“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.” – Mark Zuckerberg
Customer testimonials are a form of word-of-mouth marketing that play heavily into the psychology of social proof. Done right, they can be incredibly effective for your business, tipping that wavering prospect into a paying customer.
These 12 posts will cover all your burning questions on customer testimonials and then some. Enjoy!
1. How to Create Captivating Customer Testimonials
Post by Gregory Ciotti on HelpScout
Instead of summarizing this post, I am going to pull out two standout quotations. They do a much better job of explaining the importance of customer testimonials in far fewer words.
“Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.” –P.T. Barnum
“Your customers will always be more persuasive than you.” – Gregory Ciotti
2. Why Your Customer Testimonials Are NOT Working
Post by Steve Young on Unbounce
Your customer testimonials may actually be hurting your conversions by taking up valuable real estate on your website. Learn how to do it right, by looking at how people have done it wrong.
3. 7 Creative Ways to Get Customer Testimonials
Post by Kristi Hines on KISSmetrics
How can you get your customers to write or record reviews about your company? Learn how you can leverage the interwebs: Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, local search directories, Google alerts (and the list goes on) to gather testimonials and increase your credibility.
4. Online Testing: 6 test ideas to optimize the value of testimonials on your site
Post by Selena Blue on Marketing Experiments
Above’s blog post is an example of how customer testimonials increase conversion, now this post will share six test ideas that can increase the force testimonials have on your website. Not sure where to put your customer testimonials on your landing page? Not sure if you should have a long testimonial or a short one? Should you add a rating scale? What about geo-targeting? Images? These are all elements you can test. Because, after all, you should always be testing.
5. How WikiJob increased sales by 34% by A/B testing customer testimonials
Post by Paras Chopra on Visual Website Optimizer
You want proof that adding customer testimonials will increase your conversions? Well this post is it. It may be a bit old, but it serves as a reminder that including testimonials can increase conversions, trust and sales.
6. 10 Quick and Simple Ways to Power Up Your Customer Testimonials
Post by Dean Rieck on Copyblogger
You’re a copycat. I’m a copy-cat. We do what others do simply because others are doing it. And that’s why you should leverage customer testimonials in your marketing. This post covers what you can do with your testimonials once you have them.
7. A Marketer’s Guide to Accumulating Awesome Online Reviews
Post by Corey Eridon on Hubspot
76% of consumers regularly or occasionally use online reviews to determine which local business to use. How can you generate positive online reviews for your business? I know what you’re thinking, a customer testimonial isn’t exactly a customer review, but these tips are transferable to customer testimonials.
8. The Art of the Customer Testimonial
Post by Eloqua
By now you should be convinced that customer testimonials are important. And up until now, we’ve covered written testimonials, but Eloqua makes the case for video testimonials. They give you a couple of examples, even though they do toot their own horn doing it (sneaky & smart).
9. Seven Ways to Get Great Customer Testimonials
Post by Sue Duris on Marketing Profs
Please, for the love of marketing, do not fake your customer testimonials! Sue Duris puts this faux-pas practice into perspective quiet well: “Aren’t you in the business of building trust? What does that say about your company?” Zinggg. Well said Sue. Being genuine goes a long way. This post will outline seven ways to get great customer testimonials, starting with building a great product and involving your customers in the beta test. So no it’s not just about collecting customer testimonials after the fact, it starts well before that.
10. How to Get Testimonials for Your Business or Blog Using Twitter for Social Proof
Post by Kristi Hines on Kikolani
Take your 140 character mentions and retweets and turn them into a testimonials. Collecting them is easy, and publishing them even easier! Yes, Kristi Hines makes this top 10 list not only once, but twice. What an all-star. She knows how to leverage your tweets and will show you how and more importantly, tell you why it’s important.
11. Use Video Testimonials to Increase Conversions
Post by Annika Martins on Problogger
How do you push your product or service on someone without prancing around, saying you’re the best and ultimately pushing your product on someone? Testimonials! Let someone else be your soap box. And why not use video testimonials to do it. The title of the post is a bit misleading – it dosen’t only cover video testimonials, but preaches the importance of a dynamic testimonial strategy versus a stand-alone testimonial page.
12. How to use social proof to increase conversions
By Blair Keen on Econsultancy
If you aren’t convinced yet about the power of social proof, this post will do the trick. It also has one last section on, you guessed it, customer testimonials. And preaches that testimonials should be thoroughly tested. So don’t be afraid of switching up your customer testimonials to see which perform better on your landing page or website.
There aren’t thousands of posts on the topic of customer testimonials believe it or not. So please feel free to share others in the comments, to make this resource list longer & better.
