Testimonials add power to website and shift your marketing efforts into overdrive. Just as downshifting a hot rod and punching the gas boosts the speed of the car, testimonials boost the rest of your marketing efforts by leveraging social proof.
It’s human nature to follow the behavior of others. If you've ever purchase a book or other product based on a review, you've relied on social proof in your decision making. Social proof is especially powerful when someone is making an important decision for themselves and they perceive others as being knowledgeable on the subject. Purchasing your product or service, or even donating to your cause, might be in important decision for your target audience. Your current clients or donors will be knowledgeable assets for you to leverage.
Once you gather up your testimonials from your clients ... then what? Well, you could, of course, simply place them all on your website and hope for the best. However, forming a game plan around your testimonials will take their power, your social proof, and not just downshift and punch the gas, but supercharge it.
So let’s start putting a game plan together now and make 2015 your Year of the Testimonial.
Steps to Supercharge With Testimonials
- Set a goal for the number of testimonials you want to collect. You’ll probably collect these over time, but as a goal I recommend at least 104 to 156 … you’ll see why in a minute.
- Of that goal, attempt to get 52 of them as videos (see Video Tips below) and the rest as written (see Written Tips)
- Each week, post one or two written testimonials and one video testimonial to your website. These make great content for your blog and would allow you to easily increase your blogging rate with some valuable marketing information.
- After they’re posted, use Facebook (or your other social media outlets) to promote these by posting links to the them on your website. Posting links to the content that is on your website drives traffic back there.
See Social Media Strategies below for a suggested posting sequence.
Video Testimonial Tips
Videos should be posted to YouTube. It’s the second or third most popular search engine in the world (depending on when the last analysis was done.)
Along with posting the video, be sure to provide a good description that includes your website, the town the person is from, perhaps their profession if it’s relevant, and maybe quote from the testimonial. Also, work in a couple of sentences that use keywords and phrases which someone might use to find that video (see Choose the Long-Tail Keywords You Use for ideas.)
The clips should be a couple of minutes in length, maybe slightly longer.
Video testimonial participants should hit as many of your client demographic categories as possible. You might find that if you only ask for volunteers, you could end up with a fairly homogenous group. If this happens, go out and ask for testimonials from specific clients who fall into other categories.
Care should be taken when selecting people for video testimonials. These people are becoming your spokespersons. Make sure they will represent you well. This will probably require a little tact and might be best done by inviting specific people to provide videos.
Written Testimonial Tips
Written testimonials can be of any length, but people tend to lose interest unless the they are extremely engaging. To be safe, asking for shorter responses will be better. 150 to 300 words is generally a good length.
All written testimonials should come with a photo of the person. Pictures make the them more real to the reader. They can also help the reader relate to the person more closely (do to perceived similarities like age, race, or sex that are seen in the photo.)
Like videos, written testimonials should also come from people who hit many different demographic categories.
Social Media Strategies for Testimonials
Just like you’ll be posting your testimonials to your website in small groups each week, you’ll want to post links to those testimonials to social media in small groups, too. Even smaller groups, in fact. Post them to social media one at a time, a day or more apart, in order to get the most visibility and marketing mileage out of them.
I suggest posting your testimonials around the lunch hour in your time zone, especially on Facebook. Statistics show that Facebook usage spikes just before and just after the lunch hour each work day.
Also, because people tend to look on Facebook for things to do towards the end of the week, I recommend that you post your video testimonials on Thursday around lunch. On other days, post your text testimonials (with photos) to social media. For example, if you’re posting three per week, try posting a text versions on Monday and Wednesday and your video versions on Thursday.
The Quick Takeaway
ANY testimonials will be beneficial to you. However, taking those testimonials and wrapping a marketing campaign around them will supe up your efforts. Consider making this your goal for 2015. I am.
How do you ask your clients for testimonials? Next week we'll be discussing that and I'd love your input!