to insert a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting your product or service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before discussing the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are genuinely thrilled about your customer service when offering guarantees or providing content designed to help your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping to increase our revenue by $36,538 during the previous financial quarter,” or “XYZ product definitely 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 market share 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, 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 repeatedly throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult if you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, try to avoid displaying the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your web pages. 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 decide 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 target audience is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects aspire to become can be 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 fantastic feedback on your Facebook wall praising your commitment to customer satisfaction, send them a message asking for their permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
- Only use genuine testimonials. Many people can see through sites that employ copywriters to write content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your potential clients need to see that the testimonials published on your site are genuine. Don’t destroy your credibility with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Clients
Ask
When you complete a service for someone, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.
Follow these useful guidelines for requesting testimonials:
- Make a point of contacting customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 90 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after performing a service.
- Include a text box for entering testimonials in your client satisfaction surveys.
- Take out your phone next time you meet with a client or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they would be happy to record a quick video testimonial/feedback interview. 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 a client sends you positive written feedback 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 – never put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to use it. Explain that you have done this to help them save time and invite them to modify what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Post A Link Back To The Source
Offer to post 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 Testimonial Requests In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder mailouts. This should be done as soon as 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 the subject of your message and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking subscribers for feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you obtain testimonials that become part of your account. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your site (and offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Page
Create a new section for testimonials and place a “more client testimonials …” link to this page wherever you are adding small blocks of testimonials on your content sections.
Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your user 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 understanding what visitors are doing on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your sites to track visitor behaviour here:
Useful WordPress Plugins
If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages inviting users to submit feedback and testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you can then refer clients to your “Testimonials” page.
Check out the testimonial plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into posts and pages using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you add a list of all your 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 logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also provides users with a “pro” version with additional features and plugin support.
Go here to download the plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WordPress plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your web site. You can insert client 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 plugin provides a range of additional features via a premium version, including built-in options for improved search engine results and technical support.
To download and use the plugin, go here:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium WP plugin provides plenty of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for displaying correctly on any device or browser.
- Display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, grid layout, list layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.
Visit this site for more information about this plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Summary …
Testimonials and customer 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 your customers or clients, and publish positive content about your business on your web site.
Additional Info
The articles below are a great source of information about creating effective 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 show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to 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 100% FREE!
***
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)