A customer testimonial can do what no other form of marketing can do for a brand. The reason behind this is that customer testimonials are seen as friendly messages, written by one customer of a business to help out any potential customers for the same business. They are not seen as biased statements written for manipulating a brand image or perceived value of a product.
Even startup firms would agree that a customer testimonial has incredible power. It works like word-of-mouth marketing and is sometimes referred to as earned advertising. It is the perfect way to market and promote a specific product or a brand name as a whole.
Customer testimonials help businesses acquire new customers and reward the loyalty of existing customers. With the growing popularity of social media platforms, sharing customer testimonials has even become easier. With just a simple click and a few seconds of typing, a user can write and post a good customer review on the social media page of a brand. There are so many testimonial examples that reach a worldwide audience through social media sites.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Are you on the verge of adding a feature for customer testimonials to your professional website? If you are still double-minded about it, check out the numerous benefits that customer testimonials can give to your business.
But before we get into that, we want to mention that a customer testimonial is not the same as a customer review.
Difference Between a Customer Testimonial and a Customer Review
A customer testimonial is usually requested for, gathered, owned, and managed by the business. Businesses often include positive customer testimonials on their landing pages to build a reputation in front of their audience. They contact their past and existing clients or customers and ask them to write a positive testimonial for them if they are satisfied with their services. Generally, a business also gives an added incentive to a customer for writing a testimonial and gets the customer’s permission to publicly publish their words on their website or other marketing platforms.
A customer testimonial can be written on behalf of an individual customer or an entire organization. Service-providing businesses that offer B2B services often publish testimonials that are written on behalf of their entire client company. They are displayed on their website to attract more such clients and build more brand equity.
A customer review, on the other hand, is written with the complete will and authority of either the customer himself/herself, or a third-party source. A customer review is controlled and managed, not by the business it is about, but by a third party, without the involvement of the business, it is referring to.
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The way customer reviews are collected and used for marketing purposes actually gives them more credibility than customer testimonials. Nonetheless, customer testimonials also open up a lot of opportunities for businesses.
Before moving on to customer testimonial examples and how they benefit a business, let’s clearly define what a customer testimonial is.
What is a Customer Testimonial?
A customer testimonial is a short paragraph or a few statements written in the favor of a product, brand, or business. It is written at the request of the business itself but usually represents how the customer truly feels about the business and its services. When a customer has a good and long-lasting relationship with a company, the company might ask them if they are interested in writing something positive about their products. At times, the company might even offer a small incentive to the customer, such as a discount on their next purchase, for writing the testimonial.
When a business can gather many customer testimonials, it will typically cherry-pick the best ones and publish them on its website. These are the ones that the business feels will get them the best response from their audience and have the greatest impact on their sales.
If a business receives a bad or negative testimonial, it would filter it out of all its marketing platforms. This is because no business ever wants to lose face in front of its audience. If the feedback in a negative testimonial is true, the business can take corrective measures in its operations to improve its products or services. But it would never want the negative words to publicly spread out to its audience. Hence, whenever a business gets a testimonial from someone who doesn’t seem to be happy with their services, it will choose not to simply not show it.
Customer testimonials generally showcase the best of an organization. Testimonial examples that are most highlighted on brand websites are written by those people who are happy and satisfied with the brand. They are willing to share their experience of engaging with the brand with the world. Next time you see a customer testimonial in a large and bold font on a website’s homepage slider, know that what’s written in it is the best that the company has ever done.
9 Key Benefits of a Good Customer Testimonial
Here are 9 key benefits of gathering and publishing good and elaborated customer testimonials.
1. They Build a Positive Brand Image
What a business needs the most to boost up its sales is a good brand image, and that’s exactly what a good and elaborated customer testimonial does. Coming directly from a customer’s mouth, a testimonial is more trusted by the audience than any other form of a marketing message. That is why it is more effective in creating a positive impression about the brand.
Image taken from Strikingly
2. They Reduce the Marketing Costs
Since customer testimonials can usually be gathered free of cost, they are a means of reducing your overall marketing expenses. They work like word-of-mouth marketing, which is faster at getting results than any kind of organic marketing or paid advertising.
3. They Boost the Morale of the Staff
The employees working hard in a company to serve customers want to feel appreciated for their job. A good and praising customer testimonial can make these employees feel happy, especially if the testimonial mentions the specific way an employee served the customer. You need to maintain high morale among your staff so that they keep delivering good customer service at all times.
4. They Build a Brand’s Credibility
If a customer testimonial is about a product’s quality, it will be a means to enhance the brand’s credibility. It will convey to the audience that the particular brand really delivers what it promises. More people from the target audience will trust the quality, and some of them might even make a direct purchase after reading the testimonial, especially if they are already in need of that product.
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5. They Increase Sales Revenue
If a business can gather enough customer testimonials that speak in favor of the brand, that will ultimately lead to an increase in sales. More people will trust the brand, consider buying from it, visit its stores, and make purchases.
6. They Help in Building Long Term Customer Relationships
When a customer is requested to write a testimonial, he or she is usually given an incentive or reward in return. This makes the customer happier, causing them to make repeat purchases, which in turn leads to an increase in the average customer lifetime value. Hence, a customer testimonial can contribute to building a long-term relationship between the customer and the brand.
7. They Point Out Your Unique Selling Proposition
Customers can point out what’s unique about your brand in a customer testimonial. Since they have first-hand experience of using your product, they can tell better how it is. This helps you highlight your unique selling proposition, which you can further improve upon in your future batches of the product.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
8. They Can Increase the Average Browsing Time of Your Website
When your site visitors find interesting customer testimonials on your web pages, they are likely to hang around for a while and go through all of them. This will reduce your bounce rate and increase the average browsing time of your site.
9. They Encourage You to Perform Better
A customer testimonial not only motivates the front-line staff but also gives a lot of encouragement to the business owner and the top management. It is always good to find out and hear that people are happy with what you do and deliver.
For you to be able to publish customer testimonials or customer reviews on your website, you need to have that feature available on the website building platform you use. If you build an online store on Strikingly, we have the option that allows you to show product reviews on your product pages.
If you are running a business, we encourage you to not only gather testimonials from your customers but also contribute to writing customer testimonials for other businesses. Who knows a customer testimonial written by you for your favorite brand helps their business shoot up after the tough financial crisis that most businesses are going through during this pandemic?
