An Ultimate Guide On Testimonial Marketing For Small Businesses

Displaying just give testimonials on your website boosts your conversion by 270%

93% of consumers today make their buying decisions in the influence of online reviews. 

It clearly depicts the significance of testimonials and reviews in the perspective of a consumer. 

And since a If you are a small business, and do not utilize the potential of testimonial marketing, it’s high time to invest there. that to market their brand. 

It is more a reverse engineering the credibility or a potential of a testimonial for a customer and using it for making prospects go for a buying decision. 

If you are a small business, and do not utilize the potential of testimonial marketing, it’s high time to invest there. 

Here’s an ultimate guide on testimonial marketing for small businesses   

What is Testimonial Marketing? 

Testimonial Marketing is using the customer reviews or customer testimonials of your products or services in a way to show value and credibility of your business and convince prospective customers to make purchases. 

What are Customer Testimonials? 

Customer Testimonials are basically the customer reviews that organizations or businesses utilize to provide social proof to their customers/prospects in terms of credibility. 

These social proof depicts that the company delivers the promised products or services satisfying the end user. 

Customer testimonials encourage prospects to buy their product or services. 

A customer relates better towards testimonials as it comes from the people like them. 

Testimonials documents how the products/service reaches to the customer. It also speaks of the overall buying experience with the brand as well. 

The feedback from customers works as an evidence to convince the prospect that the particular product or services are worthy to invest. 

Different Types of Testimonials 

Testimonials are utilized in various platforms such as websites, sales funnel, social media, videos, emails, sales pitches and proposals. 

Surely, the conversions from testimonials are just dramatically high. 

Since it is used in multi-platforms, there are different types of testimonials you can use to kickstart your marketing strategy. 

Quote Testimonials

Image Source: Neil Patel

Quote Testimonials are customer reviews where they are quoted in a few lines that show up on your website, sales page or in funnel. 

They are more credible as it also features the real customer names, their photo, company name, title and actual anecdotal experience with the product or services.

It is more highlighted and quoted the statements in their voice. It clearly depicts whether buying the product is a good or bad decision. 

Pro Tip

There are just numerous ways you can use quote testimonials. Think creatively to place them in your marketing videos, website, portfolio, social media platforms and other places as well. 

Peers Testimonials 

Image Source: ReVerb

Peers Testimonials are one of the most effective testimonial marketing strategies to adapt for your sales page. 

92% of consumers trust their peers for products more than the brand. 

Peer testimonials are actually all the genuine customer reviews sharing their buying experience. 

The word of mouth or any third-party reviews can also be called peer testimonials. 

Pro Tip

Engage with your customers. Ask them to share their buying experience with you. Or best is to use existing reviews available of your customers on your landing page.

Social Media Testimonials 

Image Source: Einstein Marketer

Social Media Testimonials you have seen a lot of times!  People often share their opinions on social media about a product or services they like. 

But more than that, you see businesses or brands sharing people’s reviews/testimonials on social media on their profile. 

Social media reviews can impact your business reputation in a huge way. Negative rants on your product cost you imaginable loss. 

Buyers go through social media before buying a product or services. So here’s your chance to make things right. 

Social media reviews are mostly natural. But you can engage with your customers, ask them to leave a review tagging your business. 

Pro Tip 

Collect all the social media testimonials together to put it in your sales page or testimonial page. They add great value in building more trust and higher conversions. 

Video Testimonials 

Image Source: ResultStory

Video testimonials are way more engaging than the usual testimonials. They are more easy than ever to create with your customers.  

Most people are comfortable with making a video with their smartphone cameras sharing their experience about your product. 

They can talk about how they used your product or services, and how it helped them. 

A customer through a video is also considered to be more credible and authoritative for another customer to believe. 

Pro Tip

Ask your customers to share their reviews through videos for a specific product. It can be for a newly launched product or service as well. 

You can embed these video testimonials on your product landing page. Y

you can offer free coupons on the next purchase to your customers who share the video reviews. 

Influencer Testimonials  

Image Source: Einstein Marketer 

49% of customers depend upon recommendations from influencers to make a purchase. 

Influencer marketing is huge, and more and more small as well as large enterprises are spending every year on it. 

This means, people highly regard an influencer’s recommendation. 

So, influencer testimonials have this authority where an expert or experience of that particular field shared their experience about the product or services 

So when you  put an influencer testimonial, it gives you more ROI than any other testimonial. 

Pro Tip

 Keep connecting to various influencers related to your niche or product/services. Share their content or comment frequently to get noticed. 

Reach out, offer them your product/services and ask for a testimonial to add in your sales pages. 

Various Forms Of Testimonials 

One Sentence Testimonials

Source: OptinMonster

One-sentence testimonials are also called mini text testimonials. As the name suggests, they are usually just one sentence long testimonials. 

Such testimonials are not often very powerful but easy to gather from customers. Also, it is at least better than nothing. 

Short Text Testimonials

Short text testimonials are longer than one-sentence testimonials but still not very descriptive. 

It is a short piece under two to four sentences long. Such testimonials are most popularly used by the various services. 

It highlights the features and benefits of the product or service. It aims to hit the nerve of a prospective customer regarding the primary question about the product.

Long Text Testimonials 

Image Source: HubSpot Blog

A long text testimonial is very descriptive and discusses the various aspects of the product or services. It usually goes from two to four paragraphs. 

Long text testimonials can be more informative. 

Some of them even can be like in a storytelling form reciting the whole buying experience from ordering to getting delivered. 

Why Are Customer Testimonials So Impactful? 

Now, why do customer testimonials are so effective? 

Well, it plays with the consumer’s mind. 

Customer testimonials impact works out on the human psychology level. 

Suppose you see a shop or restaurant with a queue outside, you can’t help but think what this hype is all about. 

Well, it intrigues you. 

So, you join the queue too, and that may be the same for most of the people in the queue. 

Customer testimonials work on the same principal. 

It depicts a pleasant buying experience of a relatable consumer like you regarding the product. 

When you read the experiences of the customer, and see them enjoying the product or services, it gives you enough social proof to give it a go. 

The doubt around the product, services or the brand itself fades away. 

41% of consumers said that they don’t trust brands for their marketing strategies. 

So, prospective customers are more likely to  withdraw credibility from these testimonials rather than your sales pitches. 

According to a 2018 study by BrightLocal, 86% of consumers read reviews for their local businesses. 

Also, 91% of 18 to 34 years old people trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations from a family member, friend or coworker. 

Why Small Businesses Should Focus On Testimonial Marketing? 

These statistics very well demonstrate how much people trust testimonials. 

It indeed plays a major role in their buying decision. 

Testimonial marketing helps your small business to build credibility through social proofs.

Testimonials are quite like endorsement. The primary difference is where it is coming from. 

Endorsements come from the sellers themselves whereas testimonials come from an buyer or the customer. 

That’s why it is more appealing and credible to the buyers. 

Here’s how testimonials can help your business grow.

Testimonials builds trust for your brand

If you imagine finding yourself whether to buy a specific product or not, especially it’s your first time. Naturally, you will feel doubtful about the product and brand. 

However, when you will read positive testimonials about the product, where people are talking about their positive experience with the brand, it develops trust.

Also it is sometimes reassuring enough to make consumers purchase your product as well.

Testimonials improves your sales pitch

No matter how good a sales pitch is written, a buyer mostly approaches sales pitches with reluctance to get swayed by it.

They know that the manufacturer or brand themselves created these sales pitches, must be manipulative and biased, not factual or objective.

But testimonials coming from the customers are genuine, and anecdotal. It holds a higher position in terms of credibility. 

So small businesses on the other side surely focus on good sales pitches but also come up with great customer testimonials to improve your sales pitch. 

Testimonials convinces better  

Testimonials come from real experiences with these products or services. These reviewers are from the same position as the potential buyers. 

So a prospective buyer relates more to testimonials. 

Also, testimonial customers are more credible sources for recommendation about whether to buy a certain product or just remain far away from it. 

Now as a small business, you need to leverage it to market your brand. Testimonials can be utilized to convince the prospective buyers for the purchase. 

Even tough sales can be cracked with a powerful set of testimonials. 

What Makes Testimonials So Effective? 

As soon as the power of these customer testimonials are recognized, there also can be seen arguments against it. 

The primary issue was how businesses found ways to craft product testimonials from their customers only.

 Lot of established review websites faced issues as it came across as some kind of fraud. 

So being a small business, you need to take responsibility to obtain the best testimonials from their most benefited customers. 

But for that, you need to know what is indeed a best testimonial or more effective one, so to say. 

Positive Feedback 

Testimonials must document positive feedback towards a product. It should be about a satisfied customer.  

You need to make sure there should not be even a slightest negative element in the testimonial. 

Detailed Feedback 

The primary focus on an ideal testimonial should be on the benefits of the product. 

It can feature lines such as “I highly suggest”, “I love it” or “I am glad that I bought this product” or something like this. 

The devil is in the details! More detailed testimonials means more credible one. 

However, the aim is to communicate how this product is beneficial for buyers.

Also, detailed feedback here, it means more specific and personalized testimonials. 

It should provide points in different aspects. 

Adding Sources

Testimonials should be written by the people whom a prospective buyer can identify with.  

If it is not coming from the source which is credible and relative to the potential buyer, there is no point on how good it is. 

Add basic information about the testimonial writer such as location, age, profession, his/her story and photographs as well. 

All this to increase the credibility of the source here. 

Testimonials Affirming On Company Claims 

If you are prompting a product marking it to be a high-performing or best-seller, the testimonials regarding it must testify to it. 

Your testimonials should support the company claims regarding the products. 

In fact, to make it more credible, testimonials should match all the facts and figures mentioned by the brand. 

Winning In The Comparisons

If your featured testimonials are putting out some kind of comparison, it is essential to highlight your product to be the best amongst all. 

It should be more convincing on the front that why your product is better than the rest of available in the market.   

How To Get Customer Testimonials For Small Businesses?

Facebook Business Page Reviews

Start from the social media platforms where you already got reviews. 

May be the easiest and convenient places where customers gave you positive reviews. 

And, for most people, that will be your Facebook business page. 

If you are a local business, there is more likely you got some reviews that you even hadn’t noticed earlier. 

It is a great way to start finding customer testimonials for your business. 

Local Business Directories

Local search directories or business directories can be extremely helpful, especially if you have a local business. 

There are platforms such as Google Business Profiles, Yelp or Yahoo Local Business that allow people to write reviews about your business. 

So, if your local business there has great reviews, you can use them on your testimonials pages. 

If you don’t have reviews there, the best way is to recommend your existing customers to leave a review there. 

Youtube Video Reviews

What could be better than text-based reviews for your products or services – well, surely the video reviews. 

If you have a video where customers are talking about your products or services, and how it helped them, that would be the best. 

So encourage your followers or influencers to create video testimonials on your products/services. 

These videos feature stories about how your product/services are utilized mentioning your brand. 

You can use these videos as testimonials to create a strong impression on your potential customers.  

Niche Website Review

You need to focus more on getting featured in niche review websites depending upon your industry. 

There are a lot of credible websites featuring reviews of various businesses, services and companies. 

You can persuade these niche review websites to review your products or service on a positive note. 

And if your product/service already gets positive reviews on these websites, you can feature them on your testimonial page. 

These positive reviews from reputed niche review portals creates a good first impression about your product/services.  

 Google Alerts & Social Mentions

With all these reviews you are approaching to be written, there are so many unsolicited customer reviews featured about your company. 

You can find these customer reviews in various forums, personal blogs or other social media platforms.  

You can source these links to your website as they are unbiased and hold more credibility. 

So, now the question is how you will find these reviews or mentions about your company across the web? 

 Social mentions and Google alerts are the best ways to set up daily notifications on your email. 

You can track what people are talking about your brand across the web. 

So once you get these reviews and other opinions about your brand, you can put those on your testimonial page. 

Reward customers to review 

You need to encourage your customers to post reviews about the products or services. 

The question is how you would do that? 

Well, the best thing to do is offer them an incentive for posting reviews. 

You can offer them coupons, free discounts, special deals or anything like that for their next purchase. They have to submit the proof of the posted review with that. 

You can think out of the box on how to give rewards to your customers for the reviews.

 As long as your incentives are useful and tempting, it will definitely work. 

LinkedIn Recommendations 

You can embed a wide range of recommendations and reviews from LinkedIn to your business website. 

To do this, you need to first ask people to offer you recommendations on LinkedIn. You can also use your existing recommendations to promote your services as well. 

Now, surely recommendation features don’t work for companies or businesses but only for individuals. 

But you can still utilize it in many ways. 

If your small business is predominantly around you as its owner, you can totally share your recommendations to make yourself more credible. 

The same idea goes for your employee or team profiles on the website where they can do the same. 

What will happen is, you and your team members will start receiving recommendations on the behalf of your company from your customers.  

Now, you can use the same recommendations on your website as well after seeking their permission for sure. 

How To Write A Great Testimonial? 

Before you think it is unethical or unprofessional to write the testimonials for your own brand or business, hear this out! 

Great testimonials are responsible for persuading the audience to buy the product. The easiest, surely the best way to get testimonials is to ask, as stated above. 

But let’s face it! Lots of customers, and sometimes most of them are really bad at writing testimonials. 

They are just not effective! 

Consistently, you see the same cliche sentences such as :  

• “This the best product I have ever used”
• “ I highly suggest using this product..”
• “ This has changed my life”
• “ I loved this..” 

And so on.. 

No one really digs into such reviews. They aren’t proactively helping your sales pitch. Also, neither it is  informative nor telling a story. 

So, it is better for small businesses to write testimonials for themselves. 

Remember, there is a difference between these testimonials or fake one. 

You will be writing testimonials on the behalf of your customers, not the fake customers. 

Here’s how you can write great testimonials : 

Get to the point 

Testimonials should be short and to-the-point. You have just a few seconds to convince the prospects to buy the product, so better cut to the chase. 

Don’t use filler words. Use shorter sentences if that helps.  Even two or three sentences are more than enough for most of the time. 

Addressing the conflicts 

There are a lot of conflicts, confusion and objections going around regarding your product. People might think it is expensive. 

Or there might be some talk about a few things not being right with it. Even there can be other negative reviews around the web regarding some particular issue. 

So, you can write testimonials clarifying these objections or conflicts.  

Avoid being defensive as it is a customer writing it, not you. Focus on spreading awareness about the product or service. 

Focus on what benefit it gives

The primary driving content in your testimonial should be – what benefit it will give the prospects?  

Source: Aweber

You need to give prospects the reasons to buy your product. Don’t be afraid to put an effective bold statement in the testimonial. 

Where To Put Your Testimonials On Your Website? 

The placement of your customer testimonials on your website is a significant step in the process. 

You have to understand the alignment of your customer testimonials must go with the messaging of the particular web page you are putting it on. 

Customer testimonials should relate to the context of the particular webpage or the section of your website. 

It means, if you have a particular page talking about some specific service you provide, you should place the customer testimonial based on that service. 

On other hand, if your customer testimonial is about a particular product, it should be at the info page of that very product. 

Or it should be somewhere in the sales funnel of that particular product. 

Remember testimonials are to instill trust to the prospect regarding the product or service and it encourages people to make the purchase.

However, if your customer testimonial is just about your services in general or maybe just about your brand, it can be placed anywhere on the website. 

The idea is to provide social proof in multiple instances to make the brand credible for the prospects. 

Here are the web spaces where you can place your customer testimonials 

Homepage

Homepage is surely the highest receiving web traffic page on a website. This can be the most obvious page where you can connect to the prospects.

Here you can be the most commonly seen page by a user even if they won’t go to the service or product pages. 

So it is best to build trust and credibility through the testimonials right away here. 

It is the first impression of a potential customer towards your brand, so establishing a moment of trust here will at least assure the buyer to check more if not convert already. 

Service/Product Page

Depending upon whether you’re offering products or service, this page provides relative information and is a decisive stage for customers to buy or not buy the product. 

So that makes it even more crucial to encourage your potential customers more so they can make purchases. 

Place your customer testimonials here will be strategically helpful to give a confidence push to the customer. 

Remember, you have to specifically place testimonials with the respective product or services of which the page is about. 

Customer Service Page

Customer service page is about resolving the issue your customers or prospective customers are having. 

Here they want the assurance of whether in such unfortunate situations, whether they will be heard or not. 

Customer service is a huge factor in the decisive force towards a product or service. 

So with customer testimonials, in which customers only are talking about how their problems go resolved in no time will give utmost reliability to your prospects. 

Dedicated Testimonial Page 

This is quite obvious but not less important, at all ! 

You can gather all of your customer testimonials in order to give credibility and assurance to the customers on social proofs. 

Just put all those in one dedicated web page where customers came specifically to check what other customers are saying about your company and services. 

Make sure you include different formats and types of testimonials ranging from reviews, comments, thank you messages, videos, in-depth reviews and other social media proofs. 

Blog Pages 

While a reader is going through the blogs on your website, learning all the information about the industry, products and business, they are more interested to determine your authority on this. 

So that will be the correct time to take your readers or prospects directly to the dedicated testimonial page. So you can just mention the link at a relevant part of the blog. 

CTA

Call-to-action are very important in the sales funnel, and they are welcomed to use multiple times to encourage customers for the purchase. 

Even while making the purchase, customers’ minds get a lot of doubts and second guesses.

 So to tackle that and keep them intact towards the purchase, you should place customer testimonials right next to your call-to-action. 

What Is A Customer Review? 

A customer review is written by a customer on the basis of his/her experience reflecting their feedback  on the company’s products or services. 

You can find reviews on various platforms such as Amazon, Google Reviews, TrustPilot, Yelp and other social media. 

Consumers read these reviews while making their buying decisions to check the credibility of the product. 

Customer reviews also help out buyers to be aware about the product. It basically tells what a potential buyer can expect from a product. 

How You Can Ask For Customer Review?

Small businesses need customer reviews as much as possible to attract more customers and build reputation. 

But how can you really get reviews? 

Well, simple! You gotta ask your customers to post their reviews. 

But how you can really approach them ethically and professionally to do so. 

Ask It Naturally While In Conversation 

First of all, it is very essential to talk to your customers even after the transaction or sale. 

So while you are in conversation with your customers and they are already talking about the product, don’t hesitate to ask them to write a customer review or testimonial for the product or services. 

You need to ask people around who already bought your product or enjoyed your service. Just bring it up naturally in the conversation. 

You don’t even need to make it like a thing. 

Automated Emails After Purchase 

Once a customer bought the product or went for your service, you can send them an email requesting for a review. 

Tell them to share their feedback on the product or services. 

You also have noticed this with many e-commerce stores asking for review through their emails. 

They are often autoresponders or automated. 

Asking Casually On Social Media 

Whenever you are replying to a mention on twitter, instagram or facebook about your product, ask casually to leave a review. 

People who are already vocal about your product or services on social media are more likely to be interested in reviewing. 

So ask them to leave reviews, share feedback or put some suggestions in reviews. 

You can ask them casually in different ways. 

Asking Through Post-Purchase Review Prompt 

Once the customer makes the purchase, you can put a call-to-action for leaving their feedback. 

You have again seen this with most of the online stores. Right at the bottom of the invoice. 

It makes users click instantly and share their opinion about the product. 

Ask When Someone Praises 

You can plug in your request to do a review to a customer whenever they praise the product or services. 

Whether you meet people online or in-stores, and if you see them being impressed by your product or services you offer, just request them to share their opinion in reviews. 

You can even go further and make things easy for them by sending them the link to your business review page. 

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