Building Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews

Are you stuck in a cycle of doing what you’ve always done to attract customers, only to get the exact same results? Most business owners don’t need to be told that trying to generate new customers can be quite difficult and time-consuming. Just trying to keep your business afloat requires a lot of time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.

In today’s digital, mobile and social media-driven economy, you just can’t ignore the significance of what your potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting comments about your business.

Don’t ignore what users 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 say about your products or services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are effective when it comes to helping you market and promote your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content.

In this article, you’ll discover how to create better results online with highly effective customer testimonials.

Client Reviews And Testimonials

The great American businessman and showman P.T. Barnum is often quoted as having said that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”

P.T. Barnum obviously understood the power of “social proof”. Social proof-based content is a powerful and effective way of promoting your business. Quoting genuine testimonials and reviews from existing clients is satisfied customers are far more persuasive for drawing new customers than anything you say about your own products or services.

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

Customer testimonials and consumer reviews are a terrific way to build credibility for your business.

Research conducted by marketing research firms all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: adding customer testimonials and reviews to your sales information pages helps to eliminate doubts potential customers may have about purchasing products and services, helps with product selection and helps increase sales conversions.

Here are just some of the stats 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 web site if it has ratings and user reviews.”
• According to Reevoo.com, user reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more customer reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
• Website visitors who interact with both consumer 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).
• 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).

(Source: eConsultancy.com)

Adding Client Reviews And Testimonials – Online Reputation Management

Clearly, you should be adding positive testimonials and reviews from really happy clients who have experienced positive results with your business to your site.

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

People may not be saying bad things about your business directly to you, but they could have posted updates on a discussion thread about an unpleasant encounter they’ve just had with you or 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 important to your business success.

Misconceptions about engaging in online reputation management practices, such as being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you just don’t need it) could be seriously hurting your business without you even realizing this.

See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective tool for WordPress users that lets you legally and ethically manage user feedback:

• How To Easily Manage Negative Client Feedback On WordPress With Power Online Reviews

Tips On Improving Your Sales With Client Testimonials

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 used in your content. When you quote responses from clients in your content, you:

• Show other users exactly what pains and problems your products and services can solve for them and how easily this can be done.
• Help site visitors identify their objections and address these.
• Help prospects connect with their motivations and aspirations and facilitate the sales process.

Here are some practical tips on how to create captivating testimonials:

• Avoid over-editing: You should try to use the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leave grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps to keep things ‘real’.
• Use photos: Images of people’s faces draw attention on a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews can help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
• Tell a powerful story: Stories are far more effective and memorable than just providing statistical facts. Being able to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than using generalized statements about excellent support and giving “two thumbs up” product recommendations that everyone has heard a “million times” before.
• Use it in context: It’s good to add customer testimonials to your web content where it best makes sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help to sell your point. Think about the impact you will have 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 services, or testimonials where clients are truly thrilled about your customer service when offering guarantees or addressing objections.
• Quantify your information: Which of the following statements do you think your prospects would find more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for helping to increase our sales by $61,821 during the previous financial quarter,” or “XYZ product 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 of work you have helped them save, 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 a little difficult if you are just starting out and don’t have many clients, it’s best to avoid displaying the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your website. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more 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 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 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 speak directly to your best audience demographic.
• Reprint testimonials 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 comment or post on your site.
• Only use genuine testimonials. Your prospects need to believe that the testimonials published on your site are real. Don’t destroy your reputation with a ”made up” testimonial.

How To Get Testimonials

Ask For Testimonials

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 tips for requesting testimonials from clients:

• Make a point of contacting clients after 60 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after completing a service.
• Add a field for entering testimonials in your client satisfaction surveys.
• Pull out your phone when you next meet with a client or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a quick video testimonial/feedback interview. While recording your video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to record their positive reactions and responses.
• Make it easy for them. If a client sends 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 help them save time and invite them to modify what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.

Offer To Publish A Link Back To The Source Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial

Offer to add a link to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive for clients to provide a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real and can be verified.

Include A Testimonial Request In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages

If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in a periodic auto responder broadcast. Preferably, this should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to use 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 clients for honest feedback, a testimonial, or a review of your services.

Use LinkedIn

The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to solicit testimonials from other members for your account. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is quite simple and user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a positive recommendation on LinkedIn, ask their permission to reprint it on your site (once again, you can offer to publish a link back to their profile in exchange).

Create A Testimonials Section

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

Practical Tip: You can measure how effective 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 monitoring what visitors are doing on your pages.

We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your website to understand visitor behaviour here:

• Spy On Your WordPress Site Users Using Heat Mapping Software – Heat Map Tracker Review

Using Testimonial Plugins

If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use a plugin to display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages inviting users to submit feedback and testimonials.

Once your plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you can then send customers to your “Testimonials” page.

Here are some great testimonial plugins you can check out:

Easy Testimonials

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

The Easy Testimonials plugin also can be upgraded to a “pro” version with additional features and developer support.

To download and use this plugin, go here:

• Easy Testimonials

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free WordPress plugin that lets you randomly slide or list selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with images or videos on your pages and posts. 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 a range of additional features via a premium version, including built-in functions SEO functionality and developer support.

For more information about the plugin, go here:

• Testimonials Widget

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

This is a premium WP plugin that offers many 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 slideshows, sliders, 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 colors, font types and more.

To download and use the plugin, go here:

• Testimonials Plugin

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

• How To Add Testimonials In WordPress

In Summary …

Client testimonials and user reviews are powerful 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 existing customers or clients, and publish positive content about your business on your website.

Resources

The articles below provide useful information about creating engaging users testimonials and were also 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 actionable 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 strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

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