How To Get A Trustworthy And Effective Client Testimonial For Your Business?

Testimonials are a vital part of your business and brand success and growth. Testimonials shape the perception of your brand and business by your prospects. Specific and well-written testimonials encourage your website visitors to take action and buy that product or service or hire you.

You can speak about your products or services non-stop and try persuading your potential clients that you can provide the best solution to their problems as much as you want. But often it’s better to let your former clients speak instead, and share their results and experience working with you. Your potential clients want to see that you’re capable of doing the work, that you’re credible, and that you helped other people to achieve the results they want

Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with you speaking about your products and services, promoting and selling. Because if you’re afraid to promote them, and don’t believe in them, nobody will know what you do and be able to buy from you. So it’s essential at the time to work on overcoming your fears and limiting beliefs that you have about selling if you want to improve your sales.

Your potential clients don’t know you yet. And it takes some time for new people and potential clients to start trusting you. Are you the person who can provide the best solution to their problems and make their lives easier? They need a proof that your company or business is legit and that you can be trusted. There is nothing more inspiring than seeing other people getting the results you want. Let your former satisfied clients be your advocates and promote your services for you.

So if you want to boost the credibility of your business and brand, make sure that you gather and share case studies, testimonials, and social proof from your former clients. It can be text, video, or audio, you can be as creative with the testimonials on your website as you wish.

You want to ensure that your website doesn’t just describe the features of your services and how great you are, but that it includes positive reviews from your former clients. Reviews that describe how you, your brand and your services transformed your former client’ lives. It will make your business and brand more credible and desirable among your new potential clients.

Testimonials is a powerful marketing tool

A positive client testimonial is a powerful marketing technique that is used by both small businesses and big corporations. Well-written, specific testimonials placed all over your website can help to boost the overall trustworthiness and credibility of your brand and business. Testimonials can reassure and prove to your new potential client that you’re actually capable of bringing them the results they want because you helped to achieve the results they want for other people before. Don’t underestimate the importance of well-written and effective sales pages too. Both testimonials and an effective sale page should work together.

Often a testimonial or a case study can be a breaking point and push your potential client to take action and book that call, buy the product you offer or hire you. In the past, I made a lot of my own decisions and took action on people’s websites based on their testimonials and case studies.

There is something magical in seeing other people who used to struggle as you do now to get the results you want. It’s inspiring, it gives hope, and it makes you believe that it’s actually possible for you as well.

If you just starting out, make gathering testimonials, case studies and working with clients your priority. There are no amount of paid ads that can do the same things for your business that great testimonials can. It’s a free marketing tool you can leverage to grow your business and get a new client. In addition to this working with clients will improve your skills, and confidence, and will help you to understand in what direction you would like your business to move.

But does every single testimonial is effective and actually does something for your business?

Not every positive testimonial if effective

”Alina is amazing!” ”I loved it!” ”The course or the service was great!” It’s the examples of the worst testimonials you can possibly get from your clients. Moreover, they will do very little for your business. Most likely your website users will ignore them, as they ignore stock photos of smiling people on your website. These kinds of testimonials are very vague, non-specific, and inauthentic. They give little or no information at all about your services or products and what they do.

What elements create a powerful, and credible testimonial?

Trustworthiness – always use the full name of your client, maybe include information like her website, and the location. Include a headshot if possible – it’s very important. People want to see real people.
Specificity – the testimonial gives a specific reason why your product or service is good. What problem did exactly your service help to solve? Specific testimonial is more credible, they make your potential clients trust you more. Nobody cares about general copy, general services, and general faceless testimonials.
Authenticity – you don’t want your testimonial to sound unnatural, and be written in a non-natural way. Make sure that your former client uses simple language that describes what exactly they liked about your services and what specific results it helped them to achieve.
Don’t forget to mention any fears, and problems your client had before they started to work with you. Then you can explain how they were eliminated. You can also address here any objections that people had before they bought from you.
Explain the benefits of your service or products – what impact your product or service made had on your clients? How was their life was transformed? This makes your product or service interesting for your future potential client.
Add any numbers and specific data when it’s possible.

I prepared several examples to inspire you down below:

Where to place testimonials on your website

Very often testimonials and case studies are hidden on the website or placed on completely irrelevant web pages. If your website users don’t see them, they won’t do anything for your business and won’t encourage your website users to take action.

Should you have a separate testimonial page on your website?

You can if you want, but bare in mind that testimonial pages get very rarely visited by website users. It means that almost nobody will see your testimonials and they won’t fulfil their marketing role on your website.

But if you have huge case studies, or a website design project to share it’s totally okay to create not even one, but a separate page for every case study. Having a separate page for every case study will help you be more organized and will make your website clear for your website users. You will have enough space to explain everything you helped your former client to achieve, how did you do it, and show the actual results. So everything as always will depend on what kind of business you have and how you help your clients.

If you would like your testimonials to work on your website I would recommend putting them all over your website. Use them as a selling tool whenever you try to sell your products or services. The best pages to put your testimonials on are:

Home page
Service or product page
About page
General work with me pages
Use them in your social media posts, add them in highlight or pin the posts, so that new people could always access them
Use them in your newsletters

There are many possible designs you can use to display testimonials on your web pages. It can be a simple section with a head host and quote, it can be a carousel (but make sure that it doesn’t move too fast by itself, website users are frustrated by the elements that are moving by themselves on the website), it can be a bigger section with bigger photos. It can also be a video or even a screenshot from email or social media direct messages. There are no right or wrong designs, but only the ones that work for your website and your business.

How to get your first testimonials

Getting your first testimonials can be intimidating. When you start you can lack self-confidence, and you can be not quite sure if you are capable of doing a good job, as you don’t have yet any tangible results and proof of your previous work. All this can make you doubt yourself and your abilities.

I would always recommend starting to gather testimonials and working with clients your priority when you start. It will help you to improve your skills, do small gigs, and work with real clients. All this will help you to understand what you like and in what direction you would like to move. Because until you work on real projects, everything is just a theory. You cannot predict what you will like, and what will make you happy and will bring joy.

You can ask for testimonials from your family members, friends, or former colleagues if you complete some kind of project for them. It didn’t work for me personally. There were zero people whom I knew needed what I had to offer, so my only option was to put myself out there, to reach out to people and search for somebody who needed what I had to offer.

The things I did to find my first projects and get my first testimonials:

Posted content regularly
I was proactive and always reached out to people first. Don’t sit and wait until the opportunities and projects will start falling into your laps. It’s your job to put yourself out there and search. It can be scary, you might be afraid of rejection, but I promise that the more you do, the easier it will become. You’ve got his!
Wrote emails to business owners, where I proposed how I can improve their websites.
Created a profile on a freelance website like Upwork and reach out to people first
Wrote to people in Facebook groups to offer my services for free, for small fees, or do an exchange of services.

The last one worked out the best for me, I was able to complete 4 website design projects and added them to my portfolio. Although I’m completely against working for free, sometimes I believe that you just need to suck it up and do the work in exchange for a testimonial, if it’s the only option. Otherwise, you will never be able to get out of the vicious circus. No testimonials, no credibility, no credibility, no people who want to work with you, no clients, no testimonials. Sometimes you just need to take a decision and break this circle to be able to move on.

It’s hard to move on with your business when you have zero social proof. Your business and brand won’t look legit, and nobody will want to work with you.

A structure of effective and powerful testimonials

There are different structures you can use for the testimonials on your website. There are no strict rules. Down below I will share with you the two most effective and powerful testimonials examples and temples.

There are two main structures your testimonials can have:

The first type is where your client explained how her life was improved and transformed thanks to your product and services. People don’t buy products or services for the sake of it, they buy them because they want to solve the problem they have, transform and improve their lives. Sometimes they buy something based on their emotions because they want to be a part of something bigger. Many luxury brands and Apple sell exactly this to their customers. The structure of this type of testimonial will look like this:

Your client explains the situation she had before she found your product or service.
Then she gives specific reasons why she liked the product or service and what benefits she got from it.
Then she describes in detail how her life was transformed, and what problems your products and services helped her to solve.

The second type of testimonial is where the client explains why she was hesitant to buy your products or services or hire you and what exactly connived her to do so. This template is a great selling tool, as it might take away some of the objects your new potential clients might have.

Your client explains why she was hesitant to buy, and what stop her from taking that action.
Then let your client explain why she decided to buy from you anyway. What drove her action during that particular moment?
What was her experience with the product or services? Make sure that your client gives specifics.

Describe how her life was transformed

How to ask for a testimonial

If you simply ask your client for a testimonial, it’s very likely that you won’t get the testimonial you hope for, the testimonial that will be effective and that you will be abler to use as a free marketing tool on your website. You don’t want another general, inauthentic, not credible testimonial.

To get a specific, authentic, credible testimonial that describes the benefits of your product or service, you need to send some kind of document to your client with the right questions. Make sure that you have an automated email or a Google Form with ready-made questions that you send to your client once you finish working together. It will save you time and make the process automatic.

The most important questions you can include in your email or Google form when you ask for testimonials are:

What you struggled with or what was your situation before you hire me or buy my products or service?
Were you hesitant to buy from me? If yes, why? (it’s optional)
What exactly I did do for you? How was your experience with products or services while working with me? What did you appreciate the most?
How did you find the results to be?
How has your life improved after working with me? What problems did I help you to solve?
What impact will it have on your business in the future?

It’s not an exclusive list of questions, you might want to adapt the questions sometimes depending on the services and products you offer.

If you’re lucky enough sometimes you get a clear and specific testimonial right away, but sometimes you can receive either a novel or a very short generic testimonial. What should you do in this case? Don’t be afraid to reach out to your client once again and if you can edit and rewrite some parts of the testimonials.

Be honest, and make sure that the client knows that you appreciate her feedback and that she understands the reasons you would like to rewrite her initial testimonial. And once it is approved by your client you can go ahead and add it to your website.

Final thoughts

Asking for testimonials can feel hard and uncomfortable sometimes. But don’t be afraid, most of your clients are more than happy to help you and leave you their honest reviews. Especially when they are happy with your work.

You want to just make sure that the testimonial is specific, authentic, describes the benefits of your services or products, and that it’s trustworthy. You want also to make sure that is placed properly on your website and that your prospects can actually see it.

Well-written and powerful testimonials will help you to find new clients and will make your brand and business look legit and trustworthy. They will work as a free marketing tool for your brand and business and will help you to sell your products or services.