You know how important testimonials are for your business. But collecting them is often quite a challenge. What if we told you about proven techniques to do it more effectively?
In this episode, we'll cover 4 best practices to gather testimonials from happy clients. Then, we'll review 4 tactics to put those practices into action.
Helpful tools featured in the episode:
Shopify dedicated testimonial apps:
Mention - an aptly-named tool to help you monitor brand mentions.
Want to copy & paste something you've heard in this episode? Read the text version here.
Create beautiful email signup forms, coupon boxes, and pop-up surveys for your store with Getsitecontrol.
You know how important testimonials are for your business. But collecting them is often quite a challenge. What if we told you about proven techniques to do it more effectively?
In this episode, we'll cover 4 best practices to gather testimonials from happy clients. Then, we'll review 4 tactics to put those practices into action.
Helpful tools featured in the episode:
Shopify dedicated testimonial apps:
Mention - an aptly-named tool to help you monitor brand mentions.
Want to copy & paste something you've heard in this episode? Read the text version here.
Create beautiful email signup forms, coupon boxes, and pop-up surveys for your store with Getsitecontrol.
Hi, you're listening to Getsitecontrol Insider where we talk about ways to boost website conversions, and today we're discussing testimonials. You surely know how helpful customer testimonials are for your business, but collecting them is often quite a challenge. What if we told you about proven tactics to gather testimonials more effectively? Stay tuned because in this episode we'll cover the best practices to help you ask for testimonials the right way.
Speaker 2:How to ask for a testimonial: 4 ways that really work(plus best practices).
:Displaying testimonials is a great way to turn potential customers into existing customers. In a nutshell, testimonials show that you can back up all the attractive claims in your marketing copy and you have real happy customers to prove it. But while the benefits of testimonials are pretty clear, figuring out how to get them isn't quite as simple. When customers give you a testimonial, they're doing you a favor. They're taking time out of their busy days to create content that will help you be more successful. To help you convince customers to do you have that favor, We're going to dig into four best practices for asking for testimonials. Then we'll show you four tactics you can use to put those practices into action. If you do the math, that's eight great tips to help you collect testimonials from your customers.
Speaker 2:Let's dig right in.
:Four best practices for asking for a testimonial. Regardless of which channels you are going to use, there are some best practices you'll want to follow. Practice number one: offer something in return(ethically, of course). First, it's important to know that we're not recommending you try to buy positive testimonials as the ethics of that are gray at best. However, there are ethical ways when you can offer value to people who provide you with a testimonial. For example, at Getsitecontrol, we make sure to highlight the businesses of people who provide us with testimonials when we display them on our website or include them to our blog posts. You too can provide a brief blurb about people's businesses and maybe even a link to their websites. That way they get some helpful exposure in exchange for sharing their testimonials. You may even want to offer something more tangible in exchange for a testimonial, like a discount on the testimonial giver's next purchase. If you go this route though, just make sure you stress that you're looking for honest opinions. Practice number two: get the timing right. Look for the"aha" moment. The next tip is to ask for testimonials at the right time. So, what's the right time? Put simply, you want to ask for a testimonial as soon as possible after your product has delivered value to your customer. This is often your product or services"aha moment". Customers are at their happiest because they just accomplished something, which means they're prime to offer some positive thoughts. For example, if you are a freelancer, you could ask immediately after delivering the final project. Or if you have a software app that helps people survey their website visitors, you could ask after a person gets their first survey response. Practice number three: make it easy for customers to leave feedback
Speaker 2:Remember, customers are doing you a favor by providing their thoughts, so don't waste their time. When you ask for a testimonial and that's typically via a special form. Keep that form as simple as possible. Collect only the information you absolutely need and try to just generally keep the form frictionless.
:Practice number four: ask the right questions to get useful testimonials The previous three tips have mostly focused on convincing people to leave a testimonial in the first place. This last tip is focused on how to make those testimonials count. See, the questions that you ask will help you generate testimonials that most effectively convince your potential customers to make their purchase. While a generic"please share your experience" has i ts place, you can often elicit more useful responses by focusing your questions on your visitors' pain points. For example, if you think a major pain point for your potential customers is the fear that your tool will be too difficult to install, you might phrase a question to existing customers like this: How did you find the setup process? Was it easy? Difficult? Then you could use that focus testimonial to directly address the pain points of people who are still in the decision phase. Alright. Now that you've heard the best practices for asking for a testimonial, let's dig into some of the actual methods you can use to solicit them. Four tactics and channels to ask for testimonial. Tactic number one: send out email requests Email is a tried-and-true channel to ask for client testimonials. There are two ways you can go about it: manually or automatically. Manually sending an email is great if you're a freelancer or an agency and you've developed a close relationship with a client. In these scenarios, sending an automated email would feel impersonal, and on such a small scale, you're not really saving much time. If you're dealing with customers on a larger scale, though, the automated route probably makes more sense.
Speaker 2:Most email marketing tools make it easy to set up basic automation, so you can send timely emails and use a personalized testimonial email template.
:Let's go back to our survey app example from the best practices section. If you own an app like that one, you could create an email automation rule so that as soon as one of your users gets their first response to a survey, you can fire off an automatic email like this: Hey, your website survey is live and you just got your first response! Congratulations, you're well on your way to connecting with your customers. We know how valuable that feedback can be, which is why we'd love to hear about your experience with our app. Would you be willing to share your thoughts in a short three minute feedback survey? You'd have a chance to show up in our testimonial section where we'd be sure to feature your website. Click here to give us feedback. Tactic number two: display in-app contact or survey forms. You already know that timing is important when asking for testimonials, but even if you trigger an email based on user activity, there's still a lag between when a customer is using your product and when they see your email. For a more immediate alternative, you can display in-app survey forms. For example, at Getsitecontrol, we display an in-app feedback request form as a floating side tab, which guarantees we're catching our users while they're actively engaged with the product. Just like with the email method, you can use automatic triggers to make sure you're asking for a testimonial at the right time. For example, if you want to display a feedback request popup on your website, you could wait until a visitor hits a confirmation page. Tactic number three: consider dedicated testimonial apps
Speaker 2:While it's totally possible to collect testimonials without a dedicated app, there are some tools that are 100% focused on helping you with just that.
:As a starting point, you can find dedicated apps that help you collect and display testimonials across multiple platforms. Some popular options here are: Boast, Spectoose, Vocal References. For example, Boast can help you collect testimonials via website forms, smartphone apps, emails, and more. It can also help you organize all those testimonials and display them on your website. Beyond those, you can find dedicated testimonial apps for specific platforms. For example, if you're running a Shopify store, you can use tools like Kudobuzz Reviews. We'll link to all those tools and the episode description. Tactic number four: monitor social media for happy customers. Thanks to the popularity of social media, you might already have some glowing testimonials without even knowing it. Poke around on social media and see if you can find some happy customers.
Speaker 2:Then you have two options. Either ask them for permission to share their existing social media post on your website if it's already structured as a testimonial. This is a great because it adds another layer of authenticity, especially when you embed the post straight from social media. Or ask them if they'd be willing to write you a dedicated testimonial because you already know they're happy with your product and willing to publicly share that happiness: asking for small favor is a lot easier.
:Since manually searching social media can be time consuming, there are a lot of great social media management tools that can automatically monitor brand mentions for you. For example, the aptly-named Mention tool will help you quickly find the mentions you're looking for. And now you have all the tips and tricks to start collecting testimonials. Let's do a quick recap. Displaying testimonials on your website is a great way to use social proof and turn more visitors into customers. However, you first need your customers to share their kind words with you. At a basic level, collecting testimonials is simple- you just need to ask. But how you ask can make the difference between getting a glowing conversion-boosting testimonial and never hearing back.
Speaker 1:Focus on asking the right questions at the right time with the right incentives. Then use channels like email, in-app messaging, and social media to connect with customers and gather feedback.
:If you're looking for the easiest way to start, t he Getsitecontrol contact forms can have you up and running within minutes. You'll be able to create a feedback form even if y ou a re a non-techie person, and its targeting settings w ill make it really easy for you to ensure the form will display at the right time and place. Sign up at getsitecontrol.com and give it a spin for free. And this is it for the episode. Don't forget to subscribe. Until next time!