Getting people to buy from you is a challenging task.
Even if you have a fantastic product and can put an offer in front of people who need it, that’s only half the battle.
Some might even say that’s the easy part.
Today’s online users have become extremely savvy and careful when entrusting their money to businesses. There are thousands of scams that have burned millions of people, so most folks now recognize the importance of looking for unbiased verification that a company and its products are legitimate and can be trusted.
So, while having a persuasive message and the right audience targeting are vital parts of the equation, you need to be able to prove that your product has worked for others and have them vouch for you if you want to achieve long term success and gain an edge over your competitors.
That’s where a testimonial template can be so powerful.
Why Are Testimonials So Important?
Testimonials have been around for as long as civilization. Whether through a recommendation from a friend, a long line at the entrance of a store, or website testimonials raving about the product, people have always looked for verification that the company or salesman can be trusted
They are a crucial part of the social proof that’s required if you want to convert prospects into customers and give more credibility to the claims that you make.
Think about it – if you could get a video testimonial from a happy customer where he describes his positive experiences with your product, goes through all of the main selling points without you having to spell them out, and lists advantages over the competitors, wouldn’t that have a massive impact on whether others decide to buy as well?
I think the answer is quite obvious, and studies back this up as well:
97% of users value and trust user-generated content like testimonials more than they trust business content. So, no matter how compelling your pitch, users will always prefer to hear it from their peers instead of you.
What’s more, if you’re selling more expensive products, adding testimonials could boost your conversions by as much as 380%. That is astonishing considering that everything else in your sales pitch remains the same.
So, no matter what type of business you operate, getting informative and relevant testimonials from customers that your audience can relate to is crucial to your success.
But the question is – how can you get testimonials consistently? After all, your customers are busy people, and many won’t even consider leaving you a testimonial on their own.
Luckily, there are ways how you can boost your testimonial numbers, and get the best testimonials from your best customers at a much higher rate using a testimonial template.
Let’s explore some of the main principles you should follow below.
How to Get More and Better Testimonials from Your Customers
Most businesses are cautious about asking anything from their customers.
It was hard enough convincing them to buy, so they feel hesitant about asking for favors as that can come off as pushy or annoying.
However, if you’re not actively pursuing testimonials, you have to trust that your customers will:
- Even consider that you might need their testimonial in the first place;
- Take the time to write it themselves;
- Write more than a two-word blurb;
- Post that testimonial on a relevant review site or send it to you.
When you put it this way, it becomes much easier to understand why such a small percentage of customers leave testimonials, even when they’re pleased with the services that they’ve been provided with.
But how do you change that equation?
Well, let’s explore the specific steps below.
Ask!
If you want people to leave more testimonials, there’s no going around the fact that you will have to muster up the courage to ask them for it.
Sure, your customers are busy and are easily annoyed by requests from businesses.
But if you know how to position your request politely and conveniently, you’ll be shocked to discover how many customers are not only willing but actually delighted to vouch for your business, as they have no problem putting their stamp of approval on something that they know works well and delivers results.
You can ask by sending an email, mention it during a live call, or even send out an SMS asking for feedback on your performance or to rate your business on a specific site.
Tell Them What to Say
When asking for testimonials, most companies don’t go beyond the request itself.
They say that they’d appreciate if the customer left a review, but don’t go into any detail about what the review should say and how it should be structured.
Sure, you might not want to spell out everything he needs to write or say (although, if they agree and sign off on it, that approach is not only extremely effective but also completely fair), but you still need to at least specific what you’d like them to mention.
The best way to do this is with the help of specific questions.
Ask them how they enjoyed specific features, what is the single most useful part of your product, what are its main advantages against the competition, and why the product works so well for them individually.
When you give your customers a specific outline to work with, they will fill out the blanks on their own and will not only produce a genuine and informative testimonial that will be helpful to your prospects, but will actually give you ideas on how to better position your product to emphasize the benefits that are the most important to your audience.
Incentivize It
When using testimonials on your sales pages and other communications, it’s crucial that you remain completely honest and only use testimonials that actual customers have written or signed off on.
However, even though the contents of the testimonials have to be authentic, that doesn’t mean you can’t incentivize people to leave a review of your product, especially if you want them to do a more time-consuming review like a video testimonial.
Now, you don’t have to offer anything outrageous to get your customers more motivated to leave you testimonials. But even something as simple as a small discount on the next month of the subscription, an exclusive coupon for your other services, or a temporary upgrade to their plan, could be all it takes for them to take the time to leave you a review that you can feature for years to come.
If you can identify the best customers that you want to get reviews from and reach out to them personally, that attention from you can be enough to get people to want to reciprocate by leaving you a glowing review, especially since they are happy with what you provide them anyway.
Testimonial Template Examples
Now that we’ve figured out why testimonials are so crucial and how to get more and better ones from your customers, it’s time to explore what types of testimonials you can use in your communications.
The good news is, there are a ton of different types of testimonials that can be used in various scenarios.
The bad news:
It can get a bit complicated if you don’t know where to get started.
So, to clear up any questions you might have, we will go through a testimonial template list and explore four of the essential testimonial types that you could use.
Quotes
The simplest and most common form of testimonials are quotes.
They precede the internet by quite a while and were present in mail-in sales letters, newspapers, and billboards way before the web completely revolutionized how companies can promote themselves.
But despite being around for a long time, quotes are just as effective today as they were fifty or a hundred years ago.
In fact, the various ways that they can be presented in actually make testimonials more effective today than ever before.
Whether you’re using them on your sales page, in your emails, or sprinkling them on social media, quote testimonials should hold an important place in your marketing efforts.
If you’re dealing with a limiting medium or don’t have a lot of space, you can use a simple text quote that displays the message and its author.
However, if you have space and the means, you should always use testimonials with a hero image, as that instantly gives the testimonial more credibility by attaching a real face to the words and helping the reader associate himself more with the message.
Finally, where appropriate, you should consider adding a call-to-action at the end, which could take the reader to a case study or a landing page that’s more in-tune with the features and benefits discussed in the testimonial.
Social Media Testimonials
223 million Americans use social media in 2019.
People of all ages sign in to their social media accounts every single day, where they consume news, media, and share experiences and thoughts with their friends and family.
This has conditioned people to consume social media content differently than they would a website or a blog.
And that’s what makes social media testimonials so valuable.
If you can get people to rave about your products on social media, you can then use those testimonials all across your communications, as these testimonials will look very authentic and will have a ton of credibility in the eyes of your audience.
What’s more, social media testimonials also show prospective customers that your company generates buzz on social media and is actively talked about by people just like them.
They’ll feel much more secure choosing your services if your prospects know that your company is popular and talked about on social media and the web in general.
Consumer Reviews
When people shop online, they usually look for third-party verification of whether a product or company can be trusted.
Reviews on a website can be faked, but a product that has hundreds of reviews on a consumer review or directory site is much easier to judge and evaluate.
Now, you can trust your users to leave these reviews on their own, but that can backfire – unhappy customers are much more likely to leave a review than happy ones, so you may end up with an unproportionate amount of negative reviews which can hinder your chances of converting prospects into customers.
Instead, you should encourage people to leave reviews, just like we discussed previously.
Just figure out which consumer review sites matter the most in your niche and then point your users to them.
The good news is, it’s much easier to ask your customers to leave a review on a site that’s designed for it than to ask them to do an individual testimonial.
Video Testimonials
52% of marketers believe video content to provide the biggest ROI.
That means that if you want your testimonials to really drive your main selling points home, you should try and get at least a few video testimonials that you use when you need that extra punch of social proof.
And while you may be already getting nervous about the idea of asking your customers to get in front of a camera and record a review, the truth is that it doesn’t have to be as complicated as you may think.
The review can be shot on a phone or laptop camera and be just as powerful as one shot by a filming studio.
What’s more, video testimonials provide a unique opportunity to showcase the transformation of the person talking instead of just having to read a description.
Seeing the person’s emotions and expressions as they describe what your product did for them and why it worked so well, while also showing the changes and impact it had in action, can convince even the biggest skeptics that your product is legitimate and is the perfect choice for them.
