The power of testimonials

Today I wanted to talk about the power of testimonials. As we all know, a testimonial is when someone says something wonderful about you or your business. These recommendations can be hugely powerful, but it can be difficult to get the most out of your testimonials.

Why have them?

Testimonials are essential to almost any business. It’s well known that it’s immensely more powerful to have other people telling potential customers how great you are. People simply believe what other people say more readily than when you say it yourself.

Think of how often you or someone you know has asked friends and family for recommendations before even opening Google.

If we needed further proof, a page of testimonials on a website will often be the second most visited location on your website (after the home page, of course).

If you do not have recommendations visible, you will lose out on business.

How to get testimonials

This isn’t as simple as it sounds. Without a plan, you’ll end up with a few paragraphs in a couple of emails somewhere, which aren’t of much use to you.

To get the most out of testimonials, you want them to be somewhere independent such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn or a specific review site such as Trustpilot. They’ll be well presented with a real person attached to them, so people instantly know they’re trustworthy.

The problem is that although someone might be very happy with your work, writing a testimonial for you will be very low on their to-do list. This means you need to make it as quick and as easy as possible for people to do it.

If you meet your customers face-to-face, be prepared to ask for a quick video. Ask them some open questions to ensure you get more than a one-word answer. Questions like “What did you like most about our product?” Or “Why would you recommend my service or product?” Testimonials need some meat on the bone and thinking about your questions in advance will ensure yours do.

If you’d prefer, choose a few platforms such as LinkedIn and Google to focus on. Know how to give people a link that takes them directly to the review section. Put these links on your website and social media, clearly labelled. Email them to your clients.

You should make collecting testimonials a part of your standard process. One of the best methods I’ve found is to call people. Let them know that you’d like to get their review, then ask them some open questions and write up their response. Send it to them along with a link to your review platform. Say something like “Please feel free to rewrite this in any way, but if you’re happy with my wording can I please ask you copy and paste it into the links below”.

What to do with them

Once you’ve got some testimonials you need to get the most out of them. Simply put, your testimonials should be everywhere!

Start by creating a dedicated “reviews or testimonials” page on your website. You should also set it up so that your website uses certain testimonials in certain places.

Next, you should create some images (use something like Canva) of each testimonial, ideally with a photo of the person. You can then easily tweet them, post them to Facebook and anywhere else you’d like, whenever you like.

Here’s one I prepared earlier:

Those images will then also be useful in lots of other ways. Include them in emails and make them a part of your email nurture campaign. Any time you produce some literature, like a quote or a brochure, include some relevant testimonials.

So that’s how to get the most out of testimonials:
1. Be honest and open about it
2. Collect them somewhere trustworthy and independent
3. Always ensure they’re linked to the real person who wrote them
4. Repurpose them for your website
5. Create images
6. Use those images everywhere

Getting the most out of testimonials is something that requires a bit of work, but I’ll promise you’ll get a great return.

Oh, and if you’ve been a customer of mine and you’re happy to leave me a testimonial, I’d be very happy if you could do so here:
Facebook page
Google Review
LinkedIn

Thank you