The Power of Reviews and Testimonials for Your Business

The last time you found a new restaurant to visit or decided to buy a product online, did you ask a friend or family member for a recommendation? Or did you go to Google and search for “Best ______ restaurant near me” or “Top ______ of 2019”? As the options for consumers multiply in our increasingly digital world, it isn’t just the people we know that help us make purchasing decisions: it is anyone that has ever left a review. 

As a marketer, using reviews and testimonials to bring authenticity to your brand will also convert leads into customers is a basic part of the job nowadays. It doesn’t even have to be all good reviews for you to reap the rewards of having customers talking about your brand! 

“Displaying reviews can increase conversion rates by 270%”​ Whether you are B2B or B2C, the power of testimonials and reviews should not be underestimated in your marketing. All it takes in a couple of well-placed glowing reviews on your website and a few honest, positive testimonials on the home page to make a splash when it comes to how likely future leads will convert into customers. 

"85% of people trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family, and 91% occasionally or regularly check online reviews before making a purchase."​

If a friend tells you about an amazing restaurant they went to recently, you’re more willing to check it out than if you saw an ad for it on a billboard, right? That’s because you trust someone you know to recommend a good restaurant. Marketing and advertising may be evolving to cater more to the consumer, but at the end of the day, we trust friends, family, and even influencers more than targeted ads. Take advantage of product reviews and curated testimonials to bring social trust to your brand. 

“In a study conducted via Google, BrightLocal found that 5-star ratings boosted search click-through ratings by 28%. And, going from a 3-star to 5-star rating drove 25% more clicks.”​

Turning customers into evangelists is a major goal of the buyer’s journey, but even preventing friction in the process for your customers to leave reviews can be a game-changer in getting quality reviews for your brand.

It’s a simple and straightforward process to get reviews and testimonials from customers for you to use in your marketing. Here are our action items for you to obtain and curate reviews/testimonials: 

• Work with your top customers to see if they’ve left reviews or provided testimonials about your brand. If not, let them know that they’re a top customer and you’d love to highlight your mutually beneficial relationship. 
• Only use honest, specific, and verified reviews/testimonials from actual customers. Don’t ever use fake content! Leads will notice if your reviews sound like you wrote them. Take it one step further and feature names, photos, and a URL (if applicable) on reviews to provide additional social proof. 
• If you’re B2C, set up your email marketing to automatically send customers a link to review the product/service they purchased. You’ll receive more reviews with a wider range of experiences if you make it easy for all your customers to provide a review. For those who are B2B, put it on your calendar to follow up with new clients or after project completion dates to ask key personnel to provide testimonials about your product/service. It can be a short email guiding them with key information and questions you are looking for in the testimonial. Simply by asking, you’re greatly increasing your odds of getting a testimonial. 

And that’s it! Reviews and testimonials may not be the flashiest or most tech-savvy marketing tools in today’s modern era but even with all our technological wonder, not much can truly compete with good old-fashioned word of mouth and reasonable recommendations from real people.