What is a Customer Testimonial? + How to Create One

Every business, regardless of industry, needs to have some way of proving the effectiveness of their products and services on their website .

Customer testimonials are a great way to accomplish this. They are a great social proofing tool that can show potential customers the success stories of past customers who had similar needs at one point in time.

By definition …

Customer testimonials are quotes or personal anecdotes from past customers that demonstrate how a particular product or service has helped them overcome a challenge.

Typically, customer testimonials are rather brief. They are only a few sentences long in length, and they are right to the point. Short and sweet, problem and solution.

It’s a good idea to get as many customer testimonials as possible in order to develop a trustworthy reputation online. The more the merrier – the more people that promote your product or service’s effectiveness, the more reputable your brand becomes.

How do I get Customer Testimonials?

There are many different ways you can go about getting customer testimonials. Our best advice is to get creative – whenever you can get a customer talking about your brand in a positive light, you should try to convert what they are saying into quotes for customer testimonials.

Here are two ways to recruit these kinds of quotes to get you started:

Remember, these are just a couple of ideas – get creative and try to get your consumer-based involved in other ways as well:

1. Customer Success Stories

Reach out to your clients and set up interviews with them to talk about their successes with your products and services. Feature them on your website and let them know that they will be getting free exposure through the interview — it’s a win-win for both parties involved.

2. Giveaways

Send out a mass email announcing a giveaway sweepstakes for customer feedback. Set up a portal where feedback can be recorded, and then randomly selected one or a few winners from the feedback pool and reward them with a gift of some sort. What kind of gift, you ask? This is another opportunity to get creative. Safe choices can be Amazon gift cards, or gift cards to brands that are universally well-liked like Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts. But there are more opportunities to self-promote with this route – don’t be afraid to capitalize on them! Give out gift cards or discount codes for your own services, or offer a free 30-day trial of your most popular product. The possibilities are truly endless. Just make sure you are offering something that your consumer base will be interested in pursuing!

Where do I place these Customer Testimonials?

The beauty of customer testimonials lies in their versatility. You can use customer testimonials on customer success pages, landing pages, home pages, marketing sheets, whitepapers, as email marketing copy, on print advertisements, and even on billboards. There are probably hundreds of uses for these kinds of quotes – it’s up to you to find the right ones that will get you the results you are seeking.

Great businesses like yours shouldn’t have any problem putting them to good use – you’ve got our word!