Building Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract new customers, only to get the exact same disappointing results? As most business owners know, that trying to generate new customers can be quite hard. Just trying to keep your business afloat 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-driven economy, ignoring what users 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!
You could be doing your business a disservice if you don’t promote the positive things your clients say about your products and services. 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.
In this article, we’ll show you how to improve your visitor-to-sales conversions using profit-boosting client testimonials.
Testimonials And Consumer Reviews
The great American showman Phineas Taylor (Aka “P.T.”) Barnum once stated 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 getting your business promoted. Genuine testimonials from your satisfied customers are far more persuasive for drawing new clients than anything you have to say about your own products or services.
There is an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … customer reviews!
Customer reviews and testimonials are a fantastic way to build credibility for your products or services.
Research conducted by many marketing firms all lead to the same conclusion: adding testimonials and reviews to your sales pages reduces doubts potential customers may have about purchasing certain products, helps with product selection and helps increase sales.
Here are just some findings that support this:
- According to a study by eVoc Insights, a company known for researching and measuring 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, reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user reviews per product can translate into 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 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 Consumer Reviews – Online Reputation Management
You should be adding testimonials and reviews from existing clients to your website.
Testimonials and customer reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can affect your business both negatively and positively.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business directly to you, but they could have posted negative comments on Facebook, or a forum or discussion thread about an unpleasant 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 important to your business success.
Misconceptions about online reputation management, 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 realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a simple WordPress plugin that lets you legally and ethically manage customer reviews:
Tips On Improving Your Sales Conversions With Awesome Client Testimonials
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be included as part of your content marketing strategy. When you quote responses from customers in your content, you:
- Show others exactly what problems and pains your products and services can solve for them and how easily this can be done.
- Help potential customers identify and address their objections.
- Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Here are some practical tips on improving your conversions with engaging user testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: 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 the authenticity of your testimonials.
- 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 will help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your site’s content.
- Use the power of storytelling: Stories are so much 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 more lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generic statements about excellent service and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: It’s good to add testimonials in your site copy where it makes the most sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help sell your point. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s mind by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting price information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before talking about the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are genuinely thrilled about your customer service before offering a money-back guarantee or addressing objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for increasing our sales by $26,195 in the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ product helped us grow our sales?” Whenever possible, ask clients to specify quantifiable results when submitting testimonials, like how much your solution helped to increase their sales or reduce their costs in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours they have saved, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate during a specific business quarter, 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 somewhat difficult when you are just starting out and have very few clients, try to avoid displaying the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your website. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more customer 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 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 can relate to 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 that speak directly to your best audience demographic.
- Reprint content across different platforms. If someone posts great feedback on your Facebook page praising your solution, contact them privately asking for permission to reprint the content on your site.
- Only use genuine client testimonials. Your potential clients need to believe that the testimonials provided on your site are real. Don’t destroy your credibility with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials
Just 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.
Here are some useful guidelines for soliciting testimonials:
- Contact your clients after 90 days with an email request for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after performing a service.
- Include a field for entering testimonials in all client surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you visit clients or hand over a finished job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very quick video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording the video, explain to viewers what you have done for the client and capture their positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy 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 best sections (only use what they have given you – don’t put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. 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 Publish A Link Back To Their Site Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial
Offer to add a link back to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is a great incentive to get clients providing you with a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Add Testimonial Requests To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include a request for a testimonial in one of your autoresponder messages. This should be done after your customers have had a chance to experience your solution. Use words like “I need your help” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking users for honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you solicit testimonials from other members that become part of your profile. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite 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 for permission to reprint it on your website (you can offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Section On Your Site
Create a new page for customer testimonials and place a “more testimonials …” link to your main testimonials section throughout your content sections.
Practical Tip: You can measure how effective 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 measuring visitor behavior on your site.
We have written an article about adding heatmaps to your sites to predict visitor behavior here:
Using WordPress Testimonial Plugins
If your site or blog is built using WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also let you 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 clients to your “Testimonials” section.
Below are a few useful plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add user testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into posts and pages using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you publish a list of all 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.
The plugin also provides users with a “pro” version that has additional features and developer support.
To learn more about using the plugin, go here:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your website. You can insert testimonials content 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 offers extra features via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and developer support.
To download and use the plugin, go here:
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 to display correctly on any device or browser.
- Display options for your testimonials in a widget or as slideshows, sliders, list layout, grid layout, etc. via a shortcode
- Styling options (display image on top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customize font and background colours, 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 Summary …
Client testimonials and user reviews 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 feedback, reviews, and testimonials from your clients, and publish positive content about your business on your site.
Additional Info
The articles below provide useful information on creating effective clients 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 regular training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content for your site 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!
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