How to Get More (and Better) Customer Testimonials

Every business should be using video testimonials to move more product and close more deals.

Marketing, in essence, is all about building trust and demonstrating value.

With that in mind, you it should be obvious that customer testimonials are incredibly useful for leveraging the value you’ve created for current customers, and turning that into new customers.

If it’s not so obvious, let me explain…

72% of buyers will take action only after reading a positive review.
-BrightLocal

At the bottom of the marketing funnel, where prospects are seriously considering your product and comparing your solution to the competition’s, rave reviews from real customer can go a very long way in convincing them that what you have to offer is worth every penny.

Testimonials also help prospects make a more real-life connection with your brand or product by showing them how a person’s life has been positively impacted by what you have to offer.

88% of consumers say that they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
-BrightLocal

Want to really see what customer testimonials are capable of? Video testimonials help create an even stronger emotional connection that takes the social proof to the next level, making them particularly effective in this regard (more on this later).

There’s a reason customer testimonials have been a staple in the marketer’s toolbelt for so long, and that’s because they work.

Unfortunately, customer testimonials usually don’t just fall into your lap.

Customer testimonials are considered the most effective content marketing tactics, as identified by 89% of B2B marketers.
-Pardot

So, if you want to get testimonials from your clients with some serious selling power, you’re going to have to put some work in.

That said, to get you started, there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit that can be harvested and used across various pieces of marketing collateral.

For example, some businesses can go to social media and online review site and have plenty of candid testimonials at their disposal.

In case you don’t already have a plethora to choose from, you’ll be surprised what a simple social blast asking for feedback can produce.

If your customers lack any kind of online presence at all — don’t fret! Social postings and online reviews are rarely going to result in the best customer testimonials anyway.

The best testimonials are going to be the ones you work harder and smarter for, because by working smarter, to develop a repeatable, measurable and improvable process for collecting testimonials, your process itself can do much of the heavy-lifting. Dramatically more impactful testimonials are just the cherry on top.

Why You Need More Testimonials

Any testimonials you can get your hands on have the potential to greatly benefit your business.

Accumulating multiple testimonials, however, affords a few new advantages:

• Each testimonial can be aligned with your different buyer personas, in order to connect with a specific type of person, job role, company size, company type, etc.
• Each of your customer will have a different set of reasons to buy from you, and multiple testimonials give you multiple opportunities to address very specific problems your prospects are facing.
• Plus, each testimonial is an opportunity to learn more about your customers and improve your offering!

And, again, the best way to maximize the number of testimonials you’re able to accumulate is by developing a process for doing so.

How to Get More Customer Testimonials

Although a defined process will bring some much-needed structure, every customer you approach for a testimonial is unique, so don’t forget that your process should adapt depending on who you’re working with.

Keeping your process lightweight should make this easy, while still minimizing a lot of the time-sink associated with gathering customer testimonials (scheduling, interviewing, editing, approvals, etc.)

Here are several things to consider when outlining your testimonial-gathering process:

• When should you and when shouldn’t you ask for a testimonial?
  Not all customers, companies, or projects will make good testimonial subjects.Obviously, a difficult customer that’s not all that happy with how things turned out is not going to be a story you want to share.But sometimes it’s a project or story that just not that compelling, or doesn’t fit the narrative you’re trying to build.
• What’s the best way to ask a customer for a testimonial?
  Will you reach out to customers over phone or email? Email may be faster, but it’s less personal than a phone call. But in some industries, people just don’t answer their phones.Who’s going to be in charge of contacting them? Will there be follow-ups until a response is received?
• When will you ask a customer for a testimonial?
  In B2B cases, it’s often best to ask for a testimonial as close to the closing of a project as possible.With B2C, there’s a lot more variation to account for. You want to get commitment from a customer sooner than later, but you also want them to get the full experience of your product, first.
• What form will your customer testimonials take?
  Will your testimonials be longform or shortform? Should they fit into some sort of template? Will graphics accompany them? How about video?Video testimonials can be turned into written testimonials, but not the other way around. Although video testimonials can be more complicated to arrange, the return on that extra effort is huge.
• Who will interview customers for testimonials?
  The account manager? A member of the marketing team? An outside expert?You want your customer to be comfortable and frank in their interview, and sometimes having an interviewer that’s already built rapport with the customer can help them open up. But it can sometimes have the opposite effect.
• How will customers be interviewed for testimonials?
  By phone, email, Skype, in person, on camera? Each has its pros and cons, and it’s likely you’ll have to adopt a few different methods, depending on your customers’ needs.
• What approvals are required from the client for testimonials and endorsements?
  Who at your customer’s company is going to have to sign off on the edits? Wait a second, did you get approval for a testimonial in the first place?!Some organizations strictly govern what employees are publicly allowed to endorse, so make sure you can actually use what you get from them, before going through the effort to get it.
• When and how will new testimonials be rolled out internally and announced externally?
  The sales team will have to know how to best access and utilize the testimonial you now have.And now that you’ve got your testimonials ready to go, how will make sure the rest of the world finds out how awesome you are?

It may seem like a lot of work is required to answer all these questions, but they’re all fairly straightforward, with common sense answers.

The important thing to remember is that systemizing your testimonial-gathering will have huge payoffs!

Before you know it you’ll have a deck full of “just the right thing” for each and every prospective customer.

How to Get Better Customer Testimonials

Having a lot of customer testimonials is all well and good, but they won’t be much use if they aren’t achieving the desired result: more sales.

So, what makes a customer testimonials a truly valuable marketing and sales asset?

• Testimonials should be relatable
• Testimonials should tell a story
• Testimonials should help you make a point
• Testimonials should address buying objections
• Testimonials should be genuine and specific

With these points in mind, here are a few tips for to help ensure you get the best customer testimonials you can.

These are also things you should consider incorporating into your testimonial-gathering process.

• Get Testimonials from the Right People
  Remember, you want your testimonials to resonate with the right audiences.If you’re trying to connect with the individual making the buying decision, you might be better off with someone from the C-suite.Trying to build up support from within their ranks? Maybe talk with a team lead or someone in a director role.
• Ask the Right Customer Testimonial Questions
  Asking the right questions can make all the difference when it comes time to refine their answers into a compelling story.This part of the process is likely where you have the most control over the quality of the final testimonial.What points are you trying to make and what objectives are you helping prospects overcome? Ask your customer questions that will lead them in the right direction.BONUS: We’ve put together this download with 7 unusual questions to ask your customers to get some truly next-level testimonials.
• Tell a Story with Testimonials
  A good testimonial interviewer can get to the heart of the customer’s story within minutes, but what you collect will still need to be edited into story-form if it’s going to reach its maximum potential.Can’t find the story? Let the Hero’s Journey be your guide.
• Be Genuine and Specific
  Although you’ll almost certainly have to do some editing, it’s important to not lose the voice of the customer or soften the edges of it too much in the process.Use the language they’d use, and don’t omit points just because you don’t personally see the appeal — it may be exactly what your next customer wants to hear, or simply the context that grants it legitimacy.Modern consumers can spot a fake testimonial from a mile away, so don’t let an otherwise worthy testimonial damage your brand. Exact (and real) figures will go a long way in making a testimonial tangible.

Follow these simple guidelines and you’ll be well on your way to creating some top-shelf customer testimonials!

But what if I told you that you could amplify all the things that make customer testimonials so great, and make them that much more effective?

Take Your Customer Testimonials to the Next Level with Video Testimonial

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth 1.8 million words, at least according to some fuzzy math done by Forrester Research.

Whether or not you agree with how they reached that number, there’s no denying that when video and customer testimonials come together, the results are truly next-level.

We’ve talked before about why customer testimonial videos are the best at what they do, so I won’t go into too much detail, but in summary:

• Customer testimonial videos afford a much wider range of connection between customer and prospect; through body language, facial expressions, and other social signals.
• Video testimonials are perceived as more legitimate, as they’re much harder to fake.
• Video in general is far more engaging and digestible than other, more conventional forms of content.

Of course, a video testimonial isn’t quite as easy to pull together as a written testimonial.

However, just as with written testimonials, thinking this stuff through ahead of time, and incorporating it into your testimonial-gathering process can remove a lot of the hassle.

Outlined below are a few considerations, unique to video, that may arise when developing a process for acquiring several, high-quality customer testimonial videos:

How will customer testimonial videos be recorded?

You have a few main options here:

1. Perform a testimonial interview over something like Skype and record what unfolds
   The problem here is that you’re relying on the customer’s hardware, and laptop webcams and microphones are generally not that good. The production value is likely to vary dramatically from video to video too, which is really bad for brand consistency.
2. Use a smartphone camera
   Most flagship smartphones can record videos that are at least close to acceptable production quality, and you can provide a consistent production value, assuming you’re able to be in the same place as your customer.Otherwise, this option suffers the same hardware inconsistency problem as option #1.
3. Use professional cameras and lighting
   If you can manage to be in the same place as your customer, using professional video hardware to record your customer testimonials will give you infinitely more control over the final cut of your testimonial video.Along with a far higher production value than either other option could provide, which can greatly improve the performance of your testimonials, especially in the B2B space, where higher production values are expected.

For businesses that favor consistency (both in their internal processes and content production), by far your best options are to either a) develop an in-house video team, or b) hire a video marketing agency to produce all your video testimonials for you.

In both cases, assuming you have the right skillsets and video equipment at your disposal, you stand to benefit hugely from consistently high-quality video, and a video production process you can rely on.

Who will be the subject of your video testimonials?

As I mentioned earlier, not everyone makes a great candidate for a testimonial. This is particularly true when it comes to video testimonials.

Some customers won’t be articulate enough, others just won’t give you the responses you were looking for, and then there are the customers that are so lacking in “stage presence” that you wouldn’t ever want the video to leak to the general public.

Having a sense for who is and isn’t a good candidate for a customer testimonial video relies somewhat on intuition, but it’s also a skill you can develop over time.

Where and how will customer testimonial videos be recorded?

If you have a retail storefront, setting up a camera in the corner of a room, and recording your best customers as they come in is easy. It’s a different story in the B2B space, however.

For B2B businesses, this is perhaps the biggest obstacle is getting customer testimonial videos into your lineup, and where video testimonials differ most from written testimonials, should you choose to record testimonial videos in-person — which is really your best option.

Unfortunately, your customer are sometimes on the opposite coast, or even in another country, and flying out your internal marketing team or an outside video marketing agency to each client’s location just isn’t practical.

But you do have a couple decent alternative options:

1. Hire a video crew in your customer’s city
   Instead of flying a crew out to the client, simply hire someone near their office, and save yourself the travel expense. Plus, these studios are usually very capable of capturing incredibly well-shot video.This route does have its drawbacks though.For one, it’s not always easy to find a studio with the expertise to conduct a comprehensive testimonial interview, nor the marketing expertise to capture “the right stuff.”And although you’ll save on travel expenses, hiring a film crew in another city isn’t always easy, and certainly isn’t free. In a worst case scenario, you could wind up out of thousands of dollars with little footage you can actually work with.
2. Or wait for your customers to come to you
   Every industry has at least one big trade show every year. It’s likely that you, as well as some of your best customers will be in attendance, and you couldn’t ask for a better opportunity to get a bunch of your customers on video in one fell swoop.You may think that an annual event would be far too hectic to possibly arrange a time to record testimonials with your customers. But with an experienced video crew and testimonial interviewer, you’d be surprised how many customer testimonial videos you can knock out in an afternoon.

Want to start using customer testimonial videos?

Start by assessing your exact video needs, before choosing the video production strategy that’s best for you. Download this handy guide we’ve put together to help you do just that!

Start Using Customer Testimonials Today!

Acquiring customer testimonials isn’t always easy, but developing a process for doing so, and ensuring their quality makes it a heck of a lot easier.

Whether you decide to go with written testimonials, video testimonials, or a combination of the two — it’s hard to go wrong.

The payoff from having several testimonials in your back pocket, ready to show your next prospect, is undeniably huge.

Your Turn

How do you use customer testimonials in your business? What does your process look like? Have your own tactics for procuring customer testimonials? Sound off in the comments!

Originally published at thoughtcastmedia.tv on October 23, 2017.