How to Leverage Online Reviews to Grow Your Business Like Neil Patel | Right Mix Marketing

• Updated on: 2019-11-12
• Read original article here

It’s easy to forget the old days when businesses had to beg customers to leave reviews and testimonials after using their products and services.

Nowadays, thanks to review-centric platforms like Amazon, Yelp and TripAdvisor, this has become a lot more mainstream. Sharing your experience with a brand, and reading the experiences of others, is now seen as an integral part of the online shopping experience, which makes asking for them a whole lot easier.

With the steady stream of testimonials flowing in, it’s easy for brands to become complacent and ignore them altogether, especially if they look fake. But the truth it, online reviews are the lifeblood of online businesses, and if you aren’t making the most of out of them, then you’re probably missing out on a lot of growth and sales.

If there’s one person who knows a thing or two about putting testimonials and reviews to good use, it’s Neil Patel. He’s been reviewed countless times as one of the most prominent figures in online marketing, and he’s been a proponent of using online reviews himself to market your business for years.

Neil Patel has some great suggestions on how to leverage those valuable reviews and turn them into growth for your business. Here are a few of his top recommendations.

Many of the business platforms we use online allow buyers to leave testimonials and reviews. However, if your reviews are not where they will be seen most by potential customers, then they won’t be working for you the way they should. For local businesses, Google My Business and Yelp are usually your best bet. If you sell products on Amazon or eBay, you’ll want reviews there.

It’s also critical to consider more niche platforms if they are applicable to your business. Neil Patel’s SEO products, for example, are a perfect fit for software discovery site, Product Hunt, where tech industry experts and users leave reviews. So it’s no wonder that when he announced tools like Ubersuggest 2.0 and Backlinks, he saw Product Hunt as the perfect place to share them, get reviews, and get discovered by a wider audience.

Always be sure to research what platforms your potential customers are using to find you, and make sure you have reviews there.

We don’t need to talk about how powerful visuals are on the Internet, do we? You pretty much hear that everywhere these days.

So it’s no surprise that Neil, in this article on QuickSprout, highly recommends turning your testimonials into images and videos. Not only do our brains process images faster, but using videos and graphics can also make your brand appear more professional.

In the article, Neil also showcases an example of an A/B test done by Unbounce, where they received a whopping 25% more conversions using video testimonials on their homepage, than they did with text.

Be sure to check out this amazing list of examples if you’re looking for some inspiration for your own visual testimonials.

Too many businesses relegate testimonials to a small section at the bottom of their homepage, or a separate page on their site that’s hardly featured elsewhere and rarely gets any traffic. What’s the point of having these crazy useful sales motivators if you’re not using them where they count the most?

Take a page from Neil’s book and put your testimonials right in the center of the action! On the Neil Patel site, you’ll find his testimonials embedded in his consulting page, which serves as the “sales page” on this site. On his agency site, Neil Patel Digital, he embeds testimonials from heavy-hitters like Intuit, General Motors and Google (yes, that Google!) all throughout his homepage, along with several prominent conversion buttons. Notice a trend?

Wherever your potential are about to take the next step towards buying your product or service, that’s where your testimonials need to be. Seeing the positive experiences others have had with your brand will often inspire the confidence they need to click that buy button. Take a look at the video below where Neil goes into detail about how to use this strategy on your own website.

Also, remember that powerful reviews don’t only come from customers. Those from prominent media entities and influencers can be just as powerful, so feel free to showcase those as well.

Another key tip from Neil – always include a photo and full name of the customer, and link to their business, if applicable. All of these further signify that these are real people with real stories, and not the fake reviews that have become too prevalent online in recent years.

Case studies aren’t just another marketing tactic for Neil Patel. He has stated that case studies have been his number one content strategy for attracting high paying clients. In fact, he’s even shared that using case studies grew his sales by 185%!

While Neil strongly believes that telling the customer’s story makes for a great case study, he also knows that sharing the customer’s own words within such a story is critical. According to him, “Quoting your customer in their own words will make the case study even more relatable to your ideal customer than you telling the story.”

Initially, Neil started creating case studies to use on his website to get more leads. However, he then tried including them in his closing emails, after he’s already had a conversation with the potential customers. This key tactic he learned from another marketing agency, Single Grain (which is run by Eric Sui, Neil’s fellow co-host of the Marketing School podcast that also get amazing reviews). He also included these case studies in his proposals, since he realized that the proposal might be shared with key decision makers that he may not have contact with otherwise.

Looking for some great inspiration for case studies that include testimonials? Check out these examples on Squarespace, where they showcase prominent customers like Idris Elba, Keanu Reeves, and John Malkovich.

There you have it! You’ve just learned some of the best strategies for implementing testimonials and reviews into your marketing efforts from one of the most prominent figures in the online marketing space.

Not only has Neil shared his recommended some great tactics worth trying, he’s actually proven that they work by implementing them himself and sharing his results.

Don’t just take his word for it though. There’s nothing Neil recommends more than trying things for yourself, tracking the results, and seeing what works specifically for your business. So if you really want to know what impact these recommendations will have on your business, then you’ve got to start putting those testimonials to work!