Don’t believe me? Our clients certainly think so. Check out what they have to say about the Internet Marketing job we do by reading the testimonials throughout our website. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Pretty convincing, right? A large list of detailed testimonials from actual customers. If you don’t have testimonials on your site you are missing out on a great opportunity to promote your company to clients and to the search engines all in one.
Why Testimonials
Here’s how testimonials work for you with potential clients: it gives others a chance to sing your praises for you. What’s more convincing… me telling you how great my company is, or a national business owner giving specifics on how we helped her business to double their revenue? Of course it’s the latter! Any time you have the opportunity to have someone else do the selling for you, let them.
And what about the search engines? How are testimonials good for your placements? One reason is that if you have a testimonial page, that page will typically be a well trafficked and well linked to page. People love to find out what similar people are saying. Other ways in which they help with the search engines is because the text used in the testimonials are the words from actual clients. This means that this is how they speak, which probably means this is what they will use to search for a product or service like yours. And since these phrases are all over the testimonials page, there is a good chance you could have a solid ranking for what people are actually typing in with their search queries.
How to Get Testimonials
Do you remember the last time a customer said something nice about you or your company? If you do, great. If you don’t, you do remember that once upon a time a customer has said something nice about you, right?
Either way, it’s important to document customer quotes and testimonials, no matter how short and sweet the accolades seem. If, for some reason, you don’t seem them flowing in on a daily basis, be proactive about it. Email or call your customers and ask if they would be willing to offer a testimonial. If they’re happy customers they are usually more than willing to send over a few sentences on your behalf.
And just as important, get permission to use the quotes from the customers themselves. (At least get permission to use the quote. If you can use the person’s company and name that is even better.) Even though it gives you a warm feeling to know that a client thinks you are great, it doesn’t help your business much if you cannot share it.
Where to Put Testimonials
Once you have a bunch of testimonials, what do you do? The first thing I do when I get one is to place it in a master testimonials file, complete with quote, provider, company, date and what permissions we have for it. I use an electronic file, but a print file would work just as well. The reason for the file is that you never know when the quotes might come in handy in addition to your website (print materials, referrals, radio, …).
Speaking of your website – where on your website should you place them? I recommend having at least a master testimonials page with all the ones you have gathered. After that, I find it helpful to sprinkle the throughout the site. The bottom of pages or on the right side seem to work well, but it will all depend on the design and content of your site and page. Whatever the case, making sure people can see them and that they are relevant to the page is very important.
So, start gathering your glowing testimonials, place them on your website and let others do the selling for you!
