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 new customers, and getting the exact same disappointing results? As most small business owners know, that finding new ways of generating new customers can be difficult. Just trying to keep your business afloat takes 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, ignoring what your clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
Ignoring what clients may be saying online about your business could be a costly mistake!
You are also doing your business a disservice if you aren’t publishing the positive things your customers say about your products or services. 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 marketing strategy.
In this article, you will learn how to convert more visitors into qualified leads with more effective customer testimonials.
Testimonials And Client Reviews
The great, legendary showman and businessman Phineas Taylor P.T. Barnum once said that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum obviously understood the power of “social proof”. Using social proof as content is a powerful way of getting your business promoted effectively. Testimonials from existing users are far more persuasive for 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 businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … customer testimonials and reviews!
Customer reviews and customer testimonials are a great way to build credibility for your business.
Tests conducted by leading research firms all point to the same inevitable conclusion: testimonials and user reviews help reduce doubts potential customers may have about a product or service, help users select products and increases conversions of visitors into sales.
Below are just some statistics that support this:
- According to a study 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 site if it has ratings and reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, consumer reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more user reviews per product can result in 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 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).
(Above figures sourced from eConsultancy.com)
Adding Customer Reviews – Managing Online Reputation
Clearly, you should be adding reviews from happy customers to your website.
Reviews and customer testimonials, however, are like double-edged swords; they can impact your business both negative and positive ways.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your products directly to your face, but they could be posting damaging comments on a forum about a bad experience they’ve just had with your business and this could be costing you business.
This is where online reputation management becomes important to your online business success.
Misconceptions about managing your reputation online, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really 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 WordPress plugin that lets you legally and ethically manage customer reviews:
How To Create Testimonials – Useful Tips
User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be an integral part of your content marketing strategy. When you quote responses from customers in your content, you:
- Show potential customers exactly with similar problems and pains what your products and services can do for them.
- Help visitors identify their objections and address these.
- Help prospects connect with their motivations and facilitate moving them further along the sales process.
Below are some tips on how to create sales boosting client testimonials:
- Don’t over edit: You should try using your customer’s actual words as much as you can. Leave little grammatical or spelling errors in the content. This helps keep your testimonials ‘real’.
- Use real photos: Research shows that using images of people’s faces will draw the attention of visitors on a web page. Adding client photos next to their testimonials and reviews will help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
- Tell a story: Stories are so much more powerful and captivating than just providing facts and statistics. The ability to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution came to the rescue will make a more lasting impression on those reading your content than using generic statements about excellent support and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: Add testimonials to your site copy where it best makes sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help you sell your point. Think about the impact you can create on your visitor’s perception if you were to present a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution can be purchased for before posting your service pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before presenting the benefits of your products, or testimonials where clients are truly 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 is more powerful… “XYZ solution was directly responsible for growing our net profit by $78,343 in the previous fiscal year,” or “XYZ software helped us grow our business?” Whenever possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable data, like how much your solution helped to increase their sales or reduce their costs 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, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Vary the customer 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 throughout your web pages. 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 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 target audience: 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 an extremely 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 content across different platforms. If you get a great comment on your Facebook wall praising your customer service, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the comment or post on your site.
- Don’t use fake testimonials. Most people can see through sites that employ copywriters to write content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your potential clients need to believe that the testimonials displayed on your site are genuine. Don’t compromise your credibility with a false testimonial.
How To Get Customer Testimonials
Always Ask For Testimonials
Getting a testimonial from a happy customer can be as simple as just asking for it.
Follow these tips for soliciting testimonials from your customers:
- Contact clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 14 days with an email request for a testimonial if you did not obtain one immediately after performing a service.
- Include a text box for testimonials in client satisfaction surveys.
- Take out your phone when you next meet with a client or hand over a completed job and if they are delighted with your services, ask them if they would be happy to record a short video testimonial/feedback interview. If they agree, while recording your video, describe to viewers what you have done for your client and try to record their positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy for them. If clients send you a positive email thanking you for a great job that contains snippets of useful testimonial material interspersed with the rest of their message, grab the juiciest sections (only use what they have given you – never put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to publish it. Explain that you have done this to save them time and invite them to change what you have written however they like before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link To Their Site Wherever You Publish Their Testimonial
Offer to post 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 real and can be verified.
Include Testimonial Requests In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include a request for a testimonial in a periodic auto responder message. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your clients have had a chance to experience your product, service or solution. 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 for feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature lets you obtain testimonials for your account. 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 positive recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your website (and offer to add a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Testimonials Page
Create a new section for customer testimonials and add a “more customer testimonials …” link to your main testimonials section throughout your content sections.
Practical 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 your testimonial content. ”Heatmapping” technology is a great way to monitoring visitor behavior on your pages.
We have written an article about a heatmap analytics software you can add to your site to observe visitor behaviour here:
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 where users can 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 then send customers to your “Testimonials” section.
Here are a few useful WordPress testimonial plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free WordPress 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 publish a list of all your testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include images with testimonials, which is great for adding a photo of the testimonial author, a logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also can be upgraded to a “pro” version with additional features and developer support.
To learn more about using the plugin, go here:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with images or videos 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.
Testimonials Widget comes with additional features via a premium version, including built-in options for better search engine results and plugin support.
For more information about the plugin, go here:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This premium plugin offers many great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes to display correctly on any device or browser.
- Options to display your testimonials in a widget or as slideshows, sliders, grid layout, list layout, etc. using a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the 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 this plugin, go here:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Summary …
User reviews and client 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 feedback, reviews, and testimonials from existing clients or customers, and start publishing these on your web site.
Resources
The articles below are a great source of information on creating engaging customer 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
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