5 Simple Ways to Get Customer Testimonials

A testimonial is an endorsement where a customer attests to the quality of the product or service offered by a person or a business.

Testimonials should be personal i.e, people should have personally used your product or service and should highlight what all they liked about that product or service and why.

It is also important to understand why your business needs customer testimonials.

Customer testimonials act as proof that your business is legitimate and people are getting great results from your services. This increases the credibility of your business and helps to attract more clients.

Here are 5 ways to get customer testimonials for your business:

Reward Customers who give Reviews

One of the most creative ways to get customer testimonials is to giving rewards and incentives to the customers. The better the rewards, the more likely customers are to put in a review for your business.

Here are some ways you can reward customers who give reviews:

• Offer discounts, coupons and vouchers on your services
• Offer package deals by bundling various services together at a special price
• If you have a rewards program, offer extra points to the customers who write a review or give a testimonial
• You can offer cash-back prizes in return for getting a survey filled by a customer

Ask for Testimonials through Emails

Email marketing is another way to get client testimonials simply requesting your customers or subscribers directly by sending an email to them. Your loyal and happy customers won't mind putting in a good review for you and your business.

You can send in an email after a positive interaction of a customer or when they renew their membership or purchase again from you. Since they'll be happy with the service they got, they'll be more likely to put in a good review.

You can even convert some of the amazing testimonials into case studies and post them on your website or send them out as emails to your subscribers. Case studies are detailed testimonials that include a customer story with a positive result with the help of your services.

Set up Giveaways

Another simple way of getting testimonials from customers is by offering giveaways in return for reviews by the customers or posting their thoughts on your website as testimonials.

You can ask your customers to give a review on your social media pages or ask them to fill a survey and in return for their testimonials, you can offer an amazing prize such as a trip or a luxurious gift to a select few customers.

Keep offering such giveaways from time to time, so your customers stay incentivised and are not disheartened in case they don't win the prizes.

Make sure to lay out the terms and conditions for the giveaway so your customers are not left with a bad impression and don't stop using your services later on.

Get Testimonials on Social Media

Social Media is one of the go-to options to get testimonials from clients. Since you're already engaging and interacting with your audience on social media, you can take advantage of this space and get testimonials.

Some of the social media networks that you can use to get testimonials:

• Facebook Reviews
  Your current Facebook page has a review tab where people can give their reviews and testimonials. If you don't have any reviews on your page yet, you can simply ask your loyal clients to give a good review on your page.
• LinkedIn Recommendations
  LinkedIn is a great platform for building a professional network. You can easily get recommendations and endorsements for your services and expertise on the platform. You can simply ask for a recommendation from your connections.
  You can even ask your employees as well to get started on LinkedIn if they haven't yet and to get reviews and recommendations from customers.
• YouTube
  Video reviews are stronger and more trustworthy than text-based reviews. Many customers buy products and services and review them on their YouTube channel. You can ask your customers to review your products on their channel if they have one and send you the link. You can create a playlist of these reviews and post it on your YouTube channel.
  Another way is to film reviews when you meet customers in person with their permission and upload the videos to your YouTube channel.

Search for Unsolicited Reviews

Many customer testimonials are already out there in the way of personal blogs and video reviews that you're not aware of. You can search for such testimonials using a tool called Google Alerts.

Google Alerts helps you track brand mentions by sending you notifications for terms such as your name, business name, brand name and products and services offered by your business. You can also add keywords such as the word "review" to get more accurate results.

After finding the relevant results, simply reach out to the people who wrote about your brand and take their permission to feature their reviews on your website as testimonials.

Conclusion

Last but not the least, make sure that you don't pressurize your customers to give a testimonial for your business as that would create a bad impression on your existing clients.

Understand all the ways properly and choose the best option out of these or a combination of them that suits your business the most. Get amazing testimonials and increase the perceived brand image of your business!