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, and getting the exact same disappointing results? Most small business owners don’t need to be told that finding new ways of generating new business can be very hard. Just trying to keep your business afloat 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 web-based and social-driven economy, ignoring what your customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Ignoring what customers may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
By the same token, you are also doing your business a great disservice if you don’t spread the positive things your customers say about your services or products. Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are persuasive when it comes to helping you market your products and services online and should be used in your content.
In this article, you will learn ways to improve your sales using awesome user testimonials.
Client Reviews
Legendary showman P.T. Barnum 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 way of getting your business promoted effectively. Testimonials from your satisfied customers are far more persuasive for drawing new clients, customers or users than anything you can say about your own products or services.
There is an untapped source of business growth potential that most small businesses simply do not utilize, or utilize correctly … customer testimonials and reviews!
Testimonials and reviews are great for building credibility for your products and services.
Tests conducted by many leading firms all seem to point to the same conclusion: adding testimonials and user reviews to your site reduces doubts potential customers may have about buying your products or services, helps with product selection and helps increase the number of product sales.
Below are just some of the findings available to support this:
- According to research by eVoc Insights, an organization 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 reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Web site 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).
- 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).
(Above figures sourced from eConsultancy.com)
Adding Client Testimonials And Reviews – Online Reputation Management
You should be adding great reviews from very happy customers to your website.
Customer testimonials and customer reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can affect your business both positively or negatively.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business, products or services directly to your face, but they could be posting disparaging remarks on Facebook or a discussion group about a bad encounter they’ve just had with one of your sales or customer support representatives and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes vital to your online business success.
Misconceptions about online reputation management, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need to worry about it) may be harming your business without you even realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective WordPress plugin that allows you to legally and ethically manage your customer reviews:
Creating Customer Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content marketing strategy. When you include your own client responses in your content, you:
- Show other users exactly what problems and pains your products and services can help to solve for them and how easily it can do this.
- Help prospects identify their objections and address these.
- Help potential customers connect with their motivations and aspirations and facilitate moving them closer to a decision to purchase.
Here are some useful tips on improving your sales with engaging testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: Try using your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leaving grammatical errors and misspelt words in the content helps preserve your testimonials’ authenticity.
- Use photos: Images of people’s faces draw attention to your content. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews will help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
- Tell a story: Stories are much more powerful and captivating than providing mere facts and statistics. The ability to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a more lasting impression on those reading your content than using generalized statements about excellent customer support and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Keep 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 you sell your point. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s perception if you were to add a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution retails for before posting your price information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before talking about the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are genuinely ecstatic about your support before offering a money-back guarantee or providing content that helps your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think is more powerful… “As a direct result of implementing your XYZ software, we have seen our revenue grow by $88,468 in the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ product helped us grow our business?” If possible, ask clients to specify quantifiable results when submitting testimonials, like how much your solution helped to increase their market share or reduce their costs in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours of work they have saved, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate in a recent 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 somewhat difficult if you are just starting out and have very few clients, try to avoid displaying the same testimonial throughout your web pages. Depending on your business, you could try to obtain more 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 best 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 aspire to become can be an extremely 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 great feedback on your Facebook page praising your customer service, send them a message asking permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
- Only use genuine client testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing copywriters to produce your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your potential clients need to see that the testimonials published on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your integrity or reputation with a false testimonial.
How To Get Customer Testimonials
Just Ask
Getting a testimonial from a satisfied client can be as simple as just asking for it.
Here are some tips for requesting testimonials from clients:
- Contact clients after 90 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after performing a service.
- Include a text box for testimonials in your client satisfaction surveys.
- Pull out your phone when you next visit a client or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a brief video testimonial/feedback interview. During the video, explain to viewers what you have done for your client and make sure to record your client’s positive reactions and feedback.
- Make it easy 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 – never put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to use it. 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 The Source Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial
Offer to post a link back to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients to provide 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 a periodic email broadcast. This should be done 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 customers for feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to obtain testimonials from other members for your account. The process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation receives a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your website (tip: offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Page On Your Site
Create a “Testimonials” page and add a “more client testimonials …” link pointing to this page wherever you have added new testimonials on your content sections.
Tip: You can measure how effective client 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 measuring visitor behaviour on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmaps to your site to predict visitor behavior here:
Using Testimonial Plugins For WordPress
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 forms to your pages inviting users to submit reviews and testimonials.
Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), you then send customers to your “Testimonials” section.
Check out the plugins below:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed them into your pages and posts using a shortcode. The plugin also lets you insert a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which is great for adding a photo of the testimonial author, their business logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also comes with a “pro” version that has additional features and plugin support.
To download and use this plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with images or videos on your posts and pages. You can insert client 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 plugin comes with extra features via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and plugin support.
To download and use this plugin, go here:
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.
- 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 the testimonial, display testimonial in a speech bubble, customized font and background colours, font types and more.
To download and use this plugin, visit this site:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
Client testimonials and user reviews 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 testimonials, reviews, and feedback from existing clients or customers, and publish positive content about your business on your site.
Additional Info
For additional information on creating engaging 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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