What do you do when considering a product or service?
You Google it.
Which leads you down a series of steps, as you determine if you can trust them.
Regardless of your industry, prospects usually take the same approach, as you don’t want to be the guinea pig.
It’s only natural to want social proof, as we’ve been patterned to react that way, ever since the launch of the internet.
The easiest way for providers to deliver social proof is from testimonials, which help support your products and services.
As consumers, we depend on our network’s opinion, preferences, & perspectives, and want value from our transactions.
Just think about your last purchase, whether Amazon or another site, the odds are that you looked for positive purchasing feedback, and maybe some negative too.
Usually there’s always one or two testimonials that push you over the edge towards becoming a customer.
Heck, with gas prices rising, it’s even more important now than ever, to make sure you position yourself in the right manner.
The Internet amplifies your reach to every corner of the globe. Traditionally with marketing you need a prospect to see your messaging 7+ times. Therefore, it’s very important to have your raving reviews across all sites. Below are the top 5 places we suggest sharing your positive feedback.
Social media is word of mouth marketing, and the primary destination we leverage to grow our client’s businesses. It’s where we build our social referral engine, by capturing and sharing across all sites.
Not only do you build a business, yet you can boost your bookings by asking clients to share their feedback on social media, and tag you. Then you don’t need to do any heavy lifting, besides posting consistent content and giving them an easy way to purchase your products or services. Social media makes it easy to reshare, retweet, or repost your customer’s journey from looking to booking.
Typically when sharing it depends on your industry, yet for aesthetic medicine the top sites we leverage are Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. Posting on Twitter is hards because the posts disappear shortly thereafter.
With sites like TikTok and Snapchat it’s very reliant upon video and daily sharings, so it often requires an in-house team or an agency with the ability to regularly visit.
Tips:
Simply ask for a testimonial. You can either offer a discount in exchange for a shoutout. You can also ask them to join a community by having one specific hashtag.
Consider asking for a video testimonial, as this not only helps the client display emotion, but is very easy to repurpose. You can take a video review and turn into an image, quote, and more, while also uploading it to YouTube, to embed across the web.
Typically our clients are discovered on social, and then the prospect will visit their website. One of the most common locations for testimonials is on the bottom of a website. You have probably seen it on the landing page of a brand which is usually in a carousel-style that offers short yet powerful overviews that give you some credibility. The reason why is because, this is usually the final stop before a web site visitor makes a decision to click to purchase or move along.
When Google considers a site, it wants to send them to a page where the visitor spends a long time. By having something for them to read as they scroll down, it tells Google the visito found what they needed.
Tips:
Ask about the client experience using email, SMS, chat, or in person. It also allows you to choose & highlight your high-profile clients so they show up initially.
You might have recurring customers or long-term clients that are also relatives or friends. Why not start asking them? You will be surprised by how willing they will be to support your business and wish you’d done this a lot sooner!
Google My Business is a free tool that can help you drive local SEO. The best way to leverage this site is by sharing content around your products and services, as well as capturing as many positive client testimonial reviews as possible.
Just think about it, if you visit a medical spa online and see two compeitors offering the same services, but one has a few 3 and 4 star reviews, and the other has fifty 5 star reviews, which are you going to choose?
Be sure to ask your clients to submit the reviews from at home, as if Google suspects the reviews are coming from your IP address or geotagged location, you run the risk of running into some trouble.
Tips:
Consider asking for feedback before soliciting a review with a site like Birdeye.com. You’ll want to do your best to only share the 4 and 5 star reviews, as opposed to 3 stars or below.
In addition, share this link with customers inside your offices with a QR code, and be sure to reply to any and all reviews that are made.
You are an expert, and one way to showcase that is by partnering with third-party industry sites to share your great work. Regardless of your industry, the chances are there are sites that can help you get in front of a new set of eyes. It’s up to you to determine which sites make the most sense, yet a client testimonial is a very powerful tool to sway new clients into your offices.
For example, most of you are probably familiar with Yelp, which was built on reviews, yet it has become much more popular for restaurants and service providers. It’s a great place to share client testimonials, as target local uses and connects directly to your address.
In addition, a site like RealSelf.com allows aesthetic medical professionals to share images with your testimonials, so you can showcase your work alongside your social stamp of approval.
Try visiting Google and simply typing in your industry name + ‘testimonials’ to find a few sites around your skill set. Good stories are intriguing and your audience will want to know what your customers experienced throughout the buying process, and the more places you can share, the better. Obviously if you’re a one-person team, you will want to start with the most important sites first.
Tips:
Send customers questionnaires and post purchasing surveys where you incentivize them to share a testimonial. Ask your clients if they are on some of your industry sites when you on-board them, so you’ll know which ones to ask later.
Email lists are a comprehensive way to help your audience really dive into your brand. This allows you to share insights directly to their inboxes in the form of offers. Everyone loves a good deal, so why not tell them about another person’s experience?
This type of testimonial helps you deliver value, in the form of feedback, so you can educate audiences prior to an offer. One way to do that is a case study, accompanied by your client testimonial. Consider embedding a YouTube video link inside the email, so you can actually determine how many people clicked the link to view it, and target them accordingly.
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