Getting Testimonials is a Process
By Nick Nichols, 5-Star Online Marketing Reputation Expert
In my 20+ years as an online marketing adviser and media strategist I’ve found that most business owners don’t have a process for generating meaningful, attributed testimonials. So I developed a process that is guaranteed to get 5-star testimonials and permission to use them. It works like this… train your staff to:
- Deliver outstanding customer service.
- Identify contemporaneous testimonial opportunities.
- Ask customers to share their experiences in writing or on video in a way that shows them how doing so will help others to make an informed decision about buying from you.
Once you have a meaningful number of 5-star testimonials, you create or have created for you:
- A "customer review hub" website to post those testimonials and provide direct access to your accounts at the major consumer review portals.
- Short video clips that feature the best testimonials and deploy them online.
It’s not enough that you have stellar testimonials. You must use them in a systematic, 5-star reputation marketing program to position your business as the best and obvious choice. This will attract pre-qualified buyers who are eager to do business on your terms at the prices you want to charge.
I empathize with people in highly regulated industries who are forced by overly-restrictive compliance policies to market with both hands tied behind their backs. While your company may be able to stop you from posting testimonials and reviews online, they CANNOT prevent your happy clients from independently posting testimonials and reviews online. And they can’t prevent you from covertly encouraging happy clients to post good things about you.
Nevertheless I’ve developed a solution for this income-limiting problem, too. It involves marketing yourself in a way that is outside the tentacles of industry regulation yet systematically attracts highly-desirable clients to you like a powerful magnet. Contact me for more insight on either of these strategies.
Need help with your marketing? Call Nick Nichols at 214-459-2290.
