Building Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract and retain customers, and getting the exact same results? As most business owners know, that finding new ways of generating new customers can be difficult, confusing and frustrating. Just trying to remain in business requires 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, it’s foolish to ignore the significance of what your potential customers are doing online, especially if they are talking about your business.
Don’t ignore what customers may be saying online about your business!
You are also doing your business a disservice if you don’t publish the positive things your customers are saying about your products or services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective ways of helping you market your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content.
In this article, you’ll learn tips for turning more visitors into qualified prospects using powerful user testimonials.
Client Reviews And Testimonials
Legendary showman and businessman Phineas Taylor (Aka “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. Genuine reviews and testimonials quoted directly from satisfied clients are far more persuasive for drawing new clients than anything you have to say about your own products or services.
There is clearly a source of untapped opportunities for generating new business that most businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … client reviews!
Testimonials and reviews are a fantastic way to build credibility for your services and products.
Research conducted by leading marketing research firms all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: adding testimonials and reviews to your point of sale pages helps to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about your products or services, helps with product selection and increases the number of product sales.
Here are just some of the findings available to support this:
- According to research 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 customer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, reviews result in an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user reviews per product can translate into 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 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 User Testimonials And Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Adding positive reviews to your site from people who are thrilled with your services is essential for growing your business online.
Customer testimonials and customer reviews, however, can work both ways and impact your business both in a negative and positive manner.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business directly to your face, but they could post unhelpful feedback on Facebook, or a forum or discussion thread about a bad encounter they’ve just had with one of your team members and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes a vital aspect of your online business success.
Misconceptions about managing your reputation online, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need to worry about it) could be harming your business without you even realizing this.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective WordPress plugin that can help you avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your business through effective user review management:
Creating User Testimonials – Useful Tips
Testimonials, user reviews, 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. When you include your own client responses in your content, you:
- Show other users exactly with similar problems and pains how your products and services can help them.
- Help prospects identify their objections and address these.
- Help prospects connect with their motivations and aspirations and this facilitates moving them closer to a buying decision.
Below are some practical tips on creating testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: Try to use the actual words used by your customers as much as you can. Leaving little grammatical errors and misspelled words in the content helps preserve your testimonials’ authenticity.
- Use photos: Images of people’s faces draw the most attention to your content. Adding photos of your clients 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 much more powerful and captivating than just providing facts and statistics. Being able to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a far longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generic statements about excellent customer support and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: Add testimonials to your site copy where it makes the most sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help to sell your point. For example, 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 sells for before posting pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before talking about the benefits of your products, or testimonials where customers are truly ecstatic about your customer service when offering guarantees or providing content designed to help readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would consider to be more powerful: “Since installing XYZ solution, our profits grew by $90,394 in the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ solution has helped us grow our business?” Whenever possible, ask clients to specify quantifiable results when submitting testimonials, 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 in a recent business quarter, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Vary the 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 throughout your web pages. Depending on the nature of your business, you could try to obtain more user 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 decide 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 aspire to become is a really 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 testimonials across different platforms. If someone posts fantastic feedback on your Facebook wall praising your business, ask them permission to reprint the content on your blog.
- Never use fake client testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing professional writers to create your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your prospects need to see that the testimonials displayed on your site are real. Don’t destroy your credibility with false testimonials.
How To Get Client Testimonials
Ask
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 useful tips for soliciting testimonials from clients:
- Contact customers after 14 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one after performing a service.
- Include a field for testimonials in client surveys.
- Take out your phone when you next 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 brief video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording the video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and record your client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy for them. When clients send 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 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 invite them to edit what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link Back To The Source
Offer to add 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 the implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real 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 newsletter broadcasts. Preferably, this should be done after your clients have had a chance to assess the results of using your products or services. 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 subscribers to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature helps you obtain testimonials from other members that become part of your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your site (once again, you can offer to add a link back to their website in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Section On Your Site
Create a new section on your web site for customer testimonials and place a “more client testimonials …” link to this section wherever you are adding new testimonials on your site.
Practical Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of your testimonials by how long visitors remain 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 site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your site to predict visitor behavior here:
WordPress Testimonial Plugins
If your website or blog is built using WordPress, you can use a plugin to add, edit and display testimonials. Some plugins also let you add a form to your pages inviting users to submit testimonials.
Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (remember to provide simple instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you can then refer users to your “Testimonials” section.
Here are a few useful testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is an easy-to-use free plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed them into a Page or Post using a shortcode. The plugin also lets you publish a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which is great to add a photo of the testimonial author, a business logo, etc.
The Easy Testimonials plugin also comes with a “pro” version with additional features and plugin support.
To download and use this plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free WordPress plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with videos or images on your blog. You can insert customer testimonials using a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and have multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.
Testimonials Widget offers additional features via a premium version, including built-in options for better search engine results and developer support.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium plugin that provides plenty of great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes for displaying correctly on any device or browser.
- Display options for your testimonials in a widget or as slideshows, sliders, grid layout, list layout, etc. via 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.
Visit this site for more information about using this plugin:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Customer reviews and testimonials 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 your clients, and publish positive content about your business on your site.
Additional Info
The articles below are a great source of information about creating engaging 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 a comprehensive series of training emails with easy-to-digest information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating high-quality content for your 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!
***
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org