In a small business, your customers are your lifeline. But getting them to make a statement about your company may not be easy. Not because they don’t want to but because they too may be super busy. So, making this process as easy as possible will not only get you results fast but also help them write the testimonial quickly.
November is an excellent time of year to update existing testimonials and ask for reviews. Over my 20+ years in business, I did this for my admin support and organizing services, and it helped give the prospective clients a glimpse on how my services were received.
Sounds great, right? But, how do you streamline this process? Well, it only takes a few minutes to set this process up and distribute to your clients. Here are instructions on how to get testimonials and reviews for your company.
5 Steps to Successfully get Reviews from your Clients
- Make up a list of your new clients and associates from this year. If you have other clients that haven’t created a referral statement, add them to the list. Place all your email addresses and the name of clients (first and last name) in one spreadsheet to track the people you sent a request to and when you sent them. To track the sent data, add a “sent emailed date” column as well. Placing the date in this column will remind you to follow up if you didn’t hear from them. If you wish, instead of this, you can also add the email address and names to a contact management website.
- Write up a generic letter that can be sent to newer clients. Explain how much you appreciate them allowing you to work with them, and would love if they would help refer you to a few sentences or less. A few sentences are plenty to convey how much they appreciate you. To help them do this, make up a few questions to have your clients answer.
- Here are some examples of questions to use:
- How did (your company name) improve your company’s business?
- How did (your company name) improve a particular service in their business? What was it like before you worked with them?
- How did (your company name) help your company make a difference with your clients? Did the clients comment on the improvement?
- Then in the email, include website URL, email address, links to your Google+, LinkedIn, and Facebook pages. Use the URL links that go directly to the review section of your pages, that way, they can also give you a 5-star rating. That would be great too!
- If you have other company review pages on Yelp, Angie’s List, or other industry review site, be sure to add them too.
- Don’t forget to remind them that you will be using the quote on different social media sites and the website. If they prefer, you can also only use their first name. People may be more likely to write a review if they don’t have to reveal their entire name.
- Include a “do by” date, this will help your clients know when you want it by. Then, if they don’t respond, you can follow up with them after that date.
- Here are some examples of questions to use:
- Generate a draft email copy and paste the content into each email draft. Then, customize it for each client. If you have an account on Constant Contact or MailChimp, set up the postcard size newsletter in there instead. Then you can easily reuse it periodically to get new referrals from new clients.
- Use part of the letter you created and make an image to share on social media. If they don’t see it in the email, maybe they will see it on their feed. Post it more than a few times a month to remind people to rate your company.
- You are not done! Now, it’s time to make sure all the testimonials that you receive make it to your site. Pull the entire quote or use part of the quote. Be sure to quote the comment and write the name of the person/company somewhere near it.
- You can make the quotes into images and display them on the services pages. Then, when you share the services, the image with the quote will be displayed. Great, right?
After doing this, be sure to do it again in another year. Doing it on a regular basis will help you keep your site up-to-date and fresh. What stops you from asking for a testimonial? Please leave a comment below. I would love to hear from you.
But wait, visit these articles for more ideas.
6 Simple Ways To Get Customers To Review Your Business Online
4 Better Ways to Showcase Testimonials for Your Business
Please note the link above is affiliate links through Amazon and at no additional cost to you, I will receive affiliate fees if you click through and decide to make a purchase.
This is such a helpful guide – thank you! I’ve even gone as far as creating a form so clients can easily post testimonials to my website (subject to my approval), but I haven’t got around to sending it to anyone. 😀
Great tip. I did that too, then created my own paragraph with their answers. =) Thanks for stopping by and commenting.