Creating Testimonials that Turn Leads into Customers

Written by Lindsey Bowshier | May 24, 2016 12:55:19 AM

When a hot new prospect is exploring your site, they want to know one thing:

"What can you do for me?"

Site visitors will be looking at many types of content on your website to try to uncover this information, but one effective way to help answer that question for them is to include a section for testimonials that showcase customer delight. When a site visitor reads success stories and learns how your business's products or services solved problems for your existing customers, it can help the new prospect move through the buyer's journey by showing them how they can benefit from working with you.

What makes a testimonial Great?

Well, let's start with what does not:

"They did a great job."
"I was really happy with the product."
"Highly recommended."

But wait, those are all positive reviews. Of course! No one would ever publish negative comments on their own website. The reason those are bad testimonials--despite the positive nature of the comments--is they do not tell the prospect how you are going to help them or solve their problem.

Great testimonials that will help move leads through the buyer's journey must be:

Specific and descriptive
Long enough to tell the story
Short enough to keep people's attention

Questions that Yield Great Testimonials

When you reach out to delighted customers to compile testimonials for your website, here are some meaningful questions to ask to get descriptive, specific testimonials:

"What most impressed you about working with my company?" or "What is your favorite thing about my product?"

"How did my product/service make your life easier?"

"What was the problem you were trying to solve and how did my product/service help?"

By asking these open-ended questions, you'll get the type of testimonial that helps potential customers see exactly how you've helped others and how you can help them.

More Tips For Leveraging Customer Delight

1. Keep in mind that not everyone is a gifted grammarian. Make sure testimonials get a little copyediting love and be sure to ask your clients for permission to edit for length and comprehension.

2. To get even more mileage out of a testimonial page on your website, link to review sites such as Yelp or your Google reviews.

3. Schedule a follow-up after the sale to ask for those reviews and testimonials.

4. Have generic testimonials on your website now? Reach out to the clients who gave them and ask if you can update them with something more specific and ask them one of the questions from this post.

Delighted customers are some of your company's most valuable assets! But if they're only giving you a digital thumbs-up, it will not have nearly the same impact as a description of the pain points you resolved for them. Using specific and descriptive customer testimonials as content for your website will go a long way toward turning new website visitors into leads, and leads into additional delighted customers.

View full post