The 5 Best Places To Use Testimonials To Your Advantage

Your digital marketing efforts will make or break your business. It’s important to have a proper plan in place and to use all the tools you have to your advantage – that includes your testimonials!

What Do Testimonials Do For Readers?

Testimonials offer something tangible to back up your claims. 84% of Consumers trust reviews they read online as much as they would trust a friend. Therefore, having honest testimonials from your clients will have a big impact on how much prospective clients trust your claims.

As well as establishing trust, testimonials also relieve doubt in the minds of your customers, highlight the benefits of your company, and give your audience a third-party person to identify with. These together create a powerful marketing tool that can have a huge impact on buying decisions.

Show Off Your Testimonials

Your testimonials have been earned and are probably well-deserved. Don’t be afraid to show them off. They are something you should be proud to display as and when you can. Your prospective clients are looking for a reason to buy from you, and a glowing testimonial could be enough to tip their decisions in your favour!

Use Your Testimonials To Communicate

Communication between a business and its clients is crucial for building a trusted business-client relationship. You can use your testimonials to communicate how well you deliver on your promises, in the words of your existing clients.

Here are 5 different places to display your testimonials:

1) On Your Website

We’ll begin with your website. Your website is your base where all your traffic should be ultimately directed to. If you’re solely relying on social media to promote your business, you might consider building a website with one of these free website builders.

Here are some ways you can integrate testimonials into your website:

• Have a dedicated testimonial page – This is a great option if you have a lot of testimonials.
• Sliding testimonials across your featured homepage image – Sliding testimonials reduce the amount of effort on the audience’s part. They are displayed directly in front of them, preferably between slides of interesting offers or information.
• Having a “Here’s What Our Customers Say” part on your homepage can really make a difference when you’re trying to encourage conversions.
• Add photographic proof – Using photos, names and company names adds to the credibility of the testimonials. Seeing a real person behind the testimonial plays a significant part in the message its putting forward.

2) In Your Marketing Emails

Email marketing remains one of the top players in the world of digital marketing. You are promoting your products or services to customers and potential customers. Adding a testimonial to your marketing emails may just be enough to encourage a sales conversion.

3) On Your Social Media Channels

When you have a new testimonial from a client or customer, promote it through social media. Show your followers that you’ve provided a great service.

4) In Your Video Ads

Videos are all the rage right now.  A video ad will grab and keep your audience’s attention significantly more than a plain text ad or an image ad.

Whether you’ve opted for an animated video, white board video, or a classic live action video, you can add your testimonials in wherever you feel is appropriate. This could be written at the bottom in quotation marks, or spoken out loud.

5) In Your Digital Brochures

Brochures are not yet a thing of the past. A digital brochure can be an effective place to display products, prices, and other important information you want your customers or clients to know. Dedicating a page in your brochure to testimonials could be a deciding factor if someone is in two minds about whether or not to make a purchase.

How to Get Those All-Important Testimonials

The simplest way? Just ask!

Ask your clients if they were completely satisfied with your services. If they were, ask them for a short testimonial describing their time with you.

If they don’t respond, leave it a week and follow up with them. They might just be busy.

Another option is to provide each client or customer with a link to a “How did we do?” question with a rating system and a box for comments. The trick is to make it as simple as possible for them.

If your client responds negatively, you can then proceed to rectify any shortcomings and learn from your mistakes.

What Should a Testimonial Include?

There are no hard and fast rules about what to include in a testimonial. But, generally, it should be short, simple and straight-to-the-point.

Never Fake it

Fake testimonials might seem like a good idea if you’re just starting out, but in reality, they destroy trust, reputation, and work to undermine the genuine reviews and testimonials out there. If everyone distributed fake testimonials, the concept would become meaningless and honest companies would suffer for it.

Instead, do a great job for as many clients as you can, and then request a couple of sentences from them.