Have you used Fake Testimonials?

Cristian Level X³

July 31, 2016, 3:13 pm

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Have you used Fake Testimonials?

Ok so you develop a brand new product and you put a lot of work developing it as well as designing the perfect landing page with the perfect call to action.

What do you do when it comes to testimonials? No matter what you are offering you need to have some sort of testimonials, especially if the product is new and people haven't heard about your brand yet.

Would you write fake testimonials?
I personally can sport fake testimonials from a mile away, those perfect pictures with everyone smiling and those standard names like "John Smith" give them away instantly.
But the question still remains, would you fake them and maybe try to make them look more natural?

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ajlancer

Hi Cristian thanks for nice question. Simply I would like to say I never used fake or real testimonials for my any service or product. But, I saw many websites use testimonials as the way of what you said. I think testimonials is the very importance to make attract to new clients about any brand or product. And it is very effective way. If site or product owner use true or false testimonial, it may another discussion. But, few good testimonials may increase your product sell double. Some inexpert people going to believe what product owner write. I saw most of the software seller used testimonial as like previous customer feeling so much happy and rate as A+ etc.

Finally I think this is an excellent idea.

Regards by Ajlancer

9 years ago

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MasterA

I have never and will never use fake testimonials because that is basically lying to the customers. What I normally do is to offer my services for a very cheap price to start getting sales and only increase my price after people leave a few honest testimonials for me. I would rather start slowly to build up my reputation and reviews than create fake ones. The thing is fake reviews can backfire very quickly if your services are not good. Once people buy your service and realise the quality is very bad, you will end up getting lots of bad reviews and lose business.

9 years ago

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Lynne

I have never used fake testimonials and never will. When I had my online baby store I had the option for customers to leave a review of the product and this worked very nicely. I got some really nice reviews.

The fake testimonials are really easy to spot. Firstly like you say the people look just perfect, and oh so happy. Way too happy actually, like they've popped a happy pill or just arrive out of a Mary Poppins movie

They all give 5 stars and the reviews are just too over the top.

Real testimonials are very different.

Also I like what MasterA says, if you have these amazing testimonials and give terrible service you will be caught out very quickly and look very stupid.

9 years ago

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hitmeasap

No. I don't use fake testimonials. At least not in that way.

What I usually do is to give away my product for free, in exchange for an honest review. I do understand that most people will give me a bit better review, just because it was free.. So they can get a "review copy" in the future, in case I would release another product. This is very common and most people on WF are doing this for instance. It's easy, free and legit.. And you could actually end up with bad reviews by doing this too. Even though it's more likely you'll get a good one.

I would never write anything myself though. That's just insane and unethical.

Best Regards,
hitmeasap

9 years ago

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TommyCarey

Oh man

Back in the day I use to pay bloggers to give me positive reviews on their blogs

I would pay for 15 to 20 positive reviews on all different websites and once they were live I would compile all the review pages URLs into a text file and do a bunch of SEO for the pages. Why would I do SEO on these review pages if it's not my own website and it would just put them in competition for my own keywords? Because people will see "Razzys service was a 10/10 and I wish I could of paid more for it!" and other variants of how great I am

I've actually had people contact me saying they only purchased because they saw how many positive reviews we had around the internet.... and 99% of the reviews for the website they purchased from were fake lol

You can never really assess how many additional sales you've made using reviews, but I would bet it's a good amount since almost everyone looks for something positive written about your service prior to purchasing

9 years ago

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Cristian

Thank for your response Razzy. You are the first here to admit having fake reviews. I also did similar stuff a couple of years ago and its true, you do get more orders just because of the reviews!

I also do fake testimonials for all of my clients, sometimes I ask permission from actual buyers to use their photos and stuff but the we will write the content. I bet the vast majority of landing pages testimonials are fake.

9 years ago

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CryptoGuru

I personally have never used any testimonials but I do see the importance and need for them , as far as if they should be the truth or lies go I truthfully think they should always be honest I don't know I have good morals it does not feel right I do not feel right I would feel like a scam or some thing giving false testimony it would really effect me I don't think I would be able lie even if it did increase profit I'm an honest man and I plan on continuing to be that way to be honest

9 years ago

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EliteWriter

I think that there is nothing wrong to post a few fake testimonials, especially if you want to kick start a new site and try to make it look a bit reputable. A friend of mine had a site and when she launched it she posted a couple of fake testimonials. Once she started to get real testimonials she did not add any fake ones. It seemed that people started to view the service favorably because of these few testimonials. I think it is a bit of a trick that you can use to start off a bit, you know, give that first push, and obviously as long as you can make them look realistic not outright fake.

9 years ago

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SEOClerks

Have you used Fake Testimonials?

Have you used Fake Testimonials?

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