7 Effective Strategies To Get Customer Testimonials

A testimonial is an important psychological factor that influences a customer’s purchase decision. It’s an excellent marketing strategy to make a product or service seem much like the best one, for someone to sign up.

Great business testimonials will indirectly tell the audience that the business is legitimate, and truly works. In fact, an analysis by ‘Bright Local’ found that around 92% of customers read online reviews before they make a buying decision, and a study by ‘HubSpot’ noticed that about 60% of customers believe that customer reviews are either trustworthy or very trustworthy.

That being said, collecting positive customer testimonials and encouraging people to share more, isn’t as simple as other marketing techniques. It requires a little more finesse on your end.

However, there are still seven powerful strategies you may follow to make this happen, and here, we are going to talk about them.

#1. Checkout Your Facebook Reviews

Facebook is the most popularly used platform, so the first place you need to check for reviews is your own Facebook business page. Especially if you run a local business, you might already see many reviews here. Most of these reviews can be pretty detailed, so they are the most useful ways to highlight the best qualities of your business.

Worry not if you don’t have reviews on your Facebook page – asking your customers for a like, share, or comment is not a big deal on such a popular platform.

#2. Look At LinkedIn Recommendations

If you are a freelancer, then your LinkedIn page is a mining field for you with many gleaming reviews and recommendations. Although a lot of customers’ decisions would depend on the quality of the recommendations, the number can still assert a positive impact on your prospects.

All you need to do for this is to ask your employees or customers to offer recommendations in favor of you.

Yes, we agree that LinkedIn recommendations are only available for individuals. However, if you own a company, you may encourage all your employees to create LinkedIn profiles and receive recommendations from customers.

And with their permissions, you may use these on your website testimonials page.

#3. Ask For YouTube Video Reviews

Video reviews are perhaps more potent than standard text reviews. A video of your customer talking about the value of your product and how it benefited them can take the credibility of your business to a whole new level.

So, make sure to encourage your fans to record and share such videos through their own YouTube accounts. Now in case they send you the link, try uploading the videos to your official channel as favorites and organize a playlist of your loyal customer reviews. Apart from that, you can write transcriptions of the videos and include them as testimonials on your website.

Not only this, but we’d also wish to recommend you shoot video reviews on the fly with buyers at your physical store. If you have an active and popular YouTube channel, then everyone will love to be featured on it.

Here’s an example of a YouTube review of the Canon camera posted on the channel of Canon USA, featuring the ‘Breakout YouTuber’, Peter McKinnon.

#4. Local Search Directories

As the name indicates, local search directories are crucial for local businesses. Sites like Google Business Profiles, Yahoo Local Business, Merchant Circle, and Yelp, allow people to write reviews about local businesses.

We’ve got reviews on most of these sites. Here’s one of them from the Google Business profiles:

Today, people rely more and more on such ratings while making buying decisions. So, try to get as many reviews as possible, on them.

Also, if you are able to get great reviews on these sites, either copy and paste, take screenshots of the reviews, or use WordPress plugins to share them on your website testimonials page.

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However, if you are starting up and if you don’t have such reviews, this is one of the best platforms where you can ask your people to leave a review for your business. This is because having reviews on such sites will not only help you to get them included on your site but also keep your business high in the search results.

#5. Remember, There’re Niche Review Sites!

Niche review sites refer to industry-specific online platforms devoted to reviewing different players in the market. Hotels, for example, would wish to get reviewed on sites such as Travelocity, TripAdvisor, and Expedia.

Here’s one such example of reviews for hotels in Paris, on TripAdvisor.

Since a lot of people may get their initial guess of the quality of your products and services from such websites, it’s an excellent idea to focus on establishing a positive reputation over there, and then copying and sharing those reviews on your site.

#6. Reward Customers Who Review

Reward systems can encourage customers to provide great reviews. Offer clear incentives such as cash backs, free coupons, discounts, and special deals, for posting reviews.

Just ensure that you thoroughly review the terms and conditions of the sites you desire to grant incentives on, because some of them, like Google and Yelp, won’t allow offering direct incentives. Still, you can add a line to your receipt asking shoppers to leave a review on those sites.

#7. Set up Google Alerts and Social Mentions

The Internet is a huge arena, and there are likely a ton of unsolicited customer reviews written about your company on your personal blogs and forums. You can include them too on your website as testimonials.

But how?

It’s simple – just start by setting up to receive notifications through Google Alerts or Social Mentions, for all the posts with your personal name, company name, and product names. You can also choose to include a few relevant keywords if needed.

Once you find these reviews, you can kindly ask their authors if you can feature them on your testimonials page.

Last, But Not Least

Before we wrap up, here are a few important things for you to consider:

• Identify the right time and take advantage of happy customer moments.
• Choose a method that works best for you to get testimonials.
• Take efforts to ask your customers for reviews personally.
• If you are choosing to get reviews through surveys, try to ask more open-ended questions, so your customers get the freedom to answer liberally.
• Keep it short and let your customers know that it’s not going to take forever.

Conclusion

Now that you’ve collected your reviews. However, before you go ahead with placing them randomly on one testimonial page, let’s tell you that more than just showing that you are a popular choice, you need to focus on adding a layer of trust and credibility to the page. This is definitely an important factor that affects how others perceive your brand, which in turn boosts your conversions.

In case you still need assistance with setting up brilliant testimonial pages, then connect with Parel Creative. We are an experienced web development and digital marketing agency in Kochi and Singapore. We can get you dedicated web design and development experts to work on that.

You worked hard over the years to create a great product or deliver great services. So, why not share the rewards you received from your efforts with the world in the best way!?