5 Habits That Kill Your Testimonial Marketing Strategy

Title

5 Habits That Kill Your Testimonial Marketing Strategy

Date

Nov 24, 2024

Description

Testimonial marketing is a gold mine, but only if you do it properly. These 5 habits may be costing you money each month. Discover them and change your luck!

Status

Current Column

Person

Writer

The era of paid ad domination is experiencing a downturn: ad prices are going up yearly, and their effectiveness is decreasing.

Due to that, and to truly boost their marketing efforts, more entrepreneurs focus on SEO, content marketing, user-generated content, and collecting and leveraging testimonials.

Testimonial marketing is more important nowadays than it has ever been.

Strangely, many business owners lose profitable opportunities because some habits sabotage their testimonial marketing efforts.

This guide will list the key habits that could be killing your testimonial strategy and teach you why you should change them.

This guide will be a profitable asset for your business.

Without further delay, let’s get started.

Bad Habit #1: Ignore Testimonial Marketing Exists

The first negative habit that some founders fall into is thinking that testimonial marketing does not exist or is not essential.

A very important reality that we have to accept is that your business has a reputation regardless of whether you take charge of it or not.

The difference is that you can very easily take the reins of said reputation and not only manage it but use it to your advantage to generate income and close new clients.

In this type of negligence there are two different categories of business owners. Although both lose money and opportunities, they do so in different amounts.

First, we have those who do nothing about their online reputation.

They do not monitor review pages like Google reviews or Yelp and do not respond to either negative or positive comments left on their social media pages or posts.

These business owners basically leave adrift of what people may think of their business.

We must understand that times have changed.

Today, if you want to sell on the Internet, you have to earn the trust of your potential customers, and I am sorry to say this, but if you don’t use testimonial marketing, you will have to invest a lot of effort and money in sales. That is the reality. There is an easier way.

In the second group, we have people who think testimonial marketing and online reputation management exist and could be helpful. Yet, they take minimum action on the matter and do it just to check the item from their to-do list.

They monitor their review channels and social networks to respond to one or another comment, and if possible, they have a review section on their website or a link for people to visit their Google reviews page.

This is not bad, but it takes even more to reach the true potential of opportunities and income that testimonial marketing can unlock and achieve.

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If you ignore testimonial marketing or take it lightly, your business may survive or even grow a bit, but the unseen reality is you are working harder and throwing money on ads and old-school marketing while you could be doing less and earning a lot more.

Bad Habit #2: Using Fake Testimonials

We are ready to talk about the second negative habit.

Many entrepreneurs understand that testimonials are a very powerful form of marketing and that including them in campaigns increases conversions, leads, visits, and sales tremendously.

They do. However, some prefer not to make the effort or pay the price of requesting and collecting testimonials from real clients.

This is very wrong, and in fact, it is considered illegal in many countries.

This may be due to laziness, a desire for extremely quick results, or even a desire to remedy the consequences of giving bad service; whatever the reason, you should not fall into this trap.

The truth is that eventually, everything comes to light, and users are smarter than ever.

If you want to build a genuinely sustainable and honest business, you have to follow the process and do the work that will lead you to have your own high-quality testimonials.

Moreover, tangible results are not very difficult to achieve if you use a tool like Testimonial for this process.

Testimonial automates most of the elements of the testimonial marketing job for you.

So, decide today never to use fake testimonials or pay for them.

Consumers deserve truthful information and the right to get value in exchange for their hard-earned money.

Believe me, there is nothing more rewarding than building a business that is so valuable that clients want to give you recommendations and shoutouts just because.

Thanks for making the market a better place by only using genuine and honest testimonial practices.

Bad Habit #3: Avoid Investing in Testimonial Marketing Tools

You will say I am a bit biased here, but it is with fair reason.

I started Testimonial because I wanted to help entrepreneurs like me scale their businesses through the positive opinions of their own customers.

I realized testimonials are very powerful, yet many business owners and creators don’t know how to grab all the positivity their businesses have accumulated and put it on the Internet to generate even more good things.

Without the right tool, the work of testimonial marketing requires them to:

Design

Code

Send a lot of emails manually

Write effective copy for their requests

Pay freelancers to help them

Use their own valuable time

Overload their team members

Store a lot of files

Manually update their websites

Use many tools for one job and pay for some of them

And more

It's how I tell some of my prospects:

“If you don't buy my product, you will most likely find a cheaper or accessible way or a combination of multiple free tools that help you achieve the same thing that the Testimonial does; however, what price will you put on your time, the stress of changing contexts and many other issues that you avoid by using one tool specifically for this purpose?

And I add, “very well designed for this purpose.”

Believe me, I also started from zero. That's why Testimonial has a free plan, one that will be forever.

However, once you reach a certain level, you should understand that investing is the only way to earn more.

Testimonial is a very accessible tool that can generate more revenue for your business through new clients.

To win, you have to dare to play. For that exact reason, many people have never won anything: they try to do everything with free tools.

I repeat, there is nothing wrong with that. We all start there, but after a certain point, you must consider that investing is the only way to grow. And I'm not saying this to sell my product, but because this is true in all business areas.

Bad Habit #4: Getting New Testimonials From Very Few Sources

While some businesses are only mentioned or relevant in limited channels, this is especially true for very niche businesses.

Most businesses can get testimonials in different formats from many sources.

Let me give you some examples.

Businesses with a limited mindset would feel content by just leveraging testimonials they get directly from clients.

A hungry entrepreneur would gather testimonials from:

Google Reviews

Facebook page reviews

Yelp

Trustpilot

Tripadvisor

Capterra

Upwork

Fiverr

Foursquare

Glassdoor

Yellow Pages

Instagram comments and DMs

User-generated content

LinkedIn posts, comments, and recommendations

Ad comments

Ad replies

Amazon reviews

Airbnb

Booking.com

Just to name a few!

The list could go on and on forever. Why?

Because every positive mention, feedback, comment, email, DM, podcast feature, or similar can become a highly valuable piece of social proof.

Even if you think some forms of content cannot be turned into a review or testimonial, there is an option.

Almost any piece of information can be turned into living social proof by using Testimonial’s built-in features and, more importantly, its Browser Extension.

Testimonial Dashboard Built-in Features

Inside your Testimonial dashboard, you will see options to work with text, image, and video testimonials collected directly by you as well as import testimonials from:

Social media channels (LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram)

External video and hosting platforms (YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, Soundcloud)

Other review platforms (Google, Yelp, G2, AppSumo, Amazon, Capterra, Product Hunt)

You can also:

Add custom cards

Use Zapier, Webhook, HubSpot, Slack, and API automations

Testimonial Browser Extension

We developed this extension to make our client's lives easier.

Anyone can download it for free, and it works with features included in our free plan as well.

It allows you to do things like the following:

Add Twitter Tweets as Customer Reviews

Add social proof to your website with our Chrome extension's Twitter integration.

Easily add tweets from satisfied customers to your Wall of Love and boost your online credibility.

Add Testimonials From LinkedIn Posts, Comments, and Platform Recommendations

Collecting testimonials has never been easier with our Chrome extension's LinkedIn integration. With our native integration on LinkedIn, you can save posts, comments, and recommendations from your happy customers directly on your Wall of Love.

Showcase your expertise and credibility to potential customers.

Display Marketing Testimonials From Any Highlighted Text & Screenshots

With our Chrome extension, you can highlight the best parts of your customer feedback and add them to your Wall of Love.

Capture customer feedback quickly and add it as well. Make it easy for visitors to see why your product or service is the right choice for them.

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You can use the Testimonial Browser Extension with Google Chrome or any other Chromium-based browser.

All you have to do is:

Install the extension into your browser

Log into the extension

Gather your social proof like a boss

Bad Habit #5: Using Testimonials Very Basically

As I explained in the description of the first habit, some founders make a huge mistake by ignoring the importance or even the existence of testimonial marketing altogether.

Other entrepreneurs understand the importance of testimonials, yet they do little to reap the real benefits of a serious and professional testimonial marketing strategy.

What’s the most common case?

They just add a couple of static testimonials to their website, and that is it.

Don’t get me wrong. That will help a lot more than having no testimonials, but you can do a lot more… And your business, the project to which you have dedicated so much of your time, life, and effort, deserves better.

So, what exactly is “better”?

Create a Dedicated Wall of Love Page

A Wall of Love is a digital page where you can showcase the love your clients send you through testimonials and reviews.

Imagine a landing page focused on the best experiences of your most notable clients.

That is precisely one of the main things you can get when you sign up for Testimonial.

All of your collected video and text testimonials can be manually or automatically sent to a dedicated website or landing page, where they will be beautifully showcased to anyone who has the URL or finds your link online.

Since people hate to be sold by companies but don’t mind learning from other users’ experiences, a tool like Testimonial and a Wall of Love page can become a compelling marketing tool.

The best is that you don’t need to know design or programming to make these strategies work for you.

If it sounds cool, take a look at one.

For example, Blaine Anderson does a great job with her dedicated testimonial page.

Create a Wall of Love Embed

The same Wall of Love that I described above can be embedded on your website or landing page as a segment of the body of the page. The embedded Wall of Love is different because it's not a dedicated page but rather a widget or section that can be added to various parts of the website as you prefer.

You can create yours in seconds and the best is you can play with it:

Use different layouts or effects

Customize the visual aspect of your embed

Include all of your testimonials or just some of them

Create your embed based on tags

Auto-update the embed with new testimonials

You can do as you please to make it look good and serve your purposes.

Create unlimited embeds and showcase your social proof in any platform or website builder that supports HTML or iFrame embeds.

Embed Testimonials on Your Emails

Email is one of the main communication tools nowadays.

If you run a business, email is almost surely a part of your day-to-day.

So, it doesn't matter if you are sending a regular email, a newsletter issue, or an email sequence that includes a “thank you” or an order confirmation email - you can easily embed your single video and text testimonials.

All you have to do is install this Chrome extension into your browser and then go to your email, and click this icon:

Then visit your Testimonial dashboard, grab your single testimonial embed code, and copy-paste it into this box:

Voilá! Your email will be majestically crowned with a video or text testimonial.

In this case, I embedded a video testimonial. Please note you cannot properly embed an entire Wall of Love on emails yet. We are currently working to provide our own solution for this matter so that you can make the best use of your social proof in email communications.

Create aesthetic images from your testimonials

If you are more of the visual type or if your marketing strategy requires so, you can generate good-looking versions of any text-based testimonial with a couple of clicks. For example, one of our users received a text testimonial and he transformed it into this:

These image testimonials will be useful if you want to post your customers’ love on social media, share the image on a WhatsApp message, or attach it to an email. The levels of customization allowed are also a big plus. You can create images that match your branding perfectly. To make it even better and faster, you can save the branding as templates just to generate the images with a couple of clicks when necessary.

You can learn how to generate your image testimonials here.

Today, we think about almost everything from a digital perspective only.

Still, we shouldn’t underestimate the reach of physical testimonials.

You can print your testimonials from the image version or the original text only, or you can use your creativity to create your own versions of physical testimonials.

Then you can use them on:

Banners

Flyers

Stickers for your physical products

And more

You will be surprised about how relevant the physical version of your testimonials can be.

Inspired by the previous section, you can also create a QR code that redirects to your testimonials and print it using an app like this one.

If you put it in your restaurant, store, on the bus, or anywhere, your potential customers can visit your wall of love or a website where your social proof is displayed as well.

This is a good combination of physical and digital, and it may make a lot of sense depending on the type of business or project you are trying to grow and where your prospective customers spend their time.

Sharing a beautiful image of your testimonials is definitely not the only thing you can do if you want to leverage social media

Your opportunities in this area are basically unlimited, but they all depend on your creativity and the options offered by the social platform you're trying to use.

For example, if you're using Instagram for marketing and content, why settle just for regular posts of your testimonials when you can create stories or Reels using them?

Another example for Instagram would be using the Highlighted Stories section of your account to showcase your favorite testimonials, either text or video.

You can add a nice thumbnail to your Highlighted Stories section and make it very easy for new users to find your testimonials when they visit your account.

Finally, one of my suggestions would be to benefit from any linking options on your social profiles.

You can use them to link to your Wall of Love page or website with the Testimonial embed.

For example, this is a case of Superhuman on X.

As you can see, they made it very easy for people to find their Wall of Love page, and they are not even using their main link option.

Their testimonials will be much more effective through this backlink because the traffic will increase.

There are a lot of platforms where you can apply this, so think outside of the box and find a way to use social media to your advantage because it can be a very powerful tool for people to see your social proof and become your customers, users, or more.

Let's face it: collecting a video testimonial is more complex than people might imagine.

If you succeeded with the collection, why not use the testimonial in as many places as possible?

If you do so, you're maximizing the ROI on your efforts and ensuring that your testimonial's effectiveness goes to the maximum possible, too.

I love how one of our customers, Rewardful, collected this fantastic testimonial from his client, Uplisting, and then used the material in a case study.

The same testimonial became a YouTube video.

And if you watch the video, what Dan Kavanagh says about Rewardful is so well-thought that their team could easily use the same video in a UGC marketing story, repurpose it to their social media channels, and more. This example highlights the importance of providing a good product or service so that when you ask for a testimonial, your users or customers will give you something very powerful for your marketing efforts.

These are just a few creative things you can do to share your social proof online.

Let me know what you think or if I missed any.

Remember that Testimonial is here to connect prospects with your business using technology and social proof.

5 Habits That Kill Your Testimonial Marketing Strategy

Bad Habit #1: Ignore Testimonial Marketing Exists

Bad Habit #2: Using Fake Testimonials

Bad Habit #3: Avoid Investing in Testimonial Marketing Tools