Customer testimonials. Useful, right?

More useful than you might think! Here’s five top ways to make the most of testimonials.

1. Use a testimonal to introduce every web page, like this, and they’ll give your sales message a powerful little boost

• Header:  You deserve a brilliantly clean home!
• Subhead:  Brighton’s favourite cleaning company
• Testimonial: “I’ve used BrightInBrighton for a year now and they’ve never let me down. My home is always absolutely spotless!” 
• Body copy: BrightInBrighton deliver superb quality cleaning services (etc)

2. Use several short testimonials on your sales page, where they’ll work hard to increase conversion

3. Create a dedicated testimonial page and add new praise regularly. You’ll benefit from SEO juice, enhanced visitor interest and valuable extra credibility

4. Use a short testimonial to lend power to your email marketing campaign – we all enjoy knowing what other people think and we like to trust our fellow consumers

5. Include testimonials with the stuff you sell and hammer your quality message home. They’ll help you encourage repeat visits, increase sales, cross sales and up-sales…

• on the cover of your ebook
• designed into your product’s packaging
• printed on delivery notes
• etc 

6. Create a regular ‘what our customers say’ section in your newsletter. It’s a good place to display longer testimonials and entire letters full of praise without interfering with your core sales message. People like to read about their peers’ experiences and good news helps create a positive, trusted brand

PS. Dont forget you can use testimonials from peers and experts within your field as well as customers.  

As a freelance copywriter I’m very aware how little time – and inclination – most people have to write stuff for themselves.

So it’s no surprise that getting customers to provide testimonials, comments and case studies can be a challenge.

My tip? Write the testimonial or case study yourself. Then ask your customer to approve it.

Which sounds ridiculously simple. But it’s an incredibly effective way to get what you need within a  reasonable timescale.

If you’re just as reluctant as your customers to put pen to paper – or fingers to keyboard - get in touch and I’ll write it for you! Just click through to helpinthecity.com and we’ll take it from there!   

You can tell your target market how great you are ’til you’re blue in the face.

But if you want them to make that essential leap of faith, taking you up on your offer, you need strong medicine: introducing customer testimonials and case studies.

Why are they so powerful? 

• they’re the independent views of people who have tried your service or product and liked it, proof that you do
  what you say
• they show that real people trust you, which is especially important for online businesses with no ‘real world’
  presence
• they humanise your offer and brand, again especially helpful if you’re an online business
• they help position your organisation as an authority in it’s field
• we love to read about others’ experiences, so customer feedback is seldom ignored. If people read nothing else,
  they’ll read your case studies and testimonials
• visually they help break up your text into bite-sized pieces…
• … and they highlight / condense your sales propositions for impatient, time-poor readers

A testimonial doesn’t need to be long – three or four sentences is great. But they do need to tell a story:

“I was having a dreadful day! The final straw was finding out that our hamster supplier had let us down on a huge order we’d made for the International Hamsterfest. But Hamstapacking Direct sorted us out, delivering a million top quality uber-furry hamsters to our doorstep the next day, no fuss. My heroes!”.

And snappy one-liners grab readers’ attention:

“Hairy Dave at BillyBob Teeth & Co. is the most helpful comedy teeth supplier I’ve ever met!”. Or, “Not only did Aural Angels deliver bang on time, they even fitted my new earpiece for free!”

Sadly it is often difficult to get customers to write you a testimonial. Even if they do, it’s often awful! Here’s a copywriter’s tip or two:

• get a good copywriter to write the testimonial for you then ask your customer to approve it. They’re usually
  more than happy to – it saves them a job 
• if your customer writes you a testimonial but it’s badly written, get a copywriter to edit it and ask your customer
  to approve the edited version. Customers are usually grateful because very few non-writers are confident in
  their copywriting skills
• an alternative… if you get a verbal testimonial ask ‘Can I quote you on that’ and write it down. Then use it
  verbatim for a heightened ring of truth
• for extra oomph, attribute testimonials and boost their credibility

Detailed Case Studies are great material for information pages, encouraging website visitors to stick around and read. A one-paragraph case study will bring a web page to life, lend authority to a direct marketing campaign or vitality to a press release.]

As with testimonials, it’s almost always a good idea to get a good copywriter write up each case study for you. Then ask your customer to approve it: as long as you don’t exaggerate or fib they’ll probably jump at the chance.

It’s crowded out there. The media noise is deafening and competition for attention is fierce. Adding case studies and testimonials to your marketing toolkit can help you rise above your competitors.