Making testimonials do your work

Getting a testimonial from a client is one thing, but making them useful and getting them to ‘work’ for you is another. For well known brands, credibility is often a given, however the rest of us need to work hard to build it. The right testimonials, used in the right way, are a great to build credibility and trust. And they’re not expensive – they just take the right approach.

We need to get the right kind of praise from your customers, but not every testimony can do that.

How to make testimonials work

No one really wants to read a syrupy statement. What we want to know about is the results, the ease, the efficiencies. A client talking about these things provide evidence of our firm’s credibility.

Many people will visit your website and only see your homepage – so make sure to showcase a testimonial that has real impact.

Provide social proof that validates your claims by using testimonials that endorse your services or specialisations throughout your website.

Often web visitors look for social proof, so having testimonials on their own page will enable them to be easily navigated to. It also provides you with the opportunity to showcase different results, feature clients and thank team members. The number of these reviews will further add credibility for your brand. You can also give a particular name to the page that will entice people to read it, like ‘success stories’ or ‘our results’ or ‘what our clients say’.

Pictures add more credibility than text alone. Ask your client to provide you with their picture with the testimonial or arrange for a photoshoot and share the photos with your client (that also builds good will and also encourages them to share their thoughts via their own marketing channels). Original images are much better than regular stock photos that every firm generally uses.

As much as a photo matters, so do credentials. They add further credibility to each testimonial and thus further validate your firm. This may include their position, company name, industry etc and, don’t forget to write the services that your firm provided to them.

As people love quotes, it’s always a good idea to highlight the best parts of your testimonials. You can do this by selecting shorter statements, using bold to highlight parts of larger statements – to direct the eye to the most important part.

The popularity of the video is a clear explanation of why video testimonials should be used.They are visual, can be personal and easy to digest.

Once you build your catalogue of testimonials, it is important to categorise them to make them easy to locate and use for your tenders, proposals, websites and social channels. Date, service line, industry, client, business size (ie. corporate, SME), and partner are all useful ways to identify for a testimonial.

What can great testimonials achieve for your firm?

If 92% of customers state that they read customer reviews and testimonials before making a purchase, you need to provide them for your firm and partners. What’s more, the estimate today is that 88% of consumers believe that a review or a testimonial is as trustworthy as a personal recommendation. On top of that, 72% start trusting a business more upon reading some positive testimonials about them.

These numbers clearly show the value that a simple testimonials provide to your firm.

So, what are you waiting for? It’s high time you started getting your testimonials to do the work for you.

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