Testimonials are an amazing way to build trust with your ideal customers and showcase your expertise. They help show potential buyers your products or services do what your marketing is telling them.
Customer reviews of their experience with you can be a great opportunity for potential new customers to learn about you, particularly as many buyers head to review platforms to learn more before purchasing.
Despite the value in testimonials many small businesses fail to include a process to both capture and repurpose our client feedback.
Here are a 6 places you should be requesting a testimonial so everyone can see the amazing job you are doing:
Google My Business
Google is still the world’s largest search engine so a Google Business page is still important regardless if you have a product or service based business.
You simply need to head to google to set up a verified account for your Google My Business page where you can add relevant information about your business to help you get found.
But did you know that customers can add reviews about you here and you can ask to request them directly from customers who have purchased from you or worked with you.
You can create and share a link for customers to leave a review on your page by going to ‘customers > reviews > Get more reviews’ and even reply to reviews you get.
LinkedIn call their testimonials and reviews section a ‘recommendation’. This is a brief testimonial to recognise those who have worked with you or used your services.
You can request recommendations from your connections and give them to others too. Once they are completed they will be visible to your network.
This is particularly useful for service providers who can contact individuals they are working with or have done work for.
As a service provider, I tend to take the time to request that all important feedback myself and also return the favour with a recommendation for my clients too.
Via a form or customer survey
It is very easy to build your own form or customer testimonial survey using digital tools like TypeForm, Google Forms or even on your on website forms section.
You could also consider an offline paper form or tick box card if you deal with customers face to face. These are great in physical premises or at events or fayres.
Social Media
Sometimes a simple message via social media can be an effective way to request a testimonial. Simply direct message your customers to ask for a brief review you can use across your marketing platforms with their permission.
Review Platforms
There are some independent review platforms like TrustPilot where clients can leave reviews. Customers can leave a star rating – from one to five- and leave comments.
It’s simple for individuals to set up a free profile to review your business and they don’t need an invitation to leave a review, so it’s worthwhile checking incase there is feedback here on your business.
If you are involved in the travel and entertainment industry then it’s always worthwhile checking TripAdvisor – this is where consumers can leave reviews and photos of their experiences when travelling.
Get Your Process for requesting feedback in place
You should include a process to request feedback and testimonials throughout the process of working with a customers, you don’t just have to wait until your time together has come to an end. Don’t be afraid to ask for reviews across platforms
Add a process or reminder in place to check in with your customers regularly if you work together over a long period of time.
If your customer journey is much shorter, let’s say a customer is purchasing from your website, then you could wait until the customers item has arrived and check in to see how they found the order process and the item itself. This is a great opportunity to upsell to them or to remind them of how they can order from you again in the future, you could even ask them to send a referral to a friend.
As a service provider, my process is to send a regular check in email and include in relevant links to my testimonial platforms in the communication to request feedback. Then when I am offboarding a client, I would do the same.
Don’t be afraid to ask more than once for that all important feedback. We are all busy and when we put ourselves in a consumers shoes we are often quick to leave negative feedback but don’t often take the time and effort to leave the positive.
