If you were looking for a caterer, which company would you choose: the one whose website only has their contact info or the one with 20 five-star reviews on Google?
If you picked door #2, you’re not alone. According to TrustPulse, 83% of people trust reviews more than advertising and 97% of consumers look at reviews before making a purchase. For business owners like you, this begs a question: How can you get more testimonials to cash in on the power of social proof?
1. Ask with confidence
At some point near the end of your working relationship, include a polite but pointed request for clients to provide testimonials. You can direct them to your social media, Google, or Yelp—whichever platform you prioritize.
2. Leverage surveys
Platforms like Survey Monkey, SoGoSurvey, and Typeform make it easy to create surveys and send them to your clients. We recommend doing this at the middle and/or end of your case process and asking for feedback on each part of the client’s journey. This will bring in testimonials and also help you improve your systems and processes.
3. Mine your emails
Clients send their gratitude and praise via email all the time. These are free testimonials! Don’t be afraid to pull positive feedback from your emails after asking the client for permission.
Now that you have your testimonials in hand, it’s time to deploy them. Positive reviews can help solidify your expert status and turn prospects into clients, but they can’t do that if no one sees them. Hopefully your clients will leave testimonials in easy-to-find places like Facebook and Google, but you should also display them on your website.
The best way to do this is with a dedicated page for testimonials. You can also install a scrolling widget on your homepage that cycles through your best positive review and/or pulls the latest feedback from Google and Facebook. Ideally, you should do both!