Build 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 generating new customers can be very hard. Just trying to remain in business 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, mobile and social media-driven economy, it’s a mistake to ignore the impact of online consumer behavior, especially if they are talking about your business.
Ignoring what your clients 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 are not promoting the positive things your customers are saying about your products and services. 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 an integral part of your content marketing.
In this article, we’ll show you tips for converting more visitors into qualified prospects with captivating customer testimonials.
Consumer Reviews
Legendary American businessman and showman Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum 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 way of getting your business promoted effectively. Genuine reviews and testimonials from your existing clients are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new clients than anything you say about your own products or services.
There is clearly an untapped source of business growth potential that most small businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … reviews and testimonials from their customers!
Testimonials and reviews are a terrific way to build credibility for your services and products.
Research conducted by many leading marketing companies all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: adding testimonials and reviews to your sales information pages decreases doubts potential customers may have about purchasing your product, helps users select products and helps increase the number of product sales.
Here are just some of the findings available to support this:
- According to research findings 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 customer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, reviews can produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more customer reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Site 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 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 Reviews – Online Reputation Management
Clearly, you should be adding great testimonials and reviews from clients to your website.
Customer testimonials and reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can impact your business both in a positive or negative manner.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business, products or services directly to you, but they could have posted updates on Facebook or a user thread 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 a vital aspect of your online business 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 seriously causing damage to your business without you even being aware of it.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective WordPress plugin that allows you to legally and ethically manage customer reviews:
Improving Your Sales With Profit Boosting Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive when it comes to helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be included in your content marketing strategy. When you quote your own client responses in your content, you:
- Show potential customers exactly what pains and problems your products and services can 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 facilitate moving them closer to a decision to purchase.
Here are some tips on how to create client testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try to use the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use photos: Images of people’s faces draw the most attention to your content. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews will help increase visitor engagement with your content.
- Use the power of storytelling: Stories are far more effective and memorable than providing mere statistical facts. The ability to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than using generic statements about excellent support and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: It’s good to add customer 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. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s mind 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 presenting the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are truly ecstatic about your support when offering guarantees or providing content designed to help readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “Since using your services, we have seen our revenue grow by $54,948 during the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ software definitely helped us grow our business?” If possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable data, like how much your solution helped to increase their sales 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 period, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Use different client testimonials on your site: Although this can be a little difficult if you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial throughout your site. 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 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 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 that appeal directly to your best audience demographic.
- Reprint across different platforms. If someone publishes a great comment on your Facebook page praising your commitment to customer satisfaction, send them a message asking for their permission to reprint the content on your site.
- Don’t use fake testimonials. Prospective clients need to see that the testimonials provided on your site are real. Don’t destroy your reputation with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Customer Testimonials
Always Ask For Testimonials
When you complete performing a service, or a customer says they are really happy with your product or service, ask them for a testimonial.
Follow these tips for requesting testimonials from clients:
- Make it a part of your business processes to contact clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 14 days with an email request for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after completing your service.
- Include a field for entering testimonials in all your client satisfaction surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you 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 short video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording the video, explain to your viewers what you have done for the client and record their positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy and write the testimonial for them. Whenever 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 juiciest sections (only use what they have written – never put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to use it. Explain that you have already prepared something to help them save time and invite them to change what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Post A Link Back To The Source Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial
Offer to post a link to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients providing you with 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 a request for a testimonial in one of your newsletter mailouts. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your clients have had a chance to experience your products. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in the subject of your email and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking them to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to request testimonials that become part of your account. 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 positive recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your website (once again, you can offer to add a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Customer Testimonials Page
Create a new section for customer testimonials and add a “read more testimonials …” link to your main testimonials section whenever you display new testimonials on your site.
Useful Tip: You can measure how useful client testimonials are by how long visitors remain on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. A great tool for monitoring what visitors are doing on your pages are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap software you can add to your website to understand visitor behaviour here:
Using Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If your site or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages where users can submit reviews and testimonials.
Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you can then refer users to your “Testimonials” section.
Here are some great WordPress testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed them into your pages and posts 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 can be used for adding a photo of the testimonial author, their company logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also comes with a “pro” version that offers additional features and technical support.
Go here to download and use the plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free 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 user 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 provides additional features via a premium version, including built-in options for better search engine results and developer support.
For more information about using the plugin, go here:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium plugin provides plenty of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes to display correctly on any device or browser.
- Display options for your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, 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 learn more about using the plugin, go here:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Customer reviews and client testimonials are powerful sources of content that 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 your customers, and start publishing these on your website or blog.
Resources
For additional information about creating effective testimonials see 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 a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality 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 100% FREE!
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