How to Get Testimonials to Grow Your Business
When thinking about testimonials for businesses or products, these will very often come from customers who have had a good experience with you. They differ from reviews in the sense that they are usually more in-depth and give a comprehensive insight into how they worked with you, and the results that the customer had as a result of your product or service.
"Testimonials are a highly effective way of showing that your product or service really works. With 93% of online shoppers reading reviews and testimonials before purchasing, a testimonial goes beyond a star rating, providing real-world use cases and success stories."
In the age of social proof, it’s more important than ever to show that you’re a credible business. With more and more businesses going 100% online, you only have limited ways to interact with your customers before they purchase, so you need to make sure that your website shows that they can trust you, that you’re credible and safe, and that your product or service is tried and tested.
When thinking about your website, it’s important to consider that, often, your visitors will be brand new to your business and its offering, and that you only have a short period of time to showcase your products or services and to demonstrate credibility. Luckily, testimonials are a really simple way to do this.
Next, the big question. How do we get more testimonials?
Social media
Encourage your customers to leave feedback on your social networks. For e-commerce businesses in particular, getting your customers to tag you in their purchases online, or create short videos (for Instagram or Facebook stories) of them using the product can be a great way of not only gathering video testimonials, but also encouraging referrals. More often than not, creators will be happy for you to repost and reuse this content for your marketing purposes, but be sure to ask for permission first.
Ask
If you don’t ask, you don’t get! By simply asking your customers to leave reviews on a third-party review website or on your own website, this gives you product reviews and some data to follow-up on to request a longer testimonial. You can gather short reviews by reaching out manually via phone or email, or you can set up automated surveys that will send email requests at regular intervals post-purchase.
Offer an incentive
If you’re struggling to gather reviews or testimonials, try creating an incentive. This doesn’t have to be grandiose, and can even be something as small as a free cup of coffee, $20 Amazon gift voucher or entry into a bigger monthly prize draw. As long as your process is relatively simple, this incentive should be enough to boost your volume of testimonials. One word of warning on incentives is to make sure you validate the entries – as some people might send in fake testimonials!
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