Episode 49: No Need To Be Awkward About It: How To Properly Ask For Testimonials and Reviews for Your Small Business
If you’re not comfortable about asking for reviews and testimonials, then you don’t want to miss today’s quick tip episode. Fiona shares how they can be very useful for you as a small business owner and why it’s the best time to ask for it from your past clients and customers. Listen now as Fiona shares 4 things you want to get right in order to get your testimonials and make them work for your business.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
When was the last time you asked for a testimonial/review?
Why it can help your business
Review on the Buyer Cycle
How to get your testimonials and make them work for you
Consider who you're trying to target in the future.
Consider what you most want to be known for.
Send the request
Gather the data and use the information that you've been granted.
Conclusion
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Episode 24, My Daily Business Coach Podcast
Episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to Episode 49 of The My Daily Business Coach podcast.
Oh, my goodness, we're so close to 50 episodes. Can you believe it? And so close to the end of this year, the end of 2020. Oh, my goodness. We've got, I think it's, what, a month to go. And I'm sure that many of us will be kind of glad to say goodbye to this year to sort of see it go to a close.
It's been fantastic in so many ways. It's been Eye-Opening and it's really had enforced important issues to come to the fore from climate change and racism and inequalities and power and corruption and health care and who actually does really important work in our society, like teachers and nurses and aged care people. And I just think it's done so much to shake it all up and to show us what's really, really important. But, you know, equally, it has been an incredibly challenging year - an intensely challenging year for small business owners, for people all over the planet, no matter what you do for your work. With not only financial struggles and hurdles, but so many people going through mental health ones as well.
So I hope wherever you're listening to this, you are safe, you are healthy, and your loved ones are as well.
So today I am bringing you a quick tip episode, and I guess this one may not be as quick as usual, but it's still going to be relatively short so you can digest it all quickly. And this one is really going to help you any time, but especially if you're thinking, okay, 2021 is coming up and I want to update our website or change the way our e-commerce store operates, or maybe 2020 was one of the first years that you did focus more on the online space. And so you're kind of doing a bit of work there for 2021 or it could be that you're redoing your branding or perhaps if you're in the service-based industry, you might be bringing in a whole new revenue stream or tier for your business. And so this is going to be super, super helpful. So let's get started.
Now, can I ask you a question? I do this quite a bit on the podcast, but really I want you to think about your answer to this question, which is when was the last time you asked for a customer or client to give you a testimonial or some sort of review?
I know. I know a lot of people will be like, eew, and I can almost hear people squirming, you know, because for many small business owners, for many people in general, especially if you are raised in Australia, where I am and where we have a severe issue with actually asking for praise of any kind, asking somebody to tell you what they liked about working with you or buying from you is akin to pushing peanut butter through a sieve. You know, it's a hard task and it's a task that sometimes, if we're honest, we would rather bypass.
But as I'm always telling clients and students, word of mouth marketing has to be one of the absolute best kinds, because word of mouth marketing doesn't come with any sort of pretense that "Oh, you've paid for this." or it comes with a real truth and honesty to it. You know, people don't recommend things if they don't think that they're good.
So we're social beings and social proof, you know, testimonials and reviews and even the use of abuse branded hashtag by everyday people is often the biggest influencer for someone who might be lurking between, say, evaluation and purchase stages of the buyer cycle. Now, side note, if you're not familiar with the bio cycle, then definitely go back and listen to Episode 24, because I go into detail about that and I talk about how you can use the buyer cycle to really understand if your marketing is working or not. But for now, a quick recap on the buyer cycle. It's basically a cycle. It's a circle, really, that anyone will travel through when they wish to transact with a business.
So from awareness, you kind of go through five stages.
1. Awareness: They become aware of you.
2. Research: They jump on your website to have a look or Google you or something else. They look on social media.
3. Evaluation: So is this the right company or person for me.
4. Purchase: So how easy is it for me to actually transact and give you my money?
5. Post-purchase and advocacy: So you did such a great job. Now I'm telling everyone about it.
So when I mentioned before that testimonials can really be the thing that triggers people in the evaluation stage to actually purchase, I totally mean that. You know, people at the stage of evaluating whether your business or your product is the right thing for them can be often guided into purchasing because of this social proof - so a review or a testimonial. That can totally guide them to take action. We have all done it. We've all looked at something kind of scroll down, oh, what are the reviews say? And then we've made a decision based on that. So they're massively important.
And in my own business, I use testimonials in every pitch deck on social media all over my website, including on every service offering page. So I have like business coaching group coaching the home page. I have an actual dedicated testimonials page full of testimonials. And as I've said before, you know, marketing is really about three things. It's about people knowing about you, people liking you and people trusting you. And it's this last stage where testimonials shine.
So you might be like, yeah, all sounds good, but how do you actually go about asking for these and when should you do it? And which clients or customers should you approach first? In today's episode, I wanted to give you some really practical tips as always.
So here are four things that I tell clients when it comes to getting testimonials and reviews. And remember, if you are in the car driving, you're doing something else. You can't write things down. You can find the show notes and a full transcript of this over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/49
So back to the four things that you want to get right in order to get your testimonials and make them work for your business.
No. 1 Consider who you're trying to target in the future.
So what sorts of people or businesses would that person want to see testimonials from? So example could be are they a health coach? And they want to know if you've worked with other health coaches or are they a buyer for hotels? Who wants to know that you've also worked with large wholesale accounts before and this isn't going to be like, oh, my gosh, terrifying for you that you know how to do that?
For my business, I have a mix of consulting clients, coaching clients and people who have bought my online products, so my courses and my ebooks. And for that reason, I seek testimonials from a mix of small solo operators, small businesses, large corporate companies and creative small businesses. It's sort of five plus staff. And if you have them, you also want to include some of the most well known companies or people that you've worked with or sold to in there.
And that's really to kind of give you a bit of credibility in whatever space that you're in. So for me, this means that I have testimonials from places like Etsy, places like Australia Post, places like Cool Hunting and The Design Files, those all kind of help people make a, I guess, educated guess of what it's going to be like to work with me. So the first is consider who you're trying to target in the future.
No. 2 Consider what you most want to be known for.
And this is really important. It's no good having 10 testimonials that actually all say the same thing and also something that you're actually kind of steering away from in your business or is not something that you want to bring to light all the time. So you want to think what traits do you want to be presented in these testimonials? So it could be things like friendly or reliable or high quality or original or results driven or all sorts of things. But knowing there is knowing what you want to be known for is going to make it much easier to frame the questions that you'll ask people in your testimonial request.
No. 3 Send the request.
This is the scary part. It's not that scary, but just think of it like pulling a Band-Aid off, you know? Yes, it could be awkward for a second, but you just get through it, get it done. It's over before you know it. So if you sell products, you might want to ask people to leave a review on Google or any other platform in their status or order details email as the status email that comes through from people when they buy something is often the most read email that you'll ever get because people want to check, you know, how much they get charged. Is it going to the right address? When will it arrive? All of those things.
So in the status email, it could be a great place to say. "And if you love this, we'd love you to share a review over here, here or here." And you could even have an actual dedicated page that shows this is how to leave reviews, whether it's leaving a review for my podcast or leaving a review for the book or whatever it is, you could have a dedicated reviews page. That's a separate tip episode. But when you send in the request, really think about, you know, where am I going to ask people?
So like I said, if you're a product business, it could be in the status emails, then you could follow them up in a week or so, depending on how long the product takes to be used or to arrive even. And if you're a service-based business, you might wish to automate this process at the end of your time with a client. So in either case, really, you could use a form like Google Forms or Survey Monkey or Type form to make this super simple, to collect the data and anyone on any device can leave a review.
What you want to do when you're thinking about the request is to make it as easy as possible for somebody to get back to you with the testimonial. You can make it anonymous because sometimes that can be really helpful, because people can then, you know, people feel fine to give actual honest advice often when it is anonymous. But another option is to send a personal email, which is what I do a lot. And this is where the questions that you want to be asking yourself about, you know, what do I want to be known for and what do I try to get across in this testimony? All those things come into play when you do an individual testimonial request.
So an example of a personal email that you might send might look like, you know, "Dear Noah, I hope you will. I'm wondering if it's possible to get a testimonial for you on the whatever it is that you did for you in whatever year or whatever month or so.", for example, on the consulting that I did for you in July 2019. And then you want to make sure that they're really clear how this is going to be used. So I might say something like, I'll be using this on the My Daily Business Coach website and in other marketing materials for the business, such as proposal documents, social media presentations, website, etc, etc. It can be brief, even just a few lines.
And what I'd most like to get across is and this is where you're going to put the things you want to be known for.: how we connected. Was that a referral? You found me through my email or social media. What was your need at the time, you know, to help us identify X, how you found working with me or the work itself to things specifically that stood out, i.e. proficient, proactive, professional, friendly systems and processes. And finally, if you would recommend me or utilize my services again. So I've included some examples below to give you an idea. And if you don't feel comfortable, that's totally fine, thanks.
And so you can say from that, it's a very casual email. I'm not going in heavy, but what I'm doing is I'm tailoring it to try and get the response that I want and that's going to help me attract certain people to my business in the future.
So asking things like two things that specifically stood out, for example, and then you're going to list the things that you would like to be known for there. And this is, of course, just an example, but it is a really quick, easy way to to get that request. So that's number three is to send the request, ask for the request.
No.4 Gather the data and use the information that you've been granted.
So this could be showing the testimonial or feedback on your marketing channels. It could be using statistics on product detail pages or. So, for example, 98% of buyers would recommend this to a friend or 90% of people said X, Y, Z, and most importantly, by taking the feedback on to improve what your business does.
So are there traits you'd like to be known for that when you ask for testimonials no one is talking about? No one's ever mentioning that. And you're like, oh, that's kind of weird. I got 10 testimonials and none of them mention this thing that I'm trying to be known for. And it could be "Well, well, that didn't stand out to people. "And so it's sort of like, OK, well, what do I need to rejig in my business for that to stand out to people or in my marketing for that to stand out to people?
You could also think about how are you going to become more known for those things that you want to be known for? You also want to use your testimonials and think, well, what's not working? Look at how you're marketing your products and services. And perhaps there's something that you really want to be in those testimonials or that you want people to be talking about when it comes to your products. But actually you're not talking about it. So then how would they know, for example, that it's sustainably made or that it's made locally or other things like that? You're like, oh, that hasn't come up in the testimonials. And yet you're like, well, is it actually evident to people when they're looking at my marketing in my comps?
So you also have to look at your testimonials and think what are the common benefits that people say about your product or service in their review or the testimonial? And then ask yourself, are we really selling with these benefits or are we just stating the features all the time? So sometimes you can get the best insights really into how people see your product or your service offering from testimonials. And then you want to be like, OK, reverse engineer that.
Am I putting that stuff into the rest of my marketing? This feedback can be an incredible way to market your business.
So, look, I totally get it. Any time you have to ask people for a review or testimonial, you are forced to be vulnerable. For some of you, it's an easy task and you're like, yep, I can do it. Done. No problem.
For others, it can conjure up thoughts of not being good enough or even being an impostor in your industry. But I hope that the four steps that I've outlined today in this podcast will really help ease the awkwardness and have, you well on your way to utilizing word of mouth marketing for your small business.
And just to recap again, those four points,
1. Consider who you're trying to target in the future.
2. Consider what you most want to be known for.
3. Get it done, send the request.
4. Gather the data and use the information that you've been granted from these testimonials in other parts of your marketing.
That is it for today's Quick Tip episode on testimonials. If you want to read the full show notes and get the transcript and look at links that I might have mentioned, you can do that over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/49.
If you are looking for more quick tips for your business, you can go back and binge all the past episodes.
And if you're new here, please, please, please make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss out on any future ones. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
