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When you pay for a product or service, you most likely want to get the best value for your money. Well, your customers want the same thing. So, it’s only fair that your prospective clients want to ensure they’re making a smart buying decision before patronizing you. Enter testimonial advertising.
According to Wyzowl’s study, 9 out of 10 people seek this assurance from customers who have used your service or products. That’s why you must invest your efforts and resources in sharing testimonials about your products or services.
To make it all easy, this guide will explore five ways testimonial advertising can help you elevate your customer base.
Ready? Let’s dive in.
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What is Testimonial Advertising?
Testimonial advertising is a form of advertising that promotes your products or services using endorsements from satisfied customers, experts, and influencers.
These endorsements contain statements about how effectively your service tended to the user’s pain points. In some cases, they can even go as far as recommending the service.
Here’s an example of a customer testimonial ad by Zoom:
According to PowerReviews, testimonials can increase your conversion rate by 380%. That’s not unexpected since testimonials are social proof.
As such, they can help gain your client’s trust. You’ll also show your credibility—a major quality that can convince your leads to hasten their conversion to paying clients.
5 Ways to Use Testimonial Advertising to Get More Clients
Now, let’s dive into five ways to take advantage of testimonial advertising.
1. Get Customer Feedback Through Text
Text is a common form of testimonial advertising that remains effective to date. Even better, it is cheap and effortless to create.
There are several ways to acquire this textual feedback. First, you can get customer reviews by emailing your clients to share how they feel about the service you just rendered. Here’s a template by Wordstream that you can use:
Further, you can get reviews from real customers by sending a survey they can fill in at their convenience. And when they do, extract the positive praises from the responses.
In addition, social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook allow you to have review tabs on your page. You can take advantage of them too. Here’s how a Facebook review looks:
So, how do you use this feedback in your ads? Like the example below, you can use one of your text reviews to run a Google search Ad:
As well as this, you can also include several of the best reviews on your online ads’ homepage.
You can also redesign and include these texts in social media posts that you intend to promote. See this Instagram testimonial ad by Open Letter Marketing:
If you use social media posts, you’ll need to integrate the ad with your content plan, so it syncs with the other types of content you usually post.
Also, never alter these texts from their original form; instead, use them as is. This increases your credibility and, as a result, conversion.
2. Use Video Testimonials
Regardless of your product or service, video testimonials are a terrific testimonial advertising tool. They offer a better way to engage potential buyers and show them actual people who can testify to your service.
Here’s a video testimonial example from Grammarly:
How can you get these testimonials? As you did with texts, send an email. However, getting people to record videos of themselves is not always easy. As a result, it is possible that more than one email will be required. Send these emails in order, beginning with the pre-ask and progressing to the invite and a gentle reminder.
The pre-ask is when you ask if they can record a short video for you. To hasten their decision, be sure to include the value of the testimonial in the email. Tell them how their story impacts others and how their experiences will help others share similar success with them.
The invite – If their response is affirmative, you can send them an invite. While the video quality may vary, you can send the invite with a tool like Widewail, which allows your customers to hit a simple button and record the testimonial on their phones.
For consistent high quality, you may also send the invite via email, informing them of the time and date for a professional testimonial video shoot.
The Reminder – Here, you’ll constantly remind them of the dates, so they don’t forget. Sending an email notification will get the job done.
If they finally agree, then you need a killer video. Your testimonial video should answer questions your prospects usually have. Also, use background music to your advantage. Music evokes emotions. And with the right music, you can ignite a feeling of satisfaction and yearning.
Then, you can add these testimonial videos to your:
- Landing pages
- Social media platform
- Case studies for the middle-of-the-funnel customers
- E-mail (by simply including the link to the video)
- Blogposts
- Video streaming platforms, such as YouTube
Remember, the video testimonial is about letting satisfied customers share their experience with prospects. So, always make the customer the hero of the story.
3. Share Pictures of Products/Services/Customers
Just like videos, images are another visual element that can significantly influence testimonial ads.
There are several ways to use images for testimonial advertising. Firstly, you can request actual pictures of your happy customers when requesting their text testimonials. Then, combine these customer photos with the review like this example from Second Nature, a water filter company:
Humans are inclined to connect with other humans. So, putting the faces of real people along with these texts makes them relatable. It will help your prospects understand that you are not soliciting testimonials from pseudo-clients. This enhances your brand credibility.
Also, when your clients upload images of them using your products online, you could simply repost them on your social media page. Then tag them as shown below:
If you only offer services, you could also share before vs after photos to demonstrate your expertise. For instance, if you offer SEO services, you could share an analytics image showing how you helped increase your client’s website traffic.
Be sure to make these images as attractive as possible. If you can’t create them yourself, maybe look for a graphic designer to help you create these images on a contract basis?
4. Get a Shoutout from an Influencer
Influencers relevant to your niche can be found on social media platforms, TV, and podcasts. Reach out to these individuals for a shoutout. You can experience even better results if you opt for micro-influencers who have the potential to connect more closely with your prospective customers.
In fact, statistics show that influencers inspired 87% of shoppers who made a purchase. See the infographic below from SociaMediaToday:
Before connecting with influencers, ensure that a sizable portion of your target audience follows the influencer with whom you wish to collaborate.
Here’s an example of an influencer shoutout on Instagram:
Find the channels these influencers often use for communication and connect with them there. While some will respond to your social media DMs, others may prefer an email—they often indicate this in their bio.
Moreover, it is easier to create an impactful testimonial if the influencer is knowledgeable about your service or product. To accomplish this, you can use a technique known as “product seeding.”
Product seeding simply means sending free products or offering free services to influencers for a shoutout. It’s effective because instead of just blindly giving your service or product a shoutout, the influencer will get familiar with your brand and give a genuine and realistic testimonial.
5. Share Success Stories
Nothing beats showing customers a real-life customer success story about how your product or service has helped them.
Highlighting how well you have managed to deliver your service to your clients boosts your overall position in the market. You can share these customer stories in different formats, such as case studies, texts, or videos. You can even mix and match.
For example, Salesforce shares an intriguing story about how their product helped Amazon improve its customer service efforts in the video below:
There are some considerations to note when creating success stories:
- If possible, show quantifiable results. Telling your prospects how you grew a social media page follower from 40 to 50,000 is better than simply saying you grew a social media page.
- Include as many details as possible. You should take your potential customers on a journey with a success story. So, be specific about the client’s challenges and how you helped solve them.
- You shouldn’t include a call to action. But every point of the story should give a subtle nudge to the customers, telling them how to achieve similar results with your service.
- Create a clear comparison of the before and after situation.
Once this content is ready, share and promote it across various online channels.
In Closing
In conclusion, testimonial advertising can significantly improve your lead-generation efforts and conversion rates.
You can obtain client testimonials by inviting text reviews from past customers, creating video and picture testimonials, and sharing them on various channels and social networks.
Also, be sure to find influencers relevant to your niche and engage them for a shoutout. Finally, you can create success stories that engage potential customers.
Good luck.
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