How to get them, how to use them and where to use them…
It is very likely as a business you will fit into one of these 5 categories:
- You are a new business with no customers yet and therefore no testimonials.
- You have had customers/clients but don’t have any feedback you can use.
- You have collected the odd testimonial over the years but don’t get as many as you should.
- You have lots of reviews/testimonials but don’t use them properly.
- You have testimonials from every client/customer that are all findable online.
If you sit between 1 and 4, this blog will give you some pointers. Happy reading!
Testimonials = Credibility
Nowadays, a lot of people look for reviews or testimonials before they even consider buying what you are selling. So be sure to make an effort to get some ‘proof’ that what you are selling is great!
You can do things like giving away x amount of free licenses or products to get feedback. For example, if you have a new beauty product to sell, give away x amount of samples and ask for reviews. This will not only get you a number of potential customers who may continue to buy once their sample has ran out, but it will get you credibility in the form of reviews and testimonials.
If you offer a service, let’s say you are a designer, or copywriter. Perhaps you are a roofer or carpet cleaner and you’re new to trade or offering a new service. Again, you’ll be lacking proof – so why not do a deal – something like free to the first 5 customers (for carpet cleaners for example you could offer to do one room for free)
You might be reading this thinking it’s bonkers – all this free work – however, I ensure you that if I was looking at two quotes to have my garden done for example, I’d choose the one with testimonials over the one without – every single time. It will do you a massive favour in the long run.
Getting testimonials from past clients
Now let’s say you’re an established business, you have a number of past customers/clients (many of which always come back to you) however, you’ve never asked them for a review.
Well, it’s never too late to start.
I’ve recently run a testimonial campaign for three clients. All of these went back to PAST clients and we asked in such a way that we got everything we needed, without them really having to do anything!
Across these 4 clients we collected over 150 testimonials in just one week. These, have now been turned into images and added to their websites.
Some businesses will actually write testimonials for their clients and just ask them to put their name next to it. This is a smart approach if you take the ‘case study’ route where you involved lots of detail such as numerical data, statistics, results.
However, the way we did it was a simple service feedback questionnaire using survey monkey. Asking the right open-ended questions and asking permission to turn their feedback into a testimonial, in exchange for 5 minutes of their time and getting something in the post or being entered into a prize draw, meant there was a great uptake. My team turned the feedback into usable quotes and even designed graphics for the clients to use on their social media channels.
This is something you can replicate yourself – I haven’t held much back… however, if you want the service done for you so that all you need to do is provide the data, you know where we are.
Where would you use the testimonials?
There are 5 key places you can use testimonials and reviews.
1. On your website
Adding a page called ‘What our clients say’ and including them on here is a smart thing to do. You can even go one step further and ask your clients (B2B) if you can display their logo on your website for credibility.
(Depending on when you’re reading this, you may be looking at my site and wondering why I’m not doing this as well, the truth is that my priority is with my clients – so whilst their marketing is top notch – mine is an evening or weekend job when I get a spare 20 minutes!)
2. On your social media channels
Post testimonials in amongst other great content, whether they are text, image or video – get them on your social media channels pronto.
3. Google reviews
The super smart way. Ordinarily, I would ask my clients to give me a google review by sending them my bespoke links. From there I would turn them into graphics. However, at the time I’m writing this blog we are 8 weeks into lockdown and covid-19 even seems to be affecting the speed at work which google is reviewing feedback and adding it. Therefore, instead I’ve just asked my clients personally for testimonials on an email, which I will send back to them when the time is right to add to google for me. The more reviews you can get through google, the higher you’ll rank on google searches.
4. Proposals and selling tools
Writing the ‘perfect’ proposal probably needs a blog of its own – so for now I’ll keep this short and sweet. If you have testimonials – add a page of them to the back of your proposal.
5. Marketing materials
Brochures, flyers, email campaigns.
Testimonials = credibility. Let your customers sell for you!
Building testimonial gathering into your processes
This is something I suggest clients build into their standard processes.
There are a few little hacks you can use like building the question into your email signature, having a pre-written email that you send out to them when the work is complete or doing the questionnaire style approach once a month, that I mentioned earlier in this blog. Although many will give you reviews for nothing – it’s always good to have an incentive. People are busy… give them a reason!
A lot of the marketing tips, tricks and techniques I like to share with my connections are just habits you need to train and remember to keep doing.
One last little thing you could try.
Whenever you get a nice email with some kind words; That is the perfect opportunity to go back to them and ask if you can use what they’ve said as a testimonial and see if they want to add anything to it. 9 out of 10 people will give you the nod to do so, especially if you respond quickly to their email as they will still be in ‘complimentary mode.’
That’s all for now. If you want to have a chat about building a testimonial campaign. Call 01926350040 or email [email protected]
If you’d like to view some of our testimonials, click here.