In business, it’s no secret that credibility is so important.
In this day and age, most of your potential customers will scour the internet, looking for reasons to validate their buying decision – and if those reasons aren’t there, you could be missing a trick.
In this article, we’ll explore why testimonials are a powerful form of social proof, how to get your customers to review their experiences and where to share them to give your business a boost in credibility.
Testimonials = credibility
Did you know that 92% of consumers read online reviews and testimonials when considering a purchase, according to Vendasta?
The internet has armed the modern consumer with all the information they need to inform themselves before making any kind of purchase online. Impressive customer testimonials can be what sets you apart from your competition, especially if you’re operating in a saturated market.
Put it this way – you’re planning to make a restaurant booking for Friday evening and you can’t decide on where to go. You know you want Italian food but there’s just too much choice.
Your next step is probably to look at the online testimonials of both restaurants – and you’ll then choose the one with the most positive reviews.
Testimonials are an almost fool-proof content marketing tactic because they usually involve happy customers sharing their positive experiences of your business.
Of course, you will rave about your own business because you’re trying to sell your products or services, but hearing the words of their peers, who have no personal ties to your business, instils more trust in your potential customers.
How to get testimonials
You might be thinking: “Is it wrong to outright ask for my customer/client to say nice things about my business?”
The short answer is no!
Now let’s say you’re an established business and you have several past customers/clients. However, you’ve never asked them for a review.
Well, it’s never too late to start.
We ran a testimonial campaign for some of our clients and we asked questions in such a way that we got everything we needed from their customers, without them having to do anything!
Across these four clients, we collected over 150 testimonials in just one week, which were then added to their websites and have been used in emails and across social media.
Some businesses will write testimonials for their clients and just ask them to put their names next to them. This is a smart approach if you take the ‘case study’ route where you bring in more data and results.
You can also send out surveys using tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms to help collect testimonials through the questions you ask.
Where to publish your testimonials
- On your website
You could add a testimonials or ‘what our clients say’ page to your site to showcase some of your favourite reviews. This way, as soon as a potential customer enters your site, they will see that you have a page dedicated to it.
- On your social media channels
Testimonials are a great way to spread the word about your business on social too. Whether it’s a direct post to thank a client for their kind words or a quote adding context to a post about a specific product or service, this will go a long way to making your business more credible.
- Google Reviews
This helps you rank higher on Google and is often the first place people find you when searching for your products or services as they can be seen from within the search results.
- Business proposals and selling tools
Writing the ‘perfect’ proposal probably needs a blog of its own but, if you have testimonials – add a page of them to the back of your proposal to give your potential clients one extra reason to say ‘yes’.
- Marketing materials
Testimonials are a handy and effective addition to your brochures and flyers to be used for events or to send to leads.
Make it part of your process
Marketing has many moving parts, and asking for testimonials may be something that falls by the wayside when you’re trying to work hard on strategy and the day-to-day delivery of campaigns. This means it’s a smart idea to build asking for testimonials into your processes.
For example, you could build a question into your email signature to invite clients to leave you a testimonial. When a client leaves you on good terms, that’s the perfect opportunity to ask for a testimonial – or even a case study.
At Flamingo, we practice what we preach! That’s why we have plenty of testimonials published on our website, which you can read here.
If you need help securing testimonials from your customers, or you have some marketing questions to ask, get in touch and we can help you.