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The best way to get positive reviews and testimonials is to call them success stories and make them a regular part of your business process. Be ready with your smartphone and follow this recipe.
Authentic and in-the-moment success stories provide social proof
Social proof is powerful. In today’s world, people don’t want to hear you talk about yourself as much as they want to hear what others have to say.
Think about how you approach choosing a new restaurant, business coach, or mechanic. You check reviews first and use that to make your final decision.
Likewise, your customers want to hear from other people. Read on to learn more about how to maximize the advantages of positive reviews and testimonials.
Call them Success Stories Instead of Reviews or Testimonials
Did you know that simply by referring to reviews and testimonials in that language that you’re missing presenting them authentically? Dennis Yu, the CEO of Blitzmetrics recommend that you call them “success stories”. Not only that, but he’s got a killer process for getting positive success stories from your customers.
Making the simple switch to “success stories” can alter how they’re interpreted by your potential customers. When you list something as a “testimonial”, your potential clients might not trust it as much.
Get Video Testimonials Whenever Possible
Did you know that 2 out of 3 people want to make a purchase after watching a video!
Video testimonials are more engaging and trustworthy than text-based testimonials. They allow customers to see and hear real people talking about their experiences with your product or service, which builds trust and encourages conversions.
Step 1: Ask Customers to Share “How X Achieved Y with Z “
In this formula, X is your customer. Y are the results they got, and Z is the method you helped them with in working together.
For example:
“Tell me how you got more customers with this success story recipe.”
“Walk me through the process of when you first started working with us; what were you dealing with, what was it like working with us, and how did it make you feel when you were done working with us?”
This shows how someone overcame a challenge and achieved a positive result. Framed as a success story, this feels more real to your reader.
Step 2: Seek Lightweight Consent
Your customers are most happy in the immediate moments after you help them achieve a result. Whether you’re selling a product or a service, get their initial consent to share their feedback honestly and quickly. You can ask, “Hey, would you mind if we recorded this?” at the outset.
For example, right when they achieve their first outcome taking your online course, ask if you can hop on a quick five minute live video with them. Then use the transcript and quotes to repurpose throughout social media.
Do this by asking, “How do you feel about (result)? Would you mind if we did a quick share with your feedback?”
Pro tip: Always ask a variation of “how do you feel?” because this is where the emotional connection and real story gets told. It’s more authentic in this moment because the customer isn’t being prompted to say specific things.
Getting it on video is so much more powerful than a written review because of that human to human conversation. At the end, ask again for lightweight consent: “Hey, would you mind if I shared this on my social media?”
Step 3: Make Video Collection and Promotion Simple
Demonstrate by example when you want to collect these videos and make that ask a good experience for the customer, too. It’s too ambiguous to say “Hey, I’d love if it you left a review.”
If you’re a speaker and someone asks to take a selfie and gives you positive feedback, use that moment to ask to grab a quick reel, story, or live video in the moment.
These can be as brief as one minute and you can put a dollar a day behind them on social media ads to reach a bigger audience. Retarget those who watch the video in your target market.
Get the transcripts from Otter.ai, Descript, or Rev.com and repurpose that text.
Step 4: Scale Your Success Stories Impact
Once you begin to amass these videos, you can make sure they appear to whole new audiences over time. If you have a great review video today, you can monitor the ad results to see what performs the best. You can re-use the older success stories over time so long as you’re also adding new stories, too.
Use a team to help automate and systematize this process. Your job is to show up, make the ask, and grab the video, making it easy for this to all snowball into bigger and better results.
Show How You Care in Video Success Stories
Yes, the video output is about your customer. But it’s also about your potential customers seeing that you care. This comes across more naturally on video because you’re excited about the results your customer got, too. Over time, you’ll have a library of positive feedback that sells future clients.
How to get the most out of your positive reviews and testimonials
Now that you’ve got a batch of great success stories, don’t just let them sit gathering dust. Do something cool with them!
Create a user-generated content gallery
If you have a Facebook page for your business, encourage your clients and customers to share their experiences and how your product or service solved the problem.
My favorite example is the Jasper.ai Facebook Group:
Create use-case pages on your website featuring your success stories.
A use-case is different from a case study. A use case focuses on the real problem your customers had and how your product or service solved it.
Create categories of use-cases or applications for your product or service, write out some descriptions and include your customer success stories as videos.
Share them on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
A word of warning for using your positive reviews and success stories on social media. You don’t want to come across as bragging or shoving your success stories down people’s throats.
- Position these success stories as just that — STORIES that will help other potential customers decide to try your product or service.
- Be sure to tag the customer and their business.
- Avoid hashtags like #Amazing #Super #Fantastic etc. Nobody likes that kind of hype!
On Facebook, make sure the posts are entertaining and fun. On LinkedIn, focus the online reviews and videos that reference professional achievements. And, on Google, feature those online reviews that will help others who are searching for specific words and phrases make a buying decision.
Use the information to create a press release.
If you’ve got a collection of great reviews that show off how awesome your business is, throw them all together and turn it into a press release. Send it out to local news websites so they can do a feature on you and share your success with the rest of the community.
Use case studies to highlight your success.
A great way to show off how well you’re doing is by writing up a business case study on yourself and sharing it on your website or blog. This will help potential customers see how much success you’ve had in the past, what makes you different from everyone else, and how you’ve helped other businesses get ahead.
Notice how this example features a before and after short comment that just begs you to click to read more.
Feature your positive customer reviews on Facebook Lives, Webinars, and Workshops
If you do regular webinars for your prospects and customer, invite your clients who have success stories to participate.
Instead of them just raving about how great you are, encourage them to talk to your audience as having been one of them. “I’ve been where you are. I was feeling unsure and insecure, then I used this product or service and this is what happened.”
Add them to your email signatures.
Email signatures are a great way to share your success with prospects and customers. It’s not bragging because it is just the facts, and you can do this without coming across as self-congratulatory or arrogant. Email signature lines like: “We’re proud of our track record helping clients achieve these results” and “we’ve helped thousands of businesses grow” make for powerful statements that will get people interested in following up with you. By sharing snippets from reviews about how well we help people, we build trust and show off our expertise at the same time!
Use them as quotes in social media posts and ads
Choose snippets that are short and to the point, and that highlight how well you’ve helped others. Doing so will help you come across as credible and trustworthy, which could lead to more conversions.
Create a scrapbook to feature in your waiting room
I saw this in a waiting room of a local attorney. It was a scrapbook that was titled “Our Client Family”. When I opened it, I was greeted with dozens of pictures of clients working with the staff, quotes of reviews and testimonials. They also pasted in envelopes and thank you cards that they had received. Brilliant! It’s like a hardcopy of a Facebook wall.
Get to it!
The best way to get the most out of your reviews and testimonials is by having them be fun, entertaining, and informative. The more engaging they are for people who read them or watch videos about you, the better chance it will have at making a sale because prospects will want to know more about what makes you so great! Use this information wisely when planning your