When someone is thinking about working with you or buying your product, what influences their decision? Things like budget, timeline and how good a fit your service or product are for them are huge influencers. So let’s assume all of those are a good fit for them. What’s the next step?

Well, they would likely want to know:

• are you reliable?

• do you do good work?

• are you easy to work with?

How do they determine this? If we just brag about how great we are it does not have a lot of meaning ( we may be a little biased 😀 ). Instead, getting great quality reviews from our past clients and customers will have a much greater impact on their decision on whether to purchase from us.

Why are testimonials important or even needed?

Reading reviews from past clients and customers will give potential customers a really good idea of what the actual experience of working with us is like or how good our products truly are.

When you are browsing on Amazon for some great product, do you read the reviews? I sure do! Those reviews are a wealth of information! We can easily tell if the product met up to the hype from the company. We also can easily tell what kind of customer service the company has. These factors will greatly influence our decision on whether to purchase the product.

The same thing applies when booking hotels or airbnb’s. When there are zero reviews I tend to feel skeptical about a place. Is it legit? Reviews of accomodations tell us so much more than we can learn from the ad. Are the beds comfortable? Is it close to restaurants etc.

The beauty of reviews and testimonials is that:

• they are authentic

• they are written by your ideal customer or clients so they will likely use some of the words and descriptions other people will be feeling or searching for

• they allow us to establish authority. We can be deemed trustworthy and capable

This is amazing marketing for us!!!

So how do you get “good” testimonials?

Testimonials like this would be kind of “weak”:

“I so enjoyed working with Laura”.

“Really good service!”

These would not be enough to sway us. They do not provide enough details and more importantly they do not speak to the pain points of our ideal clients or customers.

To get really good testimonials or reviews ask guided questions about how your service made a difference to your client. What was the transformation?

How to guide your reviewers to provide testimonials and reviews

The more information your potential clients can have, the better. And even better if the information addresses their “pain points”.

What are “pain points”? Those are the issues that they are struggling with before they worked with us or bought our product. What led them to look for a solution??

We want to explore how our service improved their life or business. What is the “before and after” of their experience of working with us?

Make it easy to write the review

Most people don’t really know what to say when you ask them “hey - could you provide a testimonial for me?”. Let’s help them out by asking guided questions that highlight the “before and after”.

We can do this a number of ways. The main focus is to make it EASY for them to fill out. Like a google form, a form in your CRM tool such as Dubsado or a pretty form like typeform. But it doesn’t even have to be a form! I have just started emailing my clients an email that asks nicely for a review along with 4 questions to answer. They simply have to reply to the email with their responses. EASY-PEASY.

What questions should you ask?

Reverse engineer what you would like to highlight with “leading questions”.

ie if you are a wedding photographer are you wanting to know how your photos made their memories of their day even more special? Ask about that!

We also want to pry out of them the difference that they are feeling from before working with us to how they feel after working with us.

Example questions for a service based business:

• What’s your favorite part of working with our team/me?

• How do you think this will impact your business?

• Did we accomplish your goals?

• What would you say to someone who is thinking about this service and are unsure of whether it is worth the investment?

• What transformation did you see after working with me/what did you learn?

• Write your own summary or any other comments:

When should we ask for testimonials?

We don’t want to wait too long to ask our clients for a review because they risk losing the “new car” feeling. Maybe their elation will subside as they get distracted by other things. However, we don’t want to ask too soon as they may not had a chance to use the product for instance.

I know I have received product review requests immediately after receiving it and I had not even opened it yet. Then I kind of forgot and never filled it out.

For services there are 2 schools of thought on this. When the service is finished they are typically so excited and invested still so it is a great time to ask. But, maybe they have not had a chance to dig it into enough yet or establish what sort of transformation might happen from it. For your exact service you will want to determine what the ideal compromise is timewise to still capture their enthusiasm but give them time to test it out.

So now what do we do with these testimonials?

Business pages

First of all, at the end of your guided questions, ask your reviewer if they would be able to put their review on your Google Business Profile and Facebook Business page. We know for the most part that these reviews can not be “fudged” so they are very helpful to read.

Include on your website

Since these testimonials address your ideal customer’s pain points and are likely using the same words they are “googling” about, what better way to get not only traffic, but sway your customers by including them on your website!

Include testimonials throughout your site. Feature a few on the home page and then make sure to include testimonials for the specific product or service on the actual page it is being sold on.

Having a dedicated testimonial page is just … OK. How many people actually click through to read a whole page of testimonials? Probably very few. But having the testimonials showing on the pages they are reading to learn more about your product or service allows you to impress them right away without them having to “click” to another page.

When displaying your testimonials you will want to make sure that they are not too long. Remember most people scan web pages! Highlighting a particular sentence that is really powerful is a great way to draw attention to it and then you can include more of the testimonial below.

Here are some examples from some of my Squarepace Design Day client websites of what I mean:

on social media

Highlight their kind words on social media, like instagram, pinterest etc. Showing their testimonial along with a photo of the end result or product is so powerful! For instance, I like to include a testimonial along with a mockup of my clients finished website after my Squarespace Design Day. I also feature many “before and after” photos so it visually represents how I can address pain points. These are great to share on social media!

What else to ask:

We need to make sure we protect our clients information if they prefer. Do they want their full name featured as part of the review or would they prefer just first name and initial? Do we want to use their photo? If so, ask them for one along with their permission to use it.

Sometimes we may way to “tweak” the testimonial slightly - and I am NOT talking about changing it or the meaning of it. What I mean is that we may want to change a pronoun or correct minor typos or pull out certain bits.

We want to create brief snippets of our testimonials and not produce a long book for someone to read. Most people won’t read super long testimonials. So if you get a very long testimonial you might need to only pull out the super important bits that you want to highlight and leave the rest. (more on this in my next post!)

You could ask this: “I may need to make minor edits to shorten the testimonial or correct minor typos or sentence structure etc. Do I have your permission to do so?”.

What to do if you are not receiving a testimonial

Let’s face it. We are all busy and we have many emails in our inbox that we will “eventually get to”. If you have sent a request for a testimonial and have not heard anything back do follow up after 5 - 7 days to see if they are going to have a chance to respond. Do make sure to let them know that you want to feature them on your website and even link to their website (if that is an option and they would like that).

If they are just too busy or are not responding still, one thing you could do is write a summary of what problems they were facing before working with you and what you worked on together. Then ask them if that is a good summary and ask them to add in their own words how they feel about the transformation.

This might be enough to make it more likely to hear back from your clients.

If you still are having troubles getting a testimonial, try offering an incentive that the client will receive when they submit their review. Maybe it’s something like a PDF download, a checklist, a printed photo, a discount, a free template etc.

In summary

Testimonials are an amazing marketing source for us as our customers or clients show the transformation our product or service has made in their lives and this provides real results that can sway our potential clients. Ask guided questions to get meaningful testimonials and start converting leads to clients.

Well written testimonials lead to more clients!

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