Building Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract customers, only to get the exact same results? As most small business owners know, that finding effective ways to generate new customers can be quite hard. 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 online and social-driven economy, ignoring what clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Ignoring what clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
By the same token, you may also be doing your business a disservice if you are not spreading the positive things your clients say about your solutions, client support, etc. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be added throughout your content.
In this article, you’ll discover tips for turning more visitors into qualified prospects using effective user testimonials.
Testimonials And Client Reviews
P.T. Barnum, the great, legendary showman and successful promoter, is often quoted as having said 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. Quoting testimonials and reviews from your existing customers is existing customers are far more persuasive for attracting new customers, clients or users than anything you can 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 … reviews from your clients!
Testimonials and reviews are fantastic for building credibility for your services and products.
Tests conducted by many leading research firms all point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding reviews and testimonials to your sales information helps to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about buying your product, helps with product selection and helps increase conversions of visitors into sales.
Here are just some of the findings available to support this:
- According to research 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 user reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, consumer reviews result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user reviews per product can result in a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Website 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).
- 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 Customer Reviews And Testimonials – Managing Online Reputation
Adding great reviews and testimonials to your site from very satisfied clients is important for growing your business and creating a solid online reputation.
Testimonials and reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can impact your business both positively and negatively.
People may not be saying bad things about your products directly to your face, but they could have posted unhelpful words on Facebook, or a discussion thread or forum about a bad encounter they’ve just had with one of your sales or customer support representatives and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes an important aspect of your success.
Misconceptions about managing your reputation online, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need it) could be seriously hurting your business without you even being aware of this.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective WordPress plugin that allows you to legally and ethically manage your customer feedback:
Tips On Improving Your Conversions With Knockout Client Testimonials
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content marketing. When you quote responses from customers in your content, you:
- Show other users exactly what pains and problems your products and services can help solve for them and how easily it can do this.
- Help potential customers identify and address their objections.
- Help prospects connect with their motivations and aspirations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Below are some tips on creating profit boosting testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try to use your customer’s actual words as much as possible. Leaving little grammatical errors and misspellings in the content helps preserve your testimonials’ authenticity.
- Use real photos: It’s a proven fact that using images of people’s faces will draw the most attention of visitors on a web page. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews can help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
- Tell a powerful story: Stories are far more powerful and memorable than simply providing statistical facts. Being able to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution came to the rescue will make a far longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than using generalized statements about how “excellent” your support has been and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: Add customer testimonials to your web content where it makes the most sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help you sell your point. For example, think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s mind if you were to display a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting product or service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before talking about the benefits of your services, or testimonials where clients are truly ecstatic about your support before offering guarantees or providing content designed to help readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would find more powerful: “XYZ solution was directly responsible for growing our net profit by $91,486 in the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ software definitely helped us grow our business?” Whenever 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 they have saved, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate in a recent financial period, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Avoid using the same testimonial throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult if you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial throughout your site. Depending on 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 ideal customer: As every infomercial featuring a celebrity endorsement, subject expert or “busy mom” knows, if you know who your ideal customer is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects aspire to become 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 best audience demographic.
- Reprint across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook page praising your products or services, ask them for permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Never use fake testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing copy writers to create your 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 false testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Your Clients
Always Ask For Testimonials
Getting a testimonial from a happy client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Here are some tips for soliciting testimonials:
- 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 completing your service.
- Include a field for entering testimonials in all your client satisfaction surveys.
- Take out your phone next time you meet with clients or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a very short video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording your video, explain to viewers what you have done for your client and try to capture your client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy for them. If 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 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 change what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Post A Link To Their Site Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to post a link to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients providing you with a testimonial. It also makes the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Add A Testimonial Request To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include a request for a testimonial in a regularly-spaced email message. Preferably, this should be timed to reach subscribers just after your clients have had a chance to experience your 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 clients to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to solicit testimonials that become part of your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite simple and user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your website (once again, you can offer to publish a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Page
Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “read more customer testimonials …” link pointing to this section throughout your site.
Practical Tip: You can measure how effective customer testimonials are by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added the testimonial content. ”Heatmapping” technology is a great way to observing what visitors are doing on your site.
We have written an article about adding heatmaps to your website to analyze visitor behavior here:
Useful Testimonial Plugins
If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add a form 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 send clients to your “Testimonials” section.
Check out the WordPress testimonial 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 a Page or Post using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you add a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which can be used to add a photo of the testimonial author, a business logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also comes with a “pro” version that has additional features and developer support.
Visit this site to learn more about 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 posts and pages. 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 has loads of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and technical support.
To download this plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium WP plugin that provides a range 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 sliders, slideshows, grid layout, list layout, etc. via a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customized font and background colors, font types and more.
Go here to download and use this plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Customer reviews and client 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 your clients, and publish positive content about your business on your website or blog.
Resources
The articles below provide useful information on creating effective testimonials and were helpful in providing research and 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, save money creating high-quality content for your 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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