72% of customers say positive reviews and testimonials make them trust a business more
Beyond traditional advertising and marketing, customer advocacy plays a significant role in our brand building. With platforms such as Tripadvisor, Amazon, Yelp, G2 Crowd, and Google My Business, third party reviews and testimonials have the power to rank your business higher on search engines and gain more trust. Like reviews, customer testimonials can help promote your business as people view authentic and transparent feedback as possible triggers to making a purchase decision.
Now that you have some ideas on how to ask for testimonials to boost your marketing efforts, learn how to place this hard-earned feedback on various platforms and at the forefront for other customers to see. Here are some ideas you can consider to promote your testimonials.
Create a customer testimonial page on your website. Your website is your most valuable online property, and what better way than to display your customer testimonials here. Testimonials on your website can help convince your customers that you are worth their investment, especially after what your other clients have to say about you. Be creative and create a designated testimonial page. It can be a video, a full testimonial, or a pull-out quote. Extract the most compelling paragraph from the testimonial and include your client’s name, designation, and organisation and embed their image or logo.
Place them on your Facebook or LinkedIn cover pages. One of the best ways to showcase your testimonial is on your Facebook or LinkedIn social media cover pages. The cover page of your social media platform is the first thing that people see when they land on your page, and it helps to create instant visibility for your customers. Instead of having your customers scrolling or trying to find reviews or testimonials on your social media platform, this instant ‘on your face’ strategy is a brilliant idea.
Leverage social media to increase traction. Your social media is an instrument for your brand visibility. By putting up your testimonials on your Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, you increase traction and a chance for other potential clients to find out about your services and good work. Don’t forget to include #hashtags that can get your post reach a wider audience. Do note that testimonials complemented by images of your products on image-centric platforms adds an extra marketing boost to your brand.
Convert them into case studies. Turning testimonials into case studies can help provide more insights on how you provide value to your customers. A well written case study can give your potential customers an idea on how your service or product can fit their needs. The case study can include information on the issues, challenges, the solutions, and outcomes of the project. You can include images, contents, statistics, or data to prove your business value.
Print on your marketing materials. If you have print collaterals such as sales brochures, you can add weight to your promotional materials by printing your customer testimonials on them. Design and embed these wonderful reviews on your documents to draw attention. You can either use the whole testimonial or pull out the most relevant quote.
Include them in your email marketing. I know of many training organisations who use this to their advantage. As marketers, we will share how great our product is, but why not let your customers say it? If you use email marketing, place your customer testimonials in your email to maximise or emphasise the quality of your product and services. It creates trust in your customers and also helps build your authority.
Storytelling in your blog posts. People like to read ‘happy clients’ stories. One way to impress your customers is to incorporate your happy clients’ testimonials in your blog posts in a form of storytelling. Alternatively, the blog post can also come from your clients as third party pieces are seen as more authentic and less biased. Imagine the power of this type of advocacy when the blog post is shared and seen by many more. It is mind-blowing.
There are, of course, many ways to promote your testimonials and these are some tried and tested methods I have come across. Remember that embedding your testimonials on these various platforms can help you win prospective clients and customers. We can learn from these great examples to reach out to more customers and, in time to come, have more people talking about your brand.
