How To Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain customers, and getting the exact same results? As most small business owners know, that finding new ways of generating new business can be quite hard and frustrating. Just trying to survive in business requires a lot of time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.
In today’s online economy, you simply can’t afford to ignore the effect of online consumer behavior, especially if they are posting negative comments about your business.
Don’t ignore what clients may be saying online about your business!
By the same token, you may also be doing your business a great disservice if you are not promoting the positive things your customers are saying about your products, solutions, customer support, training, etc. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive ways of marketing your products and services online and should be included in your content.
In this article, you’ll learn how to create better results online using more effective client testimonials.
Testimonials And Client Reviews
Phineas Taylor P.T. Barnum, legendary American showman and businessman, once stated that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum understood the power of “social proof”. Social proof-based content is a powerful and effective way of promoting your business. Genuine testimonials and reviews from your existing users are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new customers, clients or users than anything you say about your own products or services.
There is a source of untapped business growth potential that most businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … reviews from your customers!
Customer testimonials and reviews are great for building credibility for your services and products.
Marketing studies conducted by leading research companies all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: adding user reviews and customer testimonials to your sales pages decreases doubts potential customers may have about purchasing a product, helps with product selection and increases sales conversions.
Below are just some statistics that 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, user reviews can 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.
- 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 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 Consumer Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding positive testimonials and reviews to your site from satisfied customers is essential for creating a solid online reputation.
Testimonials and consumer reviews, however, can work both ways and affect your business both positively or negatively.
People may not be saying bad things about your business directly to you, but they could be posting updates on Facebook 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 an important aspect of your 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 really don’t need it) could be hurting your business without you even being aware of this.
See this article to learn more about a WordPress plugin that can help to avoid the escalation of negative reviews about your business through effective user review management:
Tips On How To Create Compelling User Testimonials
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective when it comes to marketing your products and services online and should be included as part of your content. When you include responses from clients in your content, you:
- Show potential customers exactly with similar problems and pains what your products and services can do for them.
- Help prospects identify their objections and address these.
- Help potential customers connect with their aspirations and motivations and facilitate the sales process.
Below are some tips on how to create profit boosting user testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: Try using 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 of real people: It’s a proven fact that using images of people’s faces draws the attention of visitors browsing a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews can help your visitors and potential prospects take notice of your content.
- Tell a story: Stories are far more powerful and captivating than just providing facts and statistics. 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 customer service and giving “two thumbs up” service 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 best makes sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help sell your point. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s perception by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting your pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped your clients solve before presenting the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are truly ecstatic about your support when offering guarantees or providing content designed to help 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 sales by $12,779 in the previous financial quarter,” or “XYZ software definitely helped us grow our business?” 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 testimonial repeatedly throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult when you are just starting out or have very few clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial throughout your site’s pages. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more user 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 best customer: 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 can relate to 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 speak directly to your ideal customers.
- Reprint across different platforms. If you get great feedback on your Facebook wall praising your solution, ask them permission to reprint the content on your site.
- Only use real testimonials. Prospective clients need to see that the testimonials provided on your site are real. Don’t destroy your credibility with ”made up” testimonials.
How To Get Customer Testimonials
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 tips for soliciting testimonials:
- Make it a part of your business processes to contact customers after a specific period of time, e.g. 90 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you have not obtained one after completing a service.
- Include a field for testimonials in your client surveys.
- Pull out your phone next time you visit a client or hand over a finished project and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a brief video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording your video, explain to viewers what you have done for the client and record their positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy and write it for them. If clients send you a positive email thanking you for a great service 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 shape these into a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have already prepared something to help them save time and let them know they are completely free to change what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link Back To Their Site
Offer to publish a link back to their website in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients providing a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are not fake and can be verified.
Include Testimonial Requests In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a list of subscribers, include a request for a testimonial in one of your newsletter messages. Preferably, this should be done as soon as your clients have had a chance to assess the results of using your solution. 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 customers to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature allows you to solicit testimonials that become part of your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is user-friendly and the person who provides the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your site (and offer to publish a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Customer Testimonials Section On Your Site
Create a “Testimonials” page and place a “more client testimonials …” link to your main testimonials section throughout your site.
Useful Tip: You can measure how useful customer testimonials are by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. A great tool for understanding visitor behavior on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about a heatmap technology you can add to your website to track visitor behaviour here:
Testimonial Plugins
If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add forms to your pages inviting users to submit testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), all you have to do is refer clients to your “Testimonials” section.
Check out the testimonial plugins below:
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 a Page or Post using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you insert 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, a logo, etc.
The plugin also can be upgraded to a “pro” version that has additional features and plugin support.
Visit this site for more information about the plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your pages and posts. You can insert customer 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 provides additional features via a premium version, including built-in functions for improved search engine results and developer support.
To download and use the plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium plugin provides many great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for correct display on any device or browser.
- Display options for your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid layout, etc. using a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of testimonials, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.
Go here to download 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 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 publish positive content about your business on your website or blog.
Resources
For additional information on creating engaging testimonials refer to 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 regular training emails with easy-to-digest information that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality 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 completely FREE!
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