Testimonials - Why are they so important and how to get them?

Customer testimonials are an essential part of building your business. Credibility and expertise are a critical aspect to any business (large or small). The success of many businesses relies heavily on word of mouth and a testimonial is just that, an expression of your legitimacy and ability.

Benefits

• Free Marketing

Marketing can be a very costly aspect of running a business but testimonials are free!

• Establish Trust and Credibility

It works so well as it's not 'salesy'. It's an unbiased voice from real people showcasing your product or service.

• SEO

Testimonials can provide great content ideas for creating blog posts. Blogs help boost SEO by positioning your website in line with topics that are relevant to your audience.

• Business Growth

It is a proven fact that testimonials will help business growth. The reality is that a huge number of potential customers would research a product or service online before buying or hiring. Good testimonials will attract more customers.

So why don't all businesses take advantage of this free marketing resource?

Either they feel they don't need to as they get business regardless (what ever happened to a rainy day fund??!) or they just don't have the time to chase up previous customers or clients to obtain them. If you have a VA this is something that you could outsource to them.

How to get testimonials

JUST ASK!

Send a simple 'favour' email to past and present clients and ask them if they would mind giving you a short testimonial. If they’re hesitant, let them know that you’d be more than happy to write it up and send it to them to approve before use.

If a client is already praising you, ask if you can use their feedback in a testimonial. You could also ask them to elaborate a bit.

Tip

When sending your email request it's worth popping in a link to your social media profiles (Facebook and Linkedin) and asking them to upload their review there as you can copy and paste a testimonial from Facebook and LinkedIn to your website but you can’t do it the other way around.

Finally, Make sure to get permission from the author to publish on social media and your website.