Thursday, 17 May 2012

Using Customer Testimonials to Build Support for Your Business ...

Customer satisfaction is a good indicator of how well your business is doing. An even surer sign is when clients take the time to write notes voicing their appreciation. The conversation needn?t stop there. You can use these notes as testimonials in your marketing to boost your business.

Why Use Testimonials?

Other than recommendations from someone they know, people?trust online consumer reviews more than any other form of advertising. It?s true that, every once in a while, you will see a defamatory review written by a very disgruntled person. More often than not, though, they are honest accounts written by people who simply want to explain why they ?like or dislike a company?s product or a service.

By including testimonials in your marketing campaigns, you can make your customers? written endorsements work for you. These testimonials can share satisfaction with their experiences or positive results from your actual clients. If customers or prospects can relate to what others have said, they?ll be more likely to frequent your business.

How to Acquire Testimonials

Although the best testimonials are the ones presented to you unsolicited by satisfied customers, you?ll find that many of your customers will be willing to offer their thoughts simply by being asked. There are different ways of soliciting their opinions, but two of the most common are surveys and feedback requests.

  • Surveys: Surveys gauging customer satisfaction can be distributed a few different ways. You can set up an in-store display with survey cards, or you can use?direct mail?or email. For example, we?helped one of our valued clients, Adleta, design and distribute a customer satisfaction survey. This direct mail piece utilized a number of cross-media tools and directed recipients to an online survey. ?This campaign had an?impressive 40% response rate.
  • Feedback requests:?Simply asking customers about their experiences will reveal a lot about your company. Not only will you learn how to better run your business, you often will get some great quotes that you can use as testimonials. Email is the easiest, fastest way to request feedback from your clients.

What to Do With Testimonials

Once you have compiled testimonials from your customers, it?s time to share them. You should definitely place them online. Place them on your website; you could include a section devoted to testimonials. In addition, consider posting these testimonials on your social media pages to boost word-of-mouth support for your business. Including them in your newsletters,?catalogs?and emails is another way to spread the word about your company around the community.

When existing customers see how much people appreciate and benefit from the work that you?re doing, they may consider providing their own testimonials. Likewise, prospective customers will gravitate toward your business once they feel confident that they will have a pleasant, rewarding experience.

Testimonials are the perfect way to reach both clients and prospects, in the words of people just like them.

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