How To Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews
Are you stuck 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 of generating new customers can be quite difficult. 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 and social-driven economy, ignoring what 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!
By the same token, you could be doing your business a great disservice if you don’t promote the positive things your customers say about your products or services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be included in your content.
In this article, you’ll discover how to improve your visitor-to-lead conversions using profit-boosting user testimonials.
Consumer Reviews And Testimonials
P.T. Barnum, legendary American showman and businessman, once stated that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum obviously understood the power of “social proof”. Social proof-driven content is a powerful and effective way of promoting your business. Quoting reviews directly from satisfied customers is satisfied customers are far more persuasive for drawing new customers, clients or users than anything you say about your own products or services.
There is clearly an untapped source of business growth potential that most small businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … reviews from their previous customers!
Customer reviews and testimonials are a fantastic way to build credibility for your business.
Tests conducted by many leading firms all point to the same inevitable conclusion: adding customer testimonials and reviews to your sales pages eliminates doubts potential customers may have about purchasing your products, helps with product selection and increases sales.
Here are just some of the stats 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 consumer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, reviews can result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more consumer reviews per product can result in a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Web 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).
- 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 And Testimonials – Managing Online Reputation
You should be adding great reviews from very happy clients to your site.
Customer testimonials and customer reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can affect your business both negative and positive ways.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business directly to your face, but they could be posting negative comments on a forum about an unpleasant encounter they’ve just had with you or your business and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes vitally important to your online success.
Misconceptions about managing your reputation online, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need it) may be seriously harming your business without you even realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective tool for WordPress users that lets you legally and ethically manage customer reviews:
Improving Your Sales With Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content marketing. When you include responses from users in your content, you:
- Show other users exactly what problems and pains your products and services can help solve for them and how easily this can be done.
- Help visitors identify their objections and address these.
- Help prospects connect with their motivations and aspirations and this facilitates the sales process.
Here are some practical tips on creating testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: Try to use the actual words used by your customers as much as you can. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use photos: Images of people’s faces draw the most attention on a web page. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews will help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your content.
- Tell a powerful story: Stories are far more effective and memorable than providing mere 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” the service has been 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 customer testimonials in your site copy where it best makes sense to place them, and where you believe these can most effectively help sell your point. For example, think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s perception if you were to display a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution can be purchased for before posting your product pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before presenting the benefits of your services, or testimonials where clients are truly thrilled about your support before offering guarantees or providing content that helps your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for increasing our revenue by $68,684 in the last financial quarter,” or “XYZ product definitely helped us grow our sales?” Whenever possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable data, like how much your solution helped to increase their market share or reduce their costs 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, 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 or don’t have many clients, try to avoid using the same testimonial everywhere on your site’s pages. Depending on the nature of your business, you could try to obtain more customer testimonials by offering limited review copies of your product, or a special launch discount for existing 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 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 content across different platforms. If someone posts fantastic feedback on your Facebook page praising your products or services, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Don’t use fake testimonials. Your potential clients need to believe that the testimonials published on your site are genuine. Don’t destroy your credibility with a ”made up” testimonial.
How To Get Client 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.
Follow these useful tips for requesting testimonials from clients:
- Contact customers after 60 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after performing a service.
- Include a field for entering testimonials in client surveys.
- Pull out your phone when you next visit clients or hand over a finished project and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a brief video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording the video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to capture your client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy for them. If clients send 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 written – never put words into their mouth), and shape these into a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have done this to help them save time and let them know they are completely free to modify what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link To The Source
Offer to post a link back to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive for clients to provide you with a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real and can be verified.
Add A Testimonial Request To Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include requests for a testimonial in one of your newsletter mailouts. 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 your help” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking customers to provide feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to solicit testimonials for your account. 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 for permission to reprint it on your site (once again, you can offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Section On Your Site
Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “more customer testimonials …” link to your main testimonials page throughout your site.
Tip: You can measure how useful client testimonials are by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. ”Heatmapping” technology is a great way to observing visitor behaviour on your site.
We have written an article about a heatmap software you can add to your sites to analyze visitor behaviour here:
Useful Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to add, edit and display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add a form to your pages where users can submit reviews and testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you then send clients to your “Testimonials” page.
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 testimonials 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 images with testimonials, which can be used to add a photo of the testimonial author, their company logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also comes with a “pro” version that has additional features and developer support.
To download and use the plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WP plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your website. You can insert testimonials via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and have multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.
The Testimonials Widget plugin offers additional features via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and developer support.
To download and use this plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium plugin provides a range of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for displaying correctly on any device or browser.
- Options to display 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 colours, font types and more.
Go here to download the plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
User reviews and client testimonials are powerful 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 existing customers or clients, and start publishing these on your site.
Resources
For additional information on creating effective users testimonials read 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
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