Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract new customers, only to get the exact same disappointing results? As most business owners know, that finding effective ways of generating new business can be very difficult, time consuming and frustrating. 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, you cannot afford to ignore the effect of what your potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting negative comments about your business.
Don’t ignore what consumers may be saying online about your business!
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 services and products. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content.
In this article, you’ll discover how to achieve better results online using standout customer testimonials.
User Reviews
Legendary businessman and showman P.T. Barnum is often quoted as having stated that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum understood the power of “social proof”. Using social proof as content is a powerful and effective way of getting your business promoted. Quoting genuine testimonials from your satisfied users is existing customers are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new clients than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is clearly a source of untapped business growth potential that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … customer reviews and testimonials!
Consumer reviews and customer testimonials are effective for building credibility for your products and services.
Research conducted by many marketing research firms all seem to lead to the same inevitable conclusion: adding reviews and testimonials to your sales information pages reduces doubts potential customers may have about products that you are trying to sell, helps with product selection and increases the number of product sales.
Below are just some findings that support this:
- According to a study by eVoc Insights, a company 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, customer reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more reviews per product can translate into a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Website 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).
- 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).
(Source: eConsultancy.com)
Adding Client Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Clearly, you should be adding reviews and testimonials from very happy customers to your site.
Reviews and testimonials, however, can work both ways and affect your business both in a negative or positive way.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business directly to your face, but they could have posted negative comments on Facebook, or a discussion thread or forum about a bad experience they’ve just had with your business and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes a vital part of your online success strategy.
Misconceptions about managing your reputation online, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need it) could be seriously harming your business without you even realizing this.
See this article to learn more about a tool for WordPress users that can help you avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your business, products or services through effective user review management:
Creating Testimonials – Useful Tips
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective ways of marketing your products and services online and should be used in your content marketing strategy. When you include responses from customers in your content, you:
- Show prospects exactly with similar problems and pains how your products and services can help them.
- Help visitors identify their objections and address these.
- Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and facilitate moving them closer to a buying decision.
Below are some practical tips on improving your sales conversions with sales boosting client testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: Try using the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leaving little grammatical errors and misspellings in the content helps to keep it ‘real’.
- Use photos of real people: Images of people’s faces draw the most attention to your content. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews can 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 facts and statistics. The ability to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a more lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generalized statements about how “excellent” the support was and giving “two thumbs up” service 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 they can most effectively help you sell your point. For example, think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s perception by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting product pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before discussing the benefits of your services, or testimonials where clients are truly thrilled about your customer service before offering a money-back guarantee or providing content that helps your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “Since using your XYZ services, we have noticed our sales grow by $91,267 in the last fiscal year,” or “XYZ software helped us grow our business?” If possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable data, like how much your solution helped to increase their profits or reduce their costs by 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 during a specific 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 have very few clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial repeatedly 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 launch discount for clients in exchange for an honest review and permission to publish it if you choose 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 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 content across different platforms. If someone posts a great comment on your Facebook page praising your commitment to customer satisfaction, ask them permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Never use fake testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing professional writers to produce your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but prospective clients need to believe that the testimonials displayed on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your integrity with false testimonials.
How To Get Client Testimonials
Just Ask
If you have just completed a service for someone, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.
Follow these tips for requesting testimonials:
- Make a point of contacting clients 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.
- Add a text box for entering testimonials in all client satisfaction surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you visit a client or hand over a completed project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very quick video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording the video, explain to your viewers what you have done for your client and capture your client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- 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 juiciest sections (only use what they have written – don’t 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 see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link Back To Their Site Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to publish a link back to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive for clients to provide a testimonial. It also makes the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Include A Testimonial Request In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include a request for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder broadcasts. Preferably, this should be done as soon as your clients have had a chance to assess the effect 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 subscribers to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you obtain testimonials that become part of your profile. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is simple and user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your website (and offer to add a link back to their website in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Section
Create a new page on your website or blog for customer testimonials and place a “more testimonials …” link to your main testimonials page whenever you are adding new testimonials on your site.
Useful Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of 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 measuring what visitors are doing on your pages are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap software you can add to your sites to observe visitor behavior here:
Useful Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If you use 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 testimonial plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), all you have to do is send users to your “Testimonials” page.
Here are some plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is an easy-to-use free plugin that lets you add testimonials to the 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 business logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also comes with a “pro” version that offers additional features and developer support.
Go here to download and use the plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your blog. You can insert testimonials via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and specify different display options such as random or specific ordering.
The plugin comes with additional features via a premium version, including built-in functions for improved search engine results and plugin support.
To download and use this plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium plugin that offers a range of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for correct display on any device or browser.
- Display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid layout, etc. by adding a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Testimonials and user reviews are great sources of content that can help your business in terms of adding credibility, building authority, improving online reputation, and growing your sales funnel. Always ask for feedback, reviews, and testimonials from existing customers or clients, and start publishing these on your website.
Resources
For additional resources about creating effective users testimonials read these useful articles:
- 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 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 completely FREE!
***
***
"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)