Writing a testimonial is a powerful way to share your experience and help others make informed decisions. Whether you’ve had a fantastic customer service experience, received top-notch professional services, or used a product that exceeded your expectations, a well-crafted testimonial can provide valuable insights to others considering the same service or product.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the step-by-step process of writing a compelling testimonial that effectively showcases your experience and helps others make informed decisions.
What Is a Testimonial?
A testimonial is a statement or endorsement a person provides that expresses their experience or opinion about a particular product, service, or individual. Testimonials can be written or spoken and are often used by businesses or individuals to build trust and credibility with potential customers or clients. They include specific details about the product or service, the individual providing the testimonial’s personal experience or feelings, and how the product or service has helped them in some way.
Testimonials help you establish credibility and trust with your clients, mainly if you use them to dispel skepticism. Usually, businesses put them on the home page of their websites, in their advertising, and on their social media accounts.
Why are Testimonials Important?
Testimonials are important because they help build trust and credibility with potential customers or clients. When considering purchasing a product or service, they often look for reviews or feedback from others who have already used it.
Testimonials provide valuable insights into the experiences of others, which can help potential customers make informed decisions. Additionally, testimonials can help businesses or individuals establish their expertise or authority in a particular field by showcasing their positive track record and impact on others.
Overall, testimonials can be a powerful tool in building a solid reputation and establishing trust with potential customers or clients.
Types of Testimonials
There are many effective ways to tell a story. Your chosen one will depend on your available supporting materials and how you want to communicate the success.
The following are some general recommendation categories to take into account:
Quote Testimonials
Quote testimonials are advertisements or works of art that feature uplifting words about your business from a brand advocate or a satisfied client. A picture of the subject typically accompanies the quotation to make the message more relatable to the target audience.
Quote testimonials show that a user with actual expertise is endorsing your product. Since most consumers are more likely to believe a peer than a paid actor, this can be significantly more effective than conventional advertising techniques. In addition, you can establish strong credibility with potential leads by using the voice of your devoted customers to speak up for your business.
Social Media Testimonials
The best recommendations are the ones you receive without asking. Social media recommendations can be helpful in this situation. Customers who voluntarily write about their interactions with your business on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or another social media platform are considered advocates.
This kind is highly organic and can give your brand’s reputation additional credibility. In addition, it serves as social evidence of your accomplishments. Customers with strong views about a product or service can instantly vent on social media.
A satisfied customer only needs to pull out their phone, write a genuine review, and share it online for everyone to see. Depending on your customer’s social media following, that review may significantly impact millions.
Be sure to interact with customers promoting your business on social media. Like their article, and if it contains exciting content, consider sharing it. Finding these testimonials is not difficult for a business, and sharing them with your web audience is simple.
Customer Interviews
Customer interviews are an excellent method for your company to get customer feedback on particular aspects of your company and how those aspects contributed to your success. Asking willing customers to participate in an interview is one of the simplest methods to get their feedback. With this format, you can highlight your various goods and features while showing potential customers how to use them in real-world situations.
Customer interviews can be presented in various ways; they offer more flexibility than endorsements. For instance, they could be taped and shared as an audio or video piece, transcribed into a written interview, and shared on the website and blog of your business. Businesses frequently pick one or more strategies to maximize the testimonial’s exposure.
Peer Review
Peer endorsements are influential because of implied egotism, which is what it is. Individuals are drawn to others who are similar to themselves. Since many consumers consult these review websites when making decisions, these evaluations can have a significant impact on consumers.
Peer evaluations are beneficial for clients who are dealing with your company for the first time. According to studies, 52% of customers will only purchase from a company if they have received four or more ratings on a review website. Since strangers who post their honest views are responsible for the feedback on these websites.
Bring positive reviews to the customer rather than having them search for them, and keep them on your website. Because they can be rapidly shared on your company’s website, these reviews should be utilized as client testimonials. They can be quoted and reformatted on your website or screenshotted and then displayed for customers to see on the home page.
Audio Testimonials
Like video can sway and inspire your audience, audio can also do so. The main advantage of audio is that it can help your business produce engaging content cheaply. You don’t need a large production team and many expensive tools to record audio testimonials.
All you need to capture is a microphone, some software, and a quiet place. With those tools, you can create a moving customer narrative simply by combining a variety of customer quotes into a single track.
Bring positive reviews to the consumer and keep them on your website rather than making them search for them. Using this format, you can highlight your various products and features while demonstrating to prospective customers how they might be used in practical situations. They can be quoted and reformatted on your website’s main page or screenshotted and displayed to customers.
Video Testimonials
Unsurprisingly, video has become one of the most popular methods to consume content in a world where everyone carries a tiny computer in their pocket.
According to Wyzowl’s study, 87% of marketers think that video has a profitable return on investment. It is so that a compelling business story inspires viewers told in video using visual images and audio.
Videos can go viral if the material is compelling and quickly shared online. Companies like Dollar Shave Club have succeeded wildly by publishing humorous videos that instantly went viral online. Even though you might not get lucky every time, one successful piece of content can rapidly make all the others worthwhile.
Employee Testimonials
Keep in mind that your employees are one of your most valuable tools. In this kind of testimonial, your team may talk about a typical day in their lives, such as what their jobs encompass or their preferred aspects of what they do.
An employee testimonial is a fantastic method to showcase your company’s culture and what potential employees can anticipate working with you. Testimonials from employees are particularly effective because they communicate to potential customers and applicants simultaneously. On the other hand, prospective clients can see firsthand how your team works together and how that atmosphere will enhance their overall experience.
How to Write a Testimonial
Consumers have stories about your company. So you must roll up your sleeves, flex your writing muscles, and break the procedure down into these five easy steps to convert those tales into social proof:
First, determine the challenge your client faced.
Identifying your client’s challenge or problem is essential when writing a testimonial. It is a crucial step because it helps provide context for your testimonial and makes it more relevant to potential customers or clients facing similar challenges.
Once identified, you can focus on how the product or service helped solve it. To deidentified the client’s challenges, you can g them about their experience with the product or service. What problem or pain point did they have before using the product identified?
By highlighting your client’s specific challenge and how the product or service helped overcome it, you can create a more robust and compelling testimonial that resonates with potential customers or clients facing similar issues.
Walk through what you did to solve the problem.
When writing a testimonial, it’s essential to describe the specific steps you took to solve the problem, including a brief product description where relevant. It’s essential to be specific and detailed when describing how you used the product or service, as this can help build trust and credibility with potential customers or clients. In addition, it helps provide valuable information to potential customers or clients about how the product or service works and how it can help them solve similar challenges.
By providing a clear and detailed description of how you used the product or service to solve the problem, you can create a more persuasive and informative testimonial to help potential customers or clients make informed decisions.
Explain how your solution was different from other options.
By highlighting the unique aspects of the product or service that helped you solve the problem and explaining why it stands out from the competition, you can create a more persuasive and effective testimonial to help others make informed decisions. Additionally, by sharing how the product or service exceeded your expectations, you can build trust and credibility with potential customers or clients and encourage them to choose the product or service you recommend.
Describe your customer’s experience from start to finish and highlight any compelling results.
Describing your customer’s experience from start to finish and highlighting any compelling results from using the product or service is essential. By being specific and detailed, potential customers or clients can better understand the process and benefits of the product or service. Additionally, highlighting unique aspects that differentiate the product or service from competitors can help build trust and credibility with potential customers or clients and encourage them to choose the recommended product or service.
Call to Action
A call to action (CTA) is crucial to any testimonial as it encourages potential customers or clients to take a specific action. The CTA should be clear and precise, tailored to the audience and goals of the testimonial, and use an appropriate tone. By providing a clear next step, you can help potential customers or clients move forward and take action toward becoming loyal customers or clients.
Benefits of a Good Testimonial
A testimonial acts as a salesperson for you, urging prospective customers to work with you rather than rehashing your own sales pitch. Excellent references are significant because they:
Build credibility and trust.
Allow former clients to discuss their interactions with your business and provide the answers to any concerns that prospective customers may have. It can fill the gap left by skepticism and give your company credibility.
Empathize with your audience on a deep level.
Their emotional responses influence the majority of choices people make because that is what emotions are intended to do: to evaluate and summarize an experience and guide your actions, according to Psychology Today.
Make a stronger case for yourself.
When convincing them to work with you, deeper connections with your clients offer you more clout. Even if you’ve never met, you’ll have created the foundation for a potential connection by demonstrating your ability to collaborate with others.
Allow you to share a captivating story.
A story is not the same thing as an excellent story. However, if you know how to write a testimonial correctly, you can create a story that will stick in the minds of your prospective clients and motivate them to begin their own stories by working with you.
Boost sales rates.
It’s more effective than having a testimonials area on your website. Keywords like “trustworthy,” “authority,” and “credibility” are powerful signs for search engines when they appear in a testimonial. VWO claims that comments can boost sales page conversion by 34%.
Build the identity of your business.
It can be easy to forget those actual individuals are behind every social media post, email, and service, even though marketers work hard to avoid the pitfalls of impersonal sales language. Customer testimonials let your audience see that your business is made up of strong, tenacious people who are responsible for its image.
Tips for Writing a Great Testimonial
Be Authentic
Although it is simple to fabricate testimonials, your viewers will probably be able to tell whether or not a statement is true. An honest recommendation will highlight the customer’s issue and how your good or service improved their lives.
When prospective consumers read testimonials, they put themselves in the testimonial’s subject’s position and envision using your product themselves. It is nearly difficult for a marketer to duplicate an authentic testimonial.
Be Specific
The use of clichés like “it was wonderful” and other vague, meaningless expressions are avoided with a specific testimonial.
Therefore, great testimonials highlight the advantages of the product or service. An excellent method to enhance a testimonial is to use statistics. Without supporting data, a compelling testimonial can be created by describing the problem and how the questioned product helped resolve it. Keep it Short and Direct.
People are busy, and reading lengthy reviews can be daunting. Therefore, limit the length of your testimonials to no more than two or three lines.
A customer testimonial that is succinct, to the point, and uses verbs that evoke feelings encourages readers to read on.
Personalize the testimonial
Making the testimonial more relatable helps viewers feel more empathy. Another way to make the testimonial more distinctive is to include before-and-after photos, a business logo, or other images highlighting the worth of the service or good.
The benefit of personalization is that it makes a testimonial—and your product—more memorable to prospective consumers over time.
Make it a conversation.
Strong recommendations avoid being excessively formal or technical. Your users will be turned off if they’re filled with technical speak and will move on to something else to read. Make testimonials conversational and straightforward to grasp as a result.
By following the steps outlined in the guide, which include identifying the challenge faced, describing the solution and its unique features, highlighting the results achieved, and including a clear call to action, you can create an authentic and effective testimonial that resonates with potential customers or clients. Remember to be honest and specific while offering compelling reasons for others to try the product or service for themselves.
