Testimonial Archives - SCORE Maine

Word of mouth remains a powerful force for attracting new customers. Recent studies show that 72 percent of consumers trust a business more if it has positive testimonials and reviews. Customer testimonials can reinforce your value, validate your expertise, and build trust. However, they can’t do those things unless you find ways to use your customers’ glowing remarks to your advantage.

In this post, we’ll share ideas for encouraging customers to share their positive experiences. We’ll also offer suggestions for how to leverage customer testimonials to attract more business.

Tips for Encouraging Testimonials from Your Customers

While many people are quick to leave negative feedback for businesses, they may need some nudging to take the time and effort to write about their positive experiences. A few ways to get more testimonials include:

Ask them for feedback at the point of sale by having survey or comment cards available.
Send an email survey after customers visit your location or make a purchase.
Tell them which social media platforms you’re on, and invite them to share their thoughts in a post and tag your page or account.
Post a sign with the review websites you participate in (for example, Yelp, Google My Business, Citysearch, TripAdvisor, etc.). Just be careful with how you word your signage. Some review sites—Yelp, for example—prohibit asking customers to leave reviews. Yelp does, however, allow the use of some of its brand assets so that businesses can let customers know they can be found there. Also, never pay or offer other incentives to customers for writing positive reviews.

6 Suggestions for Leveraging Customer Testimonials

Before using all or parts of customer testimonials for your marketing purposes, get permission from the people who wrote them. This applies to the online reviews that customers post publicly, as well. You might consider creating a testimonial release form to protect your business legally and ensure customers know how you will use their testimonials and where they may appear.

Here are some tips when using testimonials to highlight what’s terrific about your business:

Feature the most compelling part(s) of testimonials—especially those that are long-winded. If you pull out various snippets from different places in a testimonial and piece them together, get approval from the customer before using your amended version.
Fix spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. As long as you’re not changing the meaning of their testimonials, customers will likely welcome proofreading edits. Again, share any changes that you’ve made to get approval before publishing testimonials.
Publish testimonials on the pages of your website that they are relevant to. For example, say someone raved about a bike shop’s repair services in their testimonial. By prominently placing that testimonial on its Repair Services page, the bike shop will give site visitors interested in repair services confirmation of its competence.
Include one or two compelling quotes from customer testimonials in your email signature. Every time you send an email to prospects, they will get a glimpse of how happy your customers are with your business.
Share them on social media. Weaving testimonials into your social media content will serve to humanize your brand and reinforce your value to customers. Consider strengthening the human connection to your brand by asking customers if they will provide or allow you to take a photo to accompany their testimonial.
Record them on video. Consider asking a few customers if they’d be willing to share their testimonials in a video message. These could take the form of amateur snippets recorded with a smartphone and used in social media posts. Or, they could be professionally captured by a videographer and woven into an impactful story that you can feature on your website’s home page, on YouTube, or in TV spots.

The Most Important Testimonial Tip Of All

Your business must earn positive testimonials. Customers will only give them if you deliver excellence, so make sure you provide the best customer experience possible. If you need guidance on what your business can do to achieve a higher level of customer satisfaction, connect with SCORE. Visit the SCORE website to get a mentor or sign up for workshops.

You launched your business and sales are starting to ignite. It’s time to discover your brand evangelists. These are your customer champions! Motivated users who are passionate about your product or service. Initiate these 5 steps to capture their memorable user experience:

Reach out to 2 new customers each day. Pick up the phone and make that call. Start by thanking them for their business. Show some love, because customer shelled out hard earned money to buy your product. Ask what they liked best about your product. Before customers buy from you they have to KNOW you. Followed by LIKE and finally TRUST. If you have fostered trust, you have made a sale. Discover what led them to your product.

Gather meaningful feedback. Identify precisely how your product has improved their life in big or small ways. Did you save them time, money, or provide a new experience that was a WOW? Tease those pearls of information from their lips to your ears. How did they find you? That is a critical insight to understand. If someone else spread the word you now have another person to call and thank.

Ask for any improvements. This may seem like a risk, but maybe there is a tweak or two or three that you may have not considered important when you launched. That feedback is critical as you improve your product or service further down the line. Passionate customers usually have a lot to share. Start by asking what would make it better. Listen, learn and adapt.

Ask for a testimonial. When a customer is genuinely excited about your product, it is time to spread the word. A word of mouth recommendation is the single best marketing gift you can receive. Recommendations lead to customer engagement, which reinforces the positive image of your business. More new leads, more new customers, and more referrals. All because you published trusted testimonials on your website, and/or on your blog. Social proof delivers the credibility, and starts the KNOW, LIKE, TRUST cycle all over again.

Offer a small token of appreciation. Thank your customer for their time and their endorsement. Offer up a small measure of happiness, a coupon towards a discount on a future purchase for example. It’s not the monetary value, it’s the thought that counts.

Continue to engage with your evangelists. That’s a how small business wins in a socially connected universe.