How to get and use client testimonials
Real, positive client testimonials can help persuade would-be clients to become clients. Excellent customer service and quality of service and products can motivate clients to provide testimonials. Sometimes a little encouragement helps more people write testimonials for your company.
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Be the best you can be
Learn everything you can about customer service and satisfaction, practice those principles every day, and train your staff to do so too. Give your clients everything they can reasonably expect for what they're paying for and look for ways to go beyond their expectations. When problems occur, take responsibility if the fault is at your end, fix the problems, and keep clients informed about what's being done.
Some of those happy clients will provide testimonials without your suggesting the idea to them.
Encourage clients to provide testimonials
Other clients might not think to provide a testimonial unless you give them the idea. When you encourage clients to provide testimonials, ask for both positive and negative feedback. You'll have more credibility if you're interested in both types of feedback, and any negative feedback will give you the opportunity to improve and to make clients happier.
Some ways to ask for client testimonials:
- Invite testimonials on your Contact page.
- If you have a newsletter, Facebook page, or Twitter account, invite feedback via these media.
- Run a customer satisfaction survey (with questions that you can use to help improve your business) and include a large Comments box. You could run a survey every year or so or invite clients to take part in it after they've been with you for a few months.
- Offer an incentive to provide a testimonial, such a month of free web hosting or a discount on another service or product. Be especially sure with this type of solicitation to specify that you want honest testimonials, not only positive ones.
In addition, you might get positive feedback that wasn't intended as a testimonial but can be used as a testimonial with permission. For example, clients may have positive feedback for you after you help them with a problem.
Use those testimonials
Not all testimonials are usable. Negative ones are useful to you but not as marketing material, of course. And some glowing testimonials might not sound real. If they look like a shill (a person posing as a customer to increase business) wrote them, they could hurt you, even if they're honest reviews.
The most useful reviews include specifics about what the client is happy about, the client's name, and a method of contact for verification, such as a link to the client's website. With web hosting testimonials, a domain owned by the person who wrote the testimonial and hosted by you serves to verify that the testimonial writer has first-hand experience with your company. The person's job title can also help with credibility if the service was provided to his or her company.
Make sure that you have permission to use the testimonials, including names and domains, before you publish them.
Once you have several testimonials that you can use, consider using them in the following places:
- On one or various pages of your website, possibly using a rotator script to have different testimonials appear at different times
- In online advertisements
- In print media: brochures, flyers, and other marketing material
- In newsletters; not everyone who reads them is a client, and they might inspire more clients to provide testimonials or to forward the newsletter to friends
- On company profile pages at various sites
What not to do
While it may be tempting to make up testimonials or copy them from other sites, especially when you're starting out, don't do this. Also, don't ask friends or employees to write testimonials. Any appearance of being a shill could seriously damage your reputation and your business, as could breaking copyright law and using testimonials that aren't about your company. If your company is good, you will get good, honest testimonials in time.
See also
- How to acquire web hosting clients
- How to advertise your web hosting company
- How to retain clients
- Social media marketing
- Starting a web hosting business
Web Hosting Wiki article text shared under a Creative Commons License.
