Build Your Reputation With User Testimonials And Reviews

Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract new customers, only to get the exact same disappointing results? As most business owners know, that generating new customers can be hard. Just trying to keep your business afloat takes up a lot of time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.

In today’s online and social media-driven economy, ignoring what clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!

Don’t ignore what your customers may be saying online about your business!

By the same token, you may also be doing your business a great disservice if you don’t publish the positive things your customers are saying about your products, services, user support, etc. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are persuasive ways of marketing your products and services online and should be included as part of your content.

In this article, you’ll discover how to improve your visitor-to-sales conversions using profit-boosting customer testimonials.

Client Reviews

Legendary American businessman and 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-driven content is a powerful and effective way of promoting your business. Quoting reviews from your existing users is satisfied users are far more persuasive when it comes to attracting new customers, clients or users than anything you can say about your own products or services.

There is clearly an untapped source of opportunities for generating new business that most small businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … client testimonials and reviews!

User reviews and testimonials are a terrific way to build credibility for your products and services.

Research conducted by leading marketing companies all seem to lead to the same inevitable conclusion: user reviews and testimonials decrease doubts potential customers may have about products or services, help users select products and increases the number of sales.

Here are just some findings that support this:

• According to a study 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 reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, consumer reviews 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.
• 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).
• 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).

(The figures above were sourced from eConsultancy.com)

Adding User Reviews – Online Reputation Management

Adding great reviews and testimonials to your website from very satisfied customers is essential for helping you grow your business online.

Testimonials and reviews, however, are like double-edged swords; they can affect your business both positively or negatively.

People may not be saying bad things about your business directly to you, but they could post disparaging remarks on Facebook, or a discussion group or forum about an unpleasant experience they’ve just had with your business 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 vital to 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 harming your business without you even being aware of this.

See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective tool for WordPress users that can help to avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your business through effective customer review management:

• Manage Bad Client Feedback Easily With Power Online Reviews Plugin

Creating Powerful Testimonials – Useful Tips

Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be included in your content marketing strategy. When you include responses from users in your content, you:

• Show other users exactly with similar problems and pains how your products and services can help them.
• Help visitors identify and address their objections.
• Help prospects connect with their motivations and aspirations and facilitate moving them closer to a buying decision.

Here are some tips on improving your sales with knockout testimonials:

• Don’t over edit: You should try using the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leaving grammatical errors and misspellings in the content helps preserve your testimonials’ authenticity.
• Use photos of real people: Marketing studies show that using images of people’s faces draws the attention of visitors on a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews will help increase visitor engagement with your content.
• Use the power of storytelling: Stories are so much more effective and memorable 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 far more lasting impression on those reading your content than using generic statements about how “excellent” the customer service has been and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
• Keep it in context: It’s good to add testimonials to your site copy where it best makes sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help to sell your point. For example, think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s mind if you were to add a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting your product pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before presenting the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are genuinely thrilled about your support when offering guarantees or providing content that helps your readers overcome their objections.
• Quantify the information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would find more powerful: “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping us grow our revenue by $67,691 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 financial quarter, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
• Vary the client testimonials throughout your site: Although this can be somewhat difficult when you are just starting out and have very few clients, it’s best to avoid using the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your site. Depending on your business, 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 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 target audience is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects aspire to become is a very 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 content across different platforms. If someone publishes a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your products or services, contact them privately asking for permission to reprint the content on your site.
• Only use real testimonials. Prospective customers need to believe that the testimonials provided on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your credibility or reputation with false testimonials.

How To Get Testimonials

Ask For Testimonials

If you have just completed 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 requesting testimonials:

• Make a point of contacting clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 30 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after completing a service.
• Add a text box for entering testimonials in client satisfaction 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 very quick video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording the video, describe to your viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to capture the 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 written – never put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact the client and ask them for permission to publish it. Explain that you have already prepared something to save them time and let them know they are completely free to change what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.

Offer To Publish A Link Back To The Source

Offer to post a link back to their website 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 A Testimonial Request 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. 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 your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking users to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature helps you solicit testimonials for your profile. With LinkedIn, 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 site (once again, you can offer to add a link back to their website in exchange).

Create A Client Testimonials Section

Create a new page on your site for customer testimonials and place a “read more client testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials section whenever you have added new testimonials on your content sections.

Useful 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 the testimonial content. A great tool for understanding what visitors are doing on your pages are “heatmaps”.

We have written an article about a heatmap analytics software you can add to your website to track visitor behavior here:

• Tracking Visitor Behavior On Your WordPress Site With Analytics Software – HeatMapTracker Review

WordPress Testimonial Plugins

If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages where users can submit testimonials.

Once your plugin is installed and set up (make sure to provide simple instructions for using the testimonials submission form – if available), all you have to do is refer customers to your “Testimonials” page.

Below are some great WordPress testimonial plugins you can check out:

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is an easy-to-use free plugin that lets you add customer testimonials to the sidebar as a widget, or embed testimonials into a Page or Post using a shortcode. Easy Testimonials also lets you publish a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which you can use to add a photo of the testimonial author, a logo, etc.

Easy Testimonials also comes with a “pro” version that offers additional features and developer support.

Visit this site for more information about the plugin:

• Easy Testimonials

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, quotes, reviews, or text with videos or images on your site. You can insert 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 has loads of additional features available via a premium version, including built-in options SEO functionality and technical support.

To download the plugin, visit this site:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This is a premium WP plugin that 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 your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid 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.

Visit this site for more information about using the plugin:

• Testimonials Plugin

To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Conclusion …

Customer reviews and testimonials are powerful sources of content that help your business add credibility, build authority, improve online reputation, and grow your sales funnel. Always ask for testimonials, reviews, and feedback from your customers, and publish positive content about your business on your site.

Additional Info

For additional information on creating engaging customer testimonials refer to these useful articles:

• 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 actionable information and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

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