In the modern day, there are a plethora of products (or services) to choose from. Customers have the power, and they are aware of that. However, you can boost your chances of being chosen by your buyer persona — and that’s where testimonial advertising comes in.
In a nutshell, testimonial advertising involves curating reviews and feedback from previous customers and using the information to launch a more compelling marketing campaign. It helps you stand out from the competition, and show your audience how effective your product (or service) offerings are.
It’s more about allowing potential customers to live through the experiences of previous, verified customers — and that’s a sure way to establish credibility in the marketplace. In this guide, you’ll understand the nitty-gritty of testimonial advertising, and also get to see some testimonial advertising examples.
A testimonial is a review or statement from previous customers on how they benefited from a product or service offering. Oftentimes, testimonials are forms of product (or service) recommendation.
Testimonial advertising is a sure way of building trust among your target audience. It could be:
Testimonials are forms of social proof. Since people easily trust other people who have been in a similar situation, you get to use testimonials to your benefit. Most times, before customers make a buying decision, they get to go seek guidance by reading through the experiences of previous customers. Your job is to create a memorable product (or service) experience in the minds of your existing customers, so they get to leave thrilling testimonials behind.
These testimonials could boost your credibility and trustworthiness in the marketplace. For instance, before buying a headphone, potential customers will most likely read through the experiences of your previous customers. By doing that, you’d live through the product experience even before buying it. If they’ve got a good feeling about the product, then sales are guaranteed.
Previous customer reviews and testimonials will almost always trump product descriptions written by your marketing team. As a business person, you’ve got to insert these customer testimonials and reviews into your marketing copy to boost your credibility and sales.
There are various ways of showcasing testimonial ads. You have to figure out which format works for you and make the most out of it. Here are the common types of testimonial advertising.
Quote testimonials that show positive statements about your brand. It’s often gotten from a thrilled customer or a brand evangelist. Typically, the image of the person who made the statement is positioned alongside the quote. This way, your target audience gets to easily relate to the statement.
Since quote testimonials are usually from previous customers, they tend to breed trust in the minds of potential customers. Aside from trust, this testimonial ad type is more effective than traditional advertising. After all, people tend to easily trust statements coming from their peers rather than statements from a paid actor.
Nowadays, everyone has a smart device in their pocket. And if you can properly leverage video content, then reaching and converting the most cynical customer would be a walk in the park. With video testimonials, you not only send out words, but you relate with the potential customer on an emotional level.
Just like videos, audio can easily convert people into loyal paying customers. The advantage of audio devices lies in their cost-effectiveness. To create audio testimonials, you don’t need the services of an entire production crew. All you need is a good microphone, a serene environment, and recording software.
Audio clips can be easily shared. And the data storage requirement is quite small. A good audio testimonial will go a long way in converting potential customers.
Case studies use comprehensive analysis of customer’s experience with your brand to convince potential customers into making a buying decision. There are cases where observations and facts are used to showcase how a customer benefited from a product or service offering.
With case studies, your target audience gets to have a complete user story. When potential customers compare the user story with their present challenges and are convinced that your product could offer solutions to their challenges, you’d most likely generate an inflow of new customers.
Social media marketing is the next big thing. It’s the best way of curating user-generated content. Most times, previous customers who have strong opinions about your brand will drop comments on your social media profiles.
A very satisfied customer could drop an emotional review on your social media comment section. And if you have a large following, that review could potentially influence others into buying your product or service offering.
As a general rule, you should always engage with your customers, especially when they leave comments about your brand on a social media platform. If you see a compelling piece of review, sharing such a review would potentially leave a positive imprint in the minds of your customers.
By merely asking customers direct questions during an interview session, you get to generate testimonials and also show potential customers how your products helped previous customers in solving real-world situations. Interview sessions are great avenues to demonstrate how specific features of your products could help in solving customer problems.
One of the benefits of customer interviews is that they can be tweaked into various formats. For instance, you can audio or video record it, or merely transcribe it into written formats. These various formats can be published on the company’s website or blog.
Also known as influencer testimonials, it’s a technique that involves having a spokesperson (or celebrity) support your brand. Typically, the celebrity should be a renowned figure among your target audience. By leveraging celebrities, you get to grow your credibility, and possibly boost your brand recognition in the marketplace.
The best celebrities are the ones who align with your brand values and goals. Although it’s quite challenging to find the right authority to endorse your brand, if done properly, it’d yield good results.
Blog posts provide a thorough way to showcase customer testimonials. You can start by sharing details about the customer’s journey, and also show how the product could help potential customers. The model is similar to case studies with some twists. It shares the customer’s story from the company’s perspective.
If you’re not up to the task, you’re better off hiring a ghostwriter to produce the piece for you. After that, you get to publish the piece of content on the company’s blog or website.
Showcasing the reviews and testimonials of previous customers builds more trust around your brand.
A good customer testimonial can convince the most skeptical audience to buy your product. Customer testimonials show potential customers that you’re in business to help them.
Most times, testimonials are user-generated content. As such, potential customers get to see your brand using the eyes of a third party. There are no biases here — and potential customers get to have a feel of the product they’re about to buy.
If you’ve got multidimensional products, it means customers get to have varying benefits from using the same product offering. When previous customers leave reviews on how they benefited from your product, these testimonials could be used to target different categories of your target audience.
Video content could potentially boost your local search ranking. A higher ranking on search engine result pages translates to more business visibility.
The outdoor clothing retailer uses brand ambassadors to boost credibility in the marketplace. One of such ambassadors sat for an interview session. Since it was a thrilling episode, it could inspire potential customers to pursue their passion. And when it comes to buying outdoor clothing, Stio’s brand comes to mind. After all, the brand has done a good job by associating its brand with positive emotions.
The Codecademy stories feature lots of customer testimonials — and the user-friendly format of these testimonial pages make it easy to connect with the customers.
Using this strategy, the brand share testimonial both on its company’s website and on its social media pages. Another advantage is that a chef was featured on the page. And the chef shared useful tips on how potential customers could use the company’s apron.
Having an expert demonstrate how to use your product is a sure way to drive more traffic to your business. To spice up the fun, you could include pets like cats in the mixup.
Being one of the leading search engines, Google is the right platform to launch a high-converting PPC campaign. However, you’d have to shell out some cash if you desire good results. Speaking of results, you’d need to keep a close eye on your campaigns as you manage and optimize campaigns on the go.
Problems come when you have to manage multiple campaigns from a single account — and that’s where the PPC Signal tool comes in. With the PPC Signal tool, you get to manage multiple campaigns from a single account. This way, you get to pinpoint what’s wrong with your campaign.
Let’s say you’re looking for ways of optimizing the conversions of your campaign. All you’ve got to do is navigate to the PPC Signal tool dashboard and click on the conversion metrics. After that, an automated signal will be generated and you will get to see how your campaign is performing. To gain more insights into your campaign, you’ve got to click on the Explore button.
There’s the option of generating a graphical representation of your campaign. With such a graph, you get to see how your campaigns have been performing.
To gain more clarity about your campaign, you could opt for a tabular representation of the campaign data.
The signals help you see how your conversions are performing with respect to other metrics of your campaign. This way, you get to take the right actions and possibly generate the best results in less time.
All in all, you get to save more whilst creating an avenue that would potentially increase your sales.
Endorsement pretty much involves advertising messaging that features public figures like celebrities. Testimonials, on the other hand, are advertising messages that feature regular clients and customers.
Testimonial advertising leads to an increase in the credibility and sales of your business. This will, in turn, lead to more business growth. As a rule of thumb, use positive and unbiased testimonials from previous customers. Potential customers almost always see through the deception whenever you incorporate a biased testimonial into your marketing.
Testimonials come as an unbiased voice, and it easily establishes trust. They are not strong sales pitches. You are merely using the words of previous customers to establish the credibility of your business.
Testimonial ads involve showcasing your customer’s words during your marketing campaigns. Customers typically trust the words of their peers, and if you can leverage that, you’d make more sales.
Testimonial advertising involves taking leverage of previous customers’ reviews and comments to establish credibility and trust. People are more likely to buy your product or service offering when they see lots of positive reviews about it from previous customers.
To get started, you have to curate these testimonials — and that doesn’t come easy! You need to have a system that helps you create and get testimonials from previous customers. But if you desire positive reviews, then your best shot is to provide a thrilling customer experience.
Happy customers leave happy reviews!
Now you know how testimonial advertising works, how will you grow your business with it?
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