Building relationships between customers and your business is an excellent way to build credibility and to be acknowledged as an expert in your industry. Establishing credibility helps build trust, which ultimately leads to more sales. In order to build credibility for your company, you need to make testimonial advertising a part of your marketing plan.
What is testimonial advertising?
A quick testimonial advertising definition: Unbiased comments from existing customers that help new visitors make purchasing decisions. Testimonials can take the form of text, audio, or video formats as part of your website and other marketing materials. The most effective testimonials provide visuals in addition to the finer details of the customer experience.
Here's why testimonial advertisements still matter in today's competitive environment.
More formalized word-of-mouth
Traditional word-of-mouth has a lot of impact in terms of influencing prospective customers. A testimonial advertisement acts as a formal form of traditional word of mouth, but exists as a more permanent entity. Positive comments from previous buyers are an incredibly powerful tool for strengthening overall branding and company positioning as a whole. When accompanied by visuals like photos or videos, testimonials become more compelling, and also more useful, for evaluating a purchase. Testimonial advertising is a positive way to encourage customers to make a decision.
Testimonial advertising strengthens credibility and expertise
For a business to grow their loyal customer base, they must establish credibility and a level of expertise that customers can trust. Similar to how people evaluating a purchase might read relevant comments, product feedback, or product/service reviews, testimonial advertising is a formal way of letting people know that your company can be trusted.
When customers attach photos and videos relating to their experience with your product/service, it's easier for buyers to prove credibility relating to a company's claims. Similarly, If you display visual testimonials from previous influencer clients, you can increase your credibility, and strengthen your business professionalism and expertise level. To see some great testimonial advertising examples and other testimonial examples in advertising, check out brands like Kimpton Hotels, Quay Sunglasses, Limecrime Makeup, and the Bouqs.
Testimonial advertising saves advertising costs
Companies invest seemingly immeasurable amounts of time, effort, and money into producing different kinds of advertising that they hope will pay off. But at its core - testimonials in advertising are absolutely free. Even if you add costs relating to promoting testimonials, the ROI is a lot better than an advertisement coming directly from your company and is seen as biased.
Testimonials are unbiased judgments from your previous customers, which means you're not paying them to say something good about your brand. Testimonial advertising begins when a person buys from you or hires your services, see the great quality of your products/work, and then praise your company for the experience they had, oftentimes on an online public forum.
Testimonial examples in advertising include promoted posts on social networks, customer testimonials on a company's website, and reviews on websites like Yelp.
In order to help the process along, let your customers know that you'd like to hear what they have to say about your product or service, then ask for their permission to publish it. As an incentive to inspire action, you can give customers rewards or discount coupons (which brings them back to your business for another purchase!), but the cost is minimal compared to typical advertising costs.
Testimonial advertising boosts overall business performance
At this point, it should be pretty clear - testimonial advertising can be a powerful driver of growth for your company. In general, when deciding what to buy (especially if it's a large investment), most people consult the internet and online reviews before completing a purchase. Testimonials advertising done correctly can drive a person to choose your brand over a competitor. Due to its nature, testimonial advertising seems very much like word of mouth — the single most effective tactic for driving customer purchases. Testimonial advertising helps increase credibility, which increases sales, and leads to business growth.
It's important to take note that testimonials used in advertising will only be effective if they are positive and unbiased. If there's a bias, people will be able to weed it out. If it is negative, testimonial advertising will definitely hurt your brand and send your sales in the other direction.
Work with influencers (like bloggers, industry professionals, and other public figures) to create reliable testimonial advertising that converts into actual sales. Just remember that at the end of the day, you'll only receive great testimonials if customers are satisfied with your products/services. Make sure that your quality is always the best it can be, day after day.
To create beautifully visual testimonial advertising, consider using Pixlee's Visual Reviews on Product Pages [Pixlee TurnTo is now Emplifi]. The user-generated content provides authenticity and social proof, and has built-in tools to track conversions. Make your positive customer experiences work for you!
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on pixlee.com. Any statistics or statements included in this article were current at the time of original publication.
