Effective Ways to Encourage Clients to Leave a Testimonial
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Client and customer testimonials are integral if you want to build a positive reputation for your business. You can claim to clients you’re the “best option” for them all you want, but If you actually had a high-performing team, someone else would have vouched for you by now.
At least, that’s what your consumers think. According to Trustpilot, nine out of ten consumers worldwide will read a review before purchasing a product. If you don’t work on your social proof, anything you say won’t really matter. Maybe you are the best, but where’s the evidence?
In the end, the proof is derived from your audience, your clients, and your customers. If you want to be someone’s first choice, you need to encourage clients to leave testimonials on your website.
How to encourage clients to leave a glowing business review
If you want to grow your small business quickly, increasing your online presence through testimonials is critical. Here are 5 ways to motivate past or present clients to leave reviews.
Personally ask them (and make it really simple)
Create a sample review and testimonial form
Offer incentives (as long as they aren’t monetary)
Use calls-to-action in client-specific campaigns
Consider using the long-term piecemeal method
Clients may be willing to rate your services out of 5-stars or on a numbered scale, but anyone can fake those. What you need is a personalized testimonial that sings your praises. However, these take time, and your clients may be too busy to write an effective review.
If that’s the case, write the script for them and ask them to sign off on it. It’s much easier to get an answer to a yes or no question, and most clients are more than happy to do you a favor. If you get a few takers, be sure to include client testimonial videos and reviews on your website.
If you’re not comfortable writing out a script or you don’t have the time, you can still make it really easy for clients to leave outstanding reviews. One of the best tactics includes using a sample review/testimonial form that’s client-friendly, easy to complete, and highly relevant.
The form can include 5-7 questions (nothing more, or you’ll overwhelm clients) that touch on different scenarios. For example, if the client is receiving this form because they recently ended their contract, ask them what they liked about your services using multiple-choice answers.
It’s okay to offer incentives as a way to encourage clients to leave reviews, so long as they aren’t monetary. If you’re caught paying for testimonials, it will damage your reputation and get you banned on certain platforms. It could also lead to legal consequences, so it isn’t worth it.
However, clients will write you a testimonial, be it positive or negative, if you offer them a new service for free, discounts, loyalty points, or a product that isn’t out yet in exchange for a review. Plus, you’ll know whether a new product or service could be a potential hit before launch.
Your clients may not know you want their opinion, which is why asking them for it is the simplest and most powerful thing you can do to acquire a few testimonials. But if you want to take a more casual approach, consider leaving calls-to-action somewhere in your client-specific campaigns.
For example, if you have an email list that only clients can join, put a footer at the end of each newsletter that asks for a review. After clients speak to customer service, purchase a package, or upgrade a subscription, send an email requesting a testimonial about their experience.
Your clients aren’t leaving testimonials because they don’t like you. They have a lot going on, and writing a testimonial is unlikely to reach the top of their priorities list. The piecemeal method can be really effective with busy clients, as it asks for one-sentence feedback, not a paragraph.
For this method to work, write prompts over a series of emails that ask simple questions like “what made you work with us?” At the end of the month, you should have five sentences that can fit together to form a single testimonial outlining each client’s pain points and aspirations.
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