Are you interested in learning how to incorporate effective visual marketing methods in the process of collecting and showcasing reviews and testimonials online? If so, I’ve created a guide with 5 ways that will help you do it successfully.
The following is a contributor post from Visme Marketing Director Farzad Rashidi. Learn more about Farzad at the end of the article.
In this guide, you’ll find:
- How to encourage people to review your business and talk about your products
- How to showcase your ratings on review sites and boost your social proof
- Engaging visual ways to respond to all of your reviews
- How to optimize your online content
- How to feature your customers’ testimonials and stories on your website.
Let’s get right into it.
Effective Visual Marketing Method #1: Encourage People to Talk About Your Products
When it comes to online reviews and testimonials, you should keep in mind that encouraging people to talk about your products is a key step in attracting more customers.
Simply put, if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
I’m going to use a ReviewTrackers case study that will make this more clear. Ecommerce business Concourse Sports managed to dramatically increase their reviews over two months.
How did they do it?
They prioritized email campaigns that asked for reviews.
The company noticed a correlation between a high number of reviews and increased sales.
See below:
In other words, Concourse Sports made use of the ReviewTrackers tool and gave a voice to their audience by encouraging them to leave reviews about the company’s services and customer experience.
This can really make a difference and make your audience trust you more.
What you shouldn’t forget when sending out email campaigns to ask for reviews is the importance of the level of engagement in your email.
Many times, engagement goes hand to hand with visually appealing content. For that reason, we can be sure that the emails were visually appealing so as to resonate with their audience and make the campaign a success, as we noted before.
A blog post by Moosend on the best email newsletter design formula provides us with some very interesting and successful newsletter examples. It’s also a great piece to give you guidance on what you should and shouldn’t include in a newsletter. The following image is a good example of a successful newsletter that’s eye-catching and plays nicely with interesting color combinations.
(Image Source: Moosend)
You can always use the dos and don’ts that Moosend is suggesting for newsletters and merge them into your strategies of asking for reviews. The same applies to the next image as well. I’ve highlighted the CTA ‘Follow us on Instagram’ button to show you that a ‘Review us’ CTA button could look just as cute, playful, and encouraging.
(Image Source: Moosend)
I think you’ll find these compelling newsletter templates helpful; they can be your starting point for creating a newsletter that’s engaging and helpful in terms of providing you with a creative space where you can incorporate your Review Us CTAs.
The screenshot below shows a wide variety of available Visme templates that caters to the nature of your business and the visual message you want to convey.
(Image Source: Visme)
Asking for reviews is also recommended by Neil Patel. One of his tips about how to convince your customers to review your products and generate social proof includes:
(Image Source: Neil Patel)
According to Neil, popular ecommerce companies such as Amazon and Etsy use reviews in order to connect with their customers and establish a relationship with them. However, not all of them are doing it in the same way. Some companies work exclusively with verified reviews while others allow reviews from non-verified buyers, but they always differentiate them from the verified ones.
No matter how you decide to do it, you need to be honest and show that you value your audience’s opinion and feedback. Below is an example of a business that has a dedicated “Review Us” page on their website.
There, they ask their clients to review them on a number of platforms.
(Image Source: Austin Dental Spa)
Such a page definitely establishes trust between customers and the business. Plus, it’s encouraging, isn’t it?
Effective Visual Marketing Method #2: Showcase Your Ratings on Review Sites to Boost Social Proof
When it comes to reviews and testimonials online, it’s important to showcase your rating on review sites to boost social proof. To put it another way, be proud and open about your ratings and that will generate social proof for your business.
You may be asking, what is social proof?
I’d like to use the following sentences from a recent blog post on visual social proof that I think makes the term more clear.
(Image Source: Canny)
I think it’s important to point out the correlation between online reviews and the process of convincing people to buy from you or use your services. Specifically, you have more chances to convince people about the high quality of your business when you can showcase that other people have had a positive experience with you.
The course creation platform Learnworlds dedicates a big part of their homepage to the creation of an environment that will empower their customers to leave reviews.
(Image Source: LearnWorlds)
They do this, by showcasing some of these reviews as we see above and then showing that they’re available on a number of review sites, thus inviting their users to share their experiences publicly.
(Image Source: LearnWorlds)
By displaying the review sites shown above customers are encouraged to leave comments and reviews.
Take a look at the screenshot below.
(Image Source: G2)
And this one.
(Image Source: G2)
The reviews are as detailed as they should be, thus empowering more users to leave reviews, which makes them a type of social proof.
By reading those reviews, potential customers are more likely to try the product.
The same applies to Visme.
On the bottom of our homepage, we’ve placed the following icons that show our users that they are more than welcome to leave us a review on a review site.
(Image Source: Visme)
I believe that by pointing out the fact that you’re accepting reviews from the users that buy your products, you show them how much you value their opinion, which makes customers feel empowered and more comfortable using your products.
Let’s look at one more example.
The OTT platform Uscreen uses another visual way to showcase their ratings and stresses the fact that reviews are important for the company. More specifically, as we see on their website, Uscreen uses a simple icon that delivers the message by mentioning 5-star rated apps.
(Image Source: Uscreen)
It’s as simple as that.
We notice that all the companies discussed above as examples of showcasing their ratings also focus on presenting themselves nicely, by using effective visual marketing and not just words.
Before we move on to the next method, I want to draw your attention to the graph below.
This online reviews survey graphically shows that star ratings (and reviews) are still relevant and, in fact, important when it comes to online searches for products and services. People have proven to be in favor of reading reviews because it makes them feel more confident about their choices.
For that reason, I definitely recommend that you showcase your ratings online to boost your company’s social proof.
Effective Visual Marketing Method #3: Respond to All Reviews Visually
This method is one of the most significant.
I can’t stress enough the importance of responding to all the reviews that your business receives but this doesn’t have to be a boring process.
On the contrary, you should try to see it as another place where you can use effective visual marketing methods as part of your responses. In other words, try to think of the visual components the same way you think of the actual text that you’re going to write when responding to reviews.
Before I go any further on the visual element of your responses, I want to draw your attention to the following graph.
I’d also like you to read the points below.
What the results of the survey show us is that your customers expect you to reply to their reviews, both good and bad. When you respond, people know that you’re involved and that you care about them.
Ecommerce business ASOS does that very successfully with a Twitter account that’s dedicated to replying to reviews, especially to negative ones.
See below:
(Image Source: Twitter)
The company takes the risk of showcasing the bad reviews they receive. As you may have already noticed, it works in their favor. Instead of trying to conceal the fact that they receive bad reviews, they make it public. This way, their audience feels that they can trust them more. That’s a great and effective method that you should try to take into account when building your review response strategy.
Now, thinking about the visual part of your responses.
In today’s competitive online world, you should keep in mind that standing out is essential, especially within social media platforms. Fortunately, there are many beautiful and well-made templates out there that can help you improve your visuals.
Here’s an example of a customizable template that can help you structure your posts when you want to showcase a review, as we noted earlier.
(Image Source: Visme)
You should also consider creating some kind of special post that will include reviews and your replies to those reviews.
Here’s an example of how such a post might look.
(Image Source: Visme Instagram)
Note: If you find that review posts don’t align with the aesthetics of your feed, you can always use Instagram story templates and showcase your customers’ reviews and your company’s responses as an Instagram story instead of a post.
Effective Visual Marketing Method #4: Optimize the Content You Publish Online
A more holistic method that will help you keep your audience engaged is the optimization of your online presence and content.
In other words, you should try to create content that’s beautiful, well-made, and presented in the right way. This will help you create a strong brand that people will want to join.
The aesthetics of your content can really make a difference in the way that people look at and engage with your brand. This applies to your presence on social media platforms but also on your website and any other public content.
Well-curated content alongside high-quality service will bring in more positive results and more sales for your company.
Luckily, as I already showed you earlier, there’s a wide variety of templates that you can use to make your content look compelling in only a few minutes without putting a whole lot of effort into the process.
You can easily work with design collaboration tools with your team to create the best and most appealing visual content for your reviews.
Note: if you feel that you could do with some help with your social media management, you might want to consider using a social media management tool, like SocialPilot.
Effective Visual Marketing Method #5: Feature Customer Stories on Your Website
This final method is really all about your customers, the people who support your business. I believe that a great method when it comes to creating engaging content will include the participation of your customers.
The first example below showcases the importance of creating a dedicated page that includes testimonials as a way for people to get even more detailed information about your product and services.
Sitebulb created a page where you can read a number of testimonials from users and industry experts that have used, and are still using, their product.
The customers’ page looks like this:
(Image Source: Sitebulb)
It provides a nice online space where potential customers and other users can read testimonials, thus making it more likely they will trust the company and its services.
The same applies to the next example below.
Drift created a page to focus on their customers’ stories, making it obvious that the company highly value their opinions.
(Image Source: Drift)
More importantly, the company cares about the success of their customers and showcases it through multiple, individual pages of case studies like the one below.
(Image Source: Drift)
The page is detailed and provides information to other companies that might be considering using Drift.
(Image Source: Drift)
In other words, when a company shares success stories by people who have worked with it already, it attracts more customers and boosts social proof.
My last example before I wrap this up comes from live chat software company Acquire. The company’s customer stories are a great example of how to beautifully promote the success people have had with your product.
(Image Source: Acquire)
Additionally, as we saw earlier with Drift, the company’s created individual pages for customer stories.
These stories, like the case study below, are very persuasive and engaging. They invite more people to try the product and trust it.
(Image Source: Acquire)
Keep these examples in mind when you’re sharing your reviews and testimonials online – I strongly recommend you should!
Wrapping Up
In this blog post, I’ve shared with you how important it is to share your reviews and testimonials online.
I feel that after reading this you’ll be more conscious of the power that your customers’ feedback carries and the dynamic that comes with reviews. Keep in mind that this power can be a useful tool for your online marketing strategy, and can make customers trust you more and can bring increased engagement with your content and your product.
Don’t forget to include some, or better yet all, of the effective visual marketing tips I’ve given you. These will definitely elevate the visual quality of your content.
Also, be honest when it comes to reviews and don’t avoid them. They will help you improve, and by adding some imaginative visual methods, they can make your business look even better. Your customers will definitely notice.
Good luck!
—
Farzad Rashidi is the co-founder of Respona, the all-in-one PR and link building tool that combines personalization with productivity. He also runs the marketing efforts at Visme, where he helped the company gain over 5 million users and pass 1.5M monthly organic traffic. Since then, he’s been helping other companies achieve the same success via Respona.
