Best way to ask for a testimonial: Google, Facebook, Yelp

A testimonial is a powerful resource that can help boost companies past their competition. Testimonials are a public guarantee of an experience and product that your company has delivered and should be regularly sought after as part of an on-going feedback process to better serve clients. Let the work speak for itself: work with the Profitworks team to get your customer testimonial program in effect today.

We help you source regular testimonials to increase sales

We've heard time and again how our business owners want advisors that take the time and care to manage their marketing as if it was their own. Work with the Profitworks team to help more great products and services get discovered.

Executive Summary

 - Testimonials are by far one of the strongest marketing tools for a business to grow their reputation and impact sales

 - Businesses often neglect this crucial steps in acquiring qualifications from delivered work but in reality is a small step that can be appended to existing processes with relative ease

 - Asking for testimonials is a first step in brand maangement and has the secondary benefit of empowering customers to be your greatest advocates

Top reasons companies choose testimonials as their marketing arm

Organizations often seek to establish trust with prospects as part of sales cycles or marketing efforts. One of the best ways to do so is a testimonial provided by an existing or previous customer on their experience with your company and product. Testimonials work - across industries and channels, these are concrete trust artifacts that help prospects become sales. Testimonials have the following benefits for prospects when evaluating a new company:

• Reduces perceived risk in working with your company as others have taken the risk already
• Client references that are connected to the prospect sends even stronger signals as a prospect can fact-check
• Its easier to follow the crowd and a series of testimonials triggers prospects' crowd mentality

Best way to ask for a testimonial - general guidelines

Here are some quick tips to asking a customer for a testimonial:

1. Ask a customer for a testimonial after completing an order or service
2. Reduce overhead by asking the client to submit it through Google, Facebook, or Yelp
3. Recommend to the customer not to speak negatively about competitors
4. Provide guidelines that customers shouldn't reference team members by name for privacy and fairness to other clients as this would discourage customers when they don't interact with the "superstar"
5. Help them articulate their challenge and how the situation was resolved

Asking for Google Reviews

Requesting Google Reviews offers customers the most convenience and efficiency for their time. We typically suggest that customers consider using a Google Reviews request template after every service or successful interaction. To accomplish this the most important aspects are to allow one-click access to a Google Reviews page for your business compared to the 5-6 steps they would usually take.

One-click access to Google Reviews forms

To help your customers quickly get to Google Reviews for your business:

1. Make sure Google My Business is already set up for your location
2. Verify your business location to allow customers to enter reviews
3. Utilize a direct Google Review link generator 
4. Attach the link and instructions as part of your request template

Pro tips for managing Google Reviews

Here are a number of best practices for managing Google Reviews to help your customers see that you go above and beyond the call of duty in terms of responsiveness:

• Reply to all Google Reviews whether they are positive or negative
• For negative reviews always try to provide contact or a resolution to the issue
• For positive reviews thank the reviewer
• Continue to request reviews to maintain a steady stream with at least 1 new review in the last 3-6 months

Asking for Facebook Reviews

Facebook reviews is another metric that is sometimes used when a prospect conducts research into your company online. Google utilizes reviews from a variety of sources and Facebook is just one of the many social or review aggregators that are used to determine the first impression of your company to prospects. Facebook allows business owners to create their own business page to communciate and interact with their prospects and customers.

1. Setup a Facebook page and enable reviews
2. On your home page ensure the reviews section is visible
3. For every person that likes your page or post, send them a private message to thank them
4. If they are interested and reply back ask them to provide a review for your page
5. Share deals in store or on location for customers who write a review
6. Involve employees with requesting reviews during customer delight moments (instances where your team went above and beyond)

Pro tips for managing Facebook reviews

• Like and interact with the reviews provided
• Use Facebook as a way to communicate news to customers to grow your following
• Review your competitor's customer reviews and invite those customers to try or review your service
• Maintain your business review list to ensure reviews are at least recent to the year

Asking for Yelp Reviews

Yelp is a common place for restaurants and local businesses. It is one of another of Google's top choices in presenting a rich card of information to prospects. Yelp is a worthwhile focus because it is often neglected by businesses. Yelp operates in a similar fashion to Facebook business pages but requires more stringent verification along with far more reviews than Google. People trust Yelp just as much as they trust Google Reviews.

How to ask for Yelp reviews

1. Use emails to invite customers to provide a Yelp review
2. Track customers that have not provided reviews on other channels and consider offering a promotion to first time reviewers
3. Include a direct link and utilize a URL shortener to make it easy for customers
4. Offer in-store discounts and promotions for a visitor to review your Yelp page

Pro tips for managing Yelp reviews

• Share reviews that are exemplary
• Message and thank the users for their Yelp reviews
• Find serial reviewers in your industry and invite them to try your service or product

Growing your business one testimonial at a time

Testimonials are a great way to grow your business and help share the best things about your team with the public. As we've seen, testimonials build great public prestige and trust with prospects who have yet to experience your company's work. Testimonials are a time-tested way to effectively get prospects off the fence.

Unfortunately, organizations often struggle with how to get testimonials and how to derive insight and hone their service based on the feedback they provide. Negative testimonials can also be a great source of reflection and help better serve customers. Testimonial acquisition is just one piece of the overall activities required to acquire new customers, some of which may have never heard of your brand or product before.

Profitworks helps organizations succeed with marketing

"I've found Profitworks to be tenacious and adaptable to the challenges our industry possesses."

-Blair - Business Owner & Customer

Read More About What Our Customers Say

We've helped companies across Canada and the US succeed with growth, because we believe in the beauty and meaning of every article written, email sent, and social media post crafted. Our team endeavours to create unique competitive advantages for all of our customers and would be thrilled to learn more about your mission and plans for your team. Profitworks provides marketing strategy, content marketing, branding, and social media management for great companies with a stellar product or service.